I did a search for Texas Hold 'em just to see who's ranking there and how well the blogger effort to make the Wikipedia page rank for it has gone...
I was amazed. The top spot is currently held by this lovely site, which, while not a miserable disgrace, certainly doesn't inspire the kind of confidence that I would want to see if it were my site. Just imagine if, instead you had a site with the quality of Wikipedia's page and a great design/usability/etc. You could actually rank in perpetuity (perhaps) and certainly make a lot more conversions. Why don't they try?
It seems that a great deal of effort spent on ranking could instead be used to increase conversion rates, with largely the same results. In addition, a high converting site that has great design and content isn't going to be penalized for improving its conversion rate, but a highly ranking site for Texas Hold 'em... Well, let's just say that I imagine in two weeks, a lot of people reading this post would be confused by the discrepency between the first two links.
p.s. Out of the top 20, I found 3 sites that were OK- the rest were of highly questionable value or interest, even to a Texas hold'em afficianado like myself.
Most PPC managers simply run campaigns based around the max spend of the client. They get $5k a month, and they spend every penny of it (only way to get their full commission). They get new customers for the client and the client is happy (assuming profits rose... even marginally). Eventually, the website owner will figure out PPC probably isn't the best thing since sliced bread, and will abandon it to save money, or fire the SEM and do it themselves -- after all, what the SEM does "can't be that hard to do."
I don't think *this* portion of conversions will ever increase. There are plenty of B&M merchants that have gone along for years without ever paying attention to conversion rates in their stores -- the web will be no different.
Conversions are where the money is. Even if you have horrible results in the SERPs and have to pay for PPC, if you focus on conversion rates, you'll make the money. If you focus on PPC for a client and cannot modify the client's site for conversions, then you're leaving yourself out to dry. Change the website for conversions and *then* do the SEM. If they fire you at this point, I'll bet dollars to donuts they come up with a new design and it won't be conversion friendly. They'll fire you and business will drop.
As an SEM, what more could you want?
Hey I have to add this, but it needs a post of it's own. I just took the SEO Exam - scored 45 percent -- and learned that Yahoo! is targeting affiliate sites as "having no unique value." But Yahoo is an affiliate to RazorGator tickets, so doesn't that make Yahoo! an affiliate site????
"Conversions are where the money is. Even if you have horrible results in the SERPs and have to pay for PPC, if you focus on conversion rates, you'll make the money. If you focus on PPC for a client and cannot modify the client's site for conversions, then you're leaving yourself out to dry. Change the website for conversions and *then* do the SEM. If they fire you at this point, I'll bet dollars to donuts they come up with a new design and it won't be conversion friendly. They'll fire you and business will drop."
I agree with that 100 percent. In any industry that is even slightly competitive you'll have to lay a solid foundation before you start sending traffic to the website or you'll end up wasting money.
Knock it if you wish, but they've had a lock on the No1 and No2 spot on Google for over 5 years and the make over $100,000 a month from it. I have the No1 spot on Yahoo.com for the same terms and do ok out of that with https://www.texashold-empoker.com
It is somewhat frustrating that they never move positions and the google index for this term is so static. It is worth noting that the dmoz category for texas holdem is moderated by a guy with a top 5 site for the term "poker" so he keeps all decent sites out, mine included.
The problem with virtually every poker site is that they pay no consideration to what the visitor (and potential customer) wants.
The worst offenders are the actual poker rooms themselves. No interest in giving anything of added value, other than sign-up bonuses or advertising large tournaments. The whole focus of these sites seems to be how large they can make the 'download the software' button.
Also very little focus on adding value to retain existing customers. They just hope that customer lethargy will keep them there.
I'm very surprised considering the amount of money involved, and the huge explosion of poker. As the market becomes more saturated with poker rooms it's going to become harder for them to survive, and some are going to have to think hard about their sites.
By the way, this is my first comment on the site. Great resource!!
Excellent topic Rand...LovetheCoast's 2nd post will spur comments...LOL.
I think this takes lots of experimenting (at least in my case) I can close in person...but moving people on the web is a different matter. Fortunately there are many sources for this information.
Some of the information can be found by following the Engines. Their placement of information on the web page is a key to determining what works best. They have more experience with this than any other source.
Frankly, I enjoy picking this up...though it is a different skill set than straight SEO
BTW -- to prove my point, watch how *few* comments you get to this posting. Conversions just aren't as sexy as SEO.
Good comments LoveTheCoast. As sad as it is, I do have to agree with you. One of the possible causes is that most people in SEO business have a pretty narrow educational /work-related background, and it limits their views. There are programmers, designers, sales, managers etc - but people who have done successfully at least few jobs listed are very, very few.
As for conversion, I do find it extremely sexy topic. SEO is fun, but making money is even more fun.
I see the exact same thing in many industries. The simple fact is that if you get enough traffic, someone will eventually buy from you. As far as sites that actually work on increasing their visitor conversion rate, once they make the top 3 for a high traffic term, their sales go through the roof.
When SEOs branch out into managing PPC campaigns for clients they will learn to respect conversion rates.
If you deliver a top 5 ranking to your client and he/she gets a .33 percent conversion rate, it's fine as long as they're getting 3,000 unique visitors per day but when they're paying 20 cents per click for that traffic it becomes a different story.
Someone that has a deep understanding of usability, analytics, SEM and conventional internet marketing can deliver powerful results and hopefully more companies will recognize this ability in the future.
Far too few people care about conversions, and that's where the real money is. Give me 10x more traffic (through SEO) or 10x more orders and the choice is obvious. I think the problem lies in the different trains of thought. Most programmers couldn't create a nice UI if their life depended on it. Most SEO's can get you to the top of the SERPs, but can't help you get more orders. Throwing more and more traffic at a bad site is not the answer.
Thankfully, in my industry, noone cares about conversions. At the big national conferences, there are a slew of SEO/SEM companies and all they brag about is bringing in more web traffic.
Remember when the web first came out? You could spend a weekend learning HTML and then run off and get a six-digit salary at a Fortune 500 company putting together crappy static sites. Just as that portion of the web matured, so will this one. And those focusing solely on SEO will fall by the wayside.
S