Paul's Quality Backlinks - Paul & Angela's Backlink Service

Save Yourself Time And Money To Focus On Your Business!

Angela V. Edwards and Paul Johnson have teamed up to offer you this amazing link building service. We have been offering this service to only subscribers of our monthly backlink packets, and many of them have already seen their sites move up in the search engine rankings. We have now decided to open the doors to everyone, and offer four different pricing packages as well.

Don’t waste your hard earned time & energy on tedious tasks that consume most of your day, let us build your backlinks for you, so you can spend more time to focus on your business.

Not only will you get your site and keyword manually linked on High Page Rank authority sites, but you will receive a detailed report upon completion, which will have links that you can click on that will take you to the exact location of your site & anchor text links on each High Page Rank authority site.

We are proud to announce that we have 6 different link building packages ranging from 6 to 120 backlinks per month, and you now have the option to pay by invoice of monthly subscription.

Please Note: This is a first come first serve basis, so you should reserve your spot now due to the limited amount of clients we can take.

Backlink Packages

6 backlinks $12

14 backlinks $27

30 Backlinks $57

50 Backlinks $94

80 Backlinks $150

120 Backlinks $215

Note: Pricing above is for only one site and up to two keywords, contact us for custom packages.

How Social Media Helps Businesses Deal with Economic Downturns

The economy, while showing signs of not deteriorating further, is also not as robust as we would like it to be. But smart businesses all over the world have managed to stay afloat by cutting down on their expenses considerably through some pretty innovative strategies. It is no surprise that such cost cutting innovations came to fore only during one of the worst patches of the economy. Nonetheless, even after the economy slowly started picking up, the strategies remain because they are not just a cost cutting measure; they result in substantial benefits for the business.

Marketers turned to social media in droves when the businesses had less money to spend. We went through, and haven’t yet completely come out of, a phase where even spending money for paper, printing and other routine expenses were brought under scrutiny. This has helped companies in a big way. Most of them were able to cut down unnecessary fluff in their expenses and metamorphosed into lean and tough warriors who had a real chance in surviving this battle.

Social media usage started in a big way during the economic downturn. It shows no signs of letting up, if any; the rate of usage is only increasing. When businesses learn how effective social media is, the more aggressively they use it.

The success of social media is based on its ability to converse with customers. When you use social media sites to promote your business, you are creating and magnifying the buzz about your brand. The customers speak directly to you, and that too within a matter of minutes after you initiate an attempt at engaging with them. This is an advantage that helps social media tower head and shoulders above all the rest of the advertising and marketing channels. Consider the amount of money that you have to spend on running a traditional print or a television ad. Even with the ad campaign running, it takes weeks or even months to get an inkling of what the customers think about your new product or service, updates or anything else that you are up to.

The caveat here is that you need to dedicate as much time to the social media conversations as your customers do. Prompt responses, staying away from hard sell, acknowledging blunders gracefully etc. are requisites for success.

Though social media first started to be used as a tool to cut costs, business people have since realized it’s potential and still continue to use it effectively to engage with customers. During the recession, many businesses that were forced into a corner to cut costs resorted to less than popular and sometimes downright unethical business practices. Social media gave a platform for those transgressing thus and for others to make the most of the situation.

Even those customers who had lost trust in the business could be wooed back by responding to their concerns genuinely and addressing them. Those businesses that did not bother to do so lost the customers because they went to some other company who did seem to care. Social media was, and still is, a great way to engage in a two way communication. Because of its subtlety and lack of hoopla that is usually associated with traditional marketing, social media is seen as more genuine, real and believable.

Whether the economic scenario is bleak or not, social media is and will remain one of the most powerful tools to build credibility for your brand and to attract a loyal following. It is not really a quick-fix for all the troubles of your business, so do not use it like a band-aid. Rather, use this powerful tool intelligently to build steady and deep relationships that are based on trust, respect and loyalty.

Posted by Empowered on June 23rd, 2010

Must-Have SEO Recommendations: Step 7 of the 8-Step SEO Strategy

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

You know the client. The one that really needs your help. The one that gets pumped when you explain how keywords work. The one that has an image file for a site. Or maybe the one that insists that if they copy their competitor’s title tags word-for-word, they’ll do better in search results (I had a product manager make his team do that once. Needless to say (I was thrilled when) it didn’t work).

In Step 6 of the SEO Strategy document I noted that this strategy document we’ve been building isn’t a best practices document, and it’s more than a typical SEO audit. It is a custom set of specific, often product-focused recommendations and strategies for gaining search traffic. For that reason I recommended linking out to SEO basics and best practices elsewhere (in an intranet or a separate set of documents).

But most of the time you’ll still need to call out some horizontal things that this client must have put in front of their faces, or else it will be missed completely. SEO/M is your area of expertise, not theirs, so help them make sure they’ve got their bases covered. You can create an additional section for these call-outs, wherever you feel it is appropriate in your document.

WHAT CAN I INCLUDE HERE?

Here are some examples of things you could include if you felt your client needed this brought to their attention:

1. Press Release optimization and strategy
2. SEO resources for specific groups in the company:
   1. SEO for business development (linking strategies in partner deals)
   2. SEO for writers/editorial
   3. SEO for designers
3. SEO for long term results rather than short term fixes
4. International rollout recommendations
5. Content management system – how it is impairing their SEO
6. Risks and avoidances
7. Anything that you feel should be covered in more detail for this particular client, that wasn’t covered in your strategy in the last step. This is a catchall – a place to make sure you cover all bases.
8. Nothing - if you dont feel it's needed.

If the client really needs a lot of help, you’d want to provide training and best practices, either as separate deliverables along with the strategy document, or better yet – work on training and best practices with them first, then dive into more specific strategy. You don’t want to end up with a 15 page (or even 4 page for that matter) best practices document in your strategy doc. Remember, we’re beyond best practices here, unless, in this case there’s something specific that needs to be called out.

If the client needs more than one thing called out, do it. If it’s several things, consider either adding an appendix, or as I mentioned, creating a separate best practices document.

The reason I recommend best practices as a separate document is because it is really a different project, often for an earlier phase.

EXAMPLE 1:

Let’s say for example, my client has the type of content the press loves to pick up. They don’t do press releases, mostly because they don’t know how exactly to write them and where to publish them, but they want to. I‘ll add a Press Releases section after the strategy and I might give them these simple tidbits:

• High level benefit of doing press releases
• What person or group in the company might be best utilized to manage press releases
• Examples of what to write press releases about
• Channels they can publish press releases to
• Optimization tips
• References they can go to for more detailed information

EXAMPLE 2:

My client gets it. They’re pretty good at taking on most SEO on their own. This strategy document I’m doing for them is to really dig in and make sure all gaps are closed, and that they’re taking advantage of every opportunity they should. Additionally, in a few months they are going to roll out the site to several international regions.

My dig into the site and its competitors (and search engines) for this strategy have all been for the current site in this country. Because the Intl rollout hasn’t started yet, I will add a section to my document with specific things they need to keep in mind when doing this rollout.

• Localized keyword research (rather than using translate tools)
• ccTLD (country code top level domain) considerations
• Tagging considerations (like “lang”)
• Proper use of Google Webmaster Tools for specifying region
• Potential duplication issues
• Maybe even a lit of popular search engines in those countries
• Point to more resources or list as a potential future contract project

Make sense? Use your judgment here. Like we’ve seen in the rest of the steps, this strategy document is your work of art, so paint it how your own creative noggin sees it, Picasso.

Other suggestions for what you might include here? Love it? Hate it? Think this step stinks or mad I didn’t include music to listen to for this one? Let’s hear about it in the comments!

Posted by laura on June 22nd, 2010

Bing It? “Bring It,” Says Google

I got a chuckle out of this on Google. Do a search for bing it, and Google comes back with a suggestion of “bring it.” Is Google telling Bing to bring it on?

It’s all automated, of course. This is just Google’s spelling correction kicking in. Many more people are likely typing in “bring it” than “bing it,” so Google’s trying to do the right thing and help them. But it’s still funny to me.

Over at Ask, the same thing happens there:

So see, it’s not just Google being mean to Bing.

Yahoo also does something similar. It brings back results for for both “bring it” and “bing it” mixed together, along with an option for the searcher to get only “bing it” results:

What about Bing itself? No suggestion there that the searcher might want “bring it” rather than “bing it,” as you can see:

I suppose that makes sense. More people at Bing who enter “bing it” might really mean that rather than “bring it.”

Does anyone actually say Bing It? Yes, a few actually do. Our Yes, People Do Say “Bing It” — Barely story from last month covers this in more depth. Not many, but it is a term that some people are saying — and perhaps searching on.

Of course, many more people say “Google It.” How’s that play out at Bing? Just fine — its lists Google tops, with no special suggestions.

That’s not the case with Yahoo, which shoves a box encouraging you to “get straight to your answers here with Yahoo! Search” above Google’s listing (the same thing happens if you just search for “google,” as well):

Why’s Yahoo listing Google Italy rather than the main Google site? The “It” part of “Google It” is probably being interpreted as a search for www.google.it, the Italian version of Google.

Ask plays straight with a search for “google it,” but if you search for Google, it tries to keep you there like Yahoo does:

Yahoo’s done this type of thing in the past (see “You Could Go To Google,” Says Yahoo — But Why Not Stay Here?). To its credit, Bing — in a search for Google there — doesn’t try to convince you to Bing It instead.

Bing SEO Services Jun 23, 2010 at 9:31pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Bing Has A New Look, Now Hosts Deep Content In Search Results

While Bing is throwing a star-studded party to announce changes to its entertainment-based search results, there are several other changes that deserve a close look, not the least of which is the amount of deep content — including full articles with thousands of words — that Bing is now hosting in its search results. More on that in a bit.

Look & Feel

Let’s start with the overall new look and feel that Bing has announced. The biggest change is that search options — or, Quick Tabs in Bing-speak — have been moved from the left-side column to immediately under the search box at the top of the page. Bing calls this the Answer Bar.

Just like before, the tabs will change depending on the query; the U2 search above has tabs for Songs, Albums, and Videos that are obviously query-specific. In order to make the Quick Tabs more visible below the search box, Bing’s background “image of the day” has been cut down in size pretty substantially, and you can barely tell what it is now. (If you care, that is.)

The left-side column, meanwhile, still has Related Searches and links to your recent searches; these are now easier to access because the Quick Tabs don’t take up several hundred vertical pixels above them.

What’s unchanged is the inclusion of categorized results further down the search results page.

But beyond the new Answer Bar at the top of the search results page, Bing has made some pretty substantial additions and changes to the search results for certain verticals, like Autos, Finance, and Health.

Bing: Autos

Consider a search for honda accord specs. On the old Bing interface, you’d get a pretty standard page of search results with a little bit of information about the car in Bing’s standard Instant Answer.

In the new interface, auto-related searches that include the word “specs” (and perhaps other terms; I haven’t been able to trigger it, though) send you directly to a new Quick Tab with what appears to be a pretty complete look at the Honda Accord’s specs.

The data comes from MSN Autos, and each of the orange headings you see above (Pricing & Warranty, Fuel Economy, etc.) links to further information at MSN Autos.

Bing: Finance

Bing has been strong in finance-related searches, and already shows a wealth of company information on searches that involve company stock ticker symbols. Do a search for MSFT and then click the “Finance” Quick Tab on the left, and you would see a page like this:

But, as part of the new interface, Bing has added several new content pages underneath the Finance Quick Tab that give investors faster access to deeper company information. You can see links (below) for Balance sheet, Income statement, and Cash flow — each one is a page of data like this:

Bing: Health

Coming later this week will be a variety of upgrades to Bing’s search results and interface for health-related searches. One is the addition of authoritative Twitter updates to the existing Instant Answer for medical conditions. Here’s a look at what the Instant Answer for prostate cancer will look like:

The tweet above comes from the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Bing says the tweets will only come from authoritative sources and will appear when relevancy and recency standards are met; the tweet above mentions a new discovery related to prostate cancer, which is a piece of information that the Instant Answer might not otherwise have shared with searchers.

More important than that, though, is Bing’s integration of content directly in the search results via partnerships with a variety of well-known health industry sources.

Do a search for diabetes, for example, and the initial search results include Bing’s standard Instant Answer. But there’s a new Health Quick Tab at the top of the page, and under that tab is a detailed article from the Mayo Clinic.

There’s also a box for “related articles,” all of which link to additional articles hosted by Bing.

Bing has had health information from the Mayo Clinic (and others) in its Instant Answers since day one, but this is much more than Instant Answers. This is full content articles acting like a search results page (or tab, in this case). How detailed and lengthy is that Mayo Clinic article on Bing? It’s a collection of the 10 articles that appear on the Mayo Clinic’s diabetes page — mirroring the ten links on the left side of that page (Definition, Symptoms, Causes, etc.). I cut-and-pasted Bing’s version into Microsoft Word: It took up eight pages and shows a word count of 5,264.

Final Thoughts

With this latest round of changes, Bing continues to drive home the idea of being a “decision engine” — getting searchers the information they need to take action right from the search results, or with as few clicks as possible from the search results.

Bing says that the new Answer Bar increased user engagement during its internal testing, and also helped to decrease the number of manual re-queries. Bing says that’s a sign that searchers are getting the information they need.

What’s very important in all of this, I think, is the increase in real information sitting on/in Bing’s search engine — the type of stuff search engines typically just provide links to. Whether it’s full specs for a new car, a company’s complete and current balance sheet, or an 8,000+ word article about diabetes, this is new. Search results are now content.

Note: Some Bing users may not see all of the changes at this time while the updates are rolling out; the Health updates, in particular, aren’t due to go live for a couple days.

Bing Optimization Jun 23, 2010 at 2:14am ET by Matt McGee

8 Reasons In-House SEOs Hire SEO Consultants

When I was an in-house SEO I hired outside SEO consultants. Now as the outside SEO consultant I often work with in-house SEOs. In the comments of my most recent post, an interesting question came up, "...why would a company who has an in-house SEO expert hire an external company?"

Here are 8 excellent reasons why talented in-house SEOs often bring in outside help.

1. Specialized Expertise

Not too long ago, SEO was a niche marketing specialization. I remember when even Internet Marketing was considered a highly niche specialization. In fact, my college marketing instructor tried to talk me out of Internet Marketing because it was too niche and I ran the risk of limiting my prospects down the line.

Times have sure changed. As the search engines have matured and the SEO industry has evolved along with them, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be on top of every SEO related factor. Even something as specific as SEO is segmenting into specializations. Experts have emerged in social media promotion, local SEO, mobile SEO, copy-writing for SEO, link-building, and so on.

"I hired the external consultants simply because they had more experience in the area I needed support in. Everyone needs to learn new things, so you're rarely an expert in everything at once. Hiring the external consultant gets around a lot of hurdles and ramps up your program much quicker. Their deeper domain expertise allowed me to focus in areas I was strong in, while our entire SEO effort moved forward at the desired pace. Why reinvent the wheel when someone else already has an established, productive program that can benefit you?"

Duane Forrester is an in-house SEO with Microsoft, running their program for MSN. He is also the author of How To make Money With Your Blog and Turn Clicks into Customers. In his spare time, he writes for Search Engine Land.

I like what Duane said about the hiring of external consultants ramping up your program quicker. By knowing and doing what you do best and outsourcing other tasks, you can super-charge your site's SEO and get closer to your potential traffic level.

If I worked for a national business comprised on thousands of brick-and-mortar locations (think Burger King), I'd definitely look at retaining the services of someone like David Mihm to ensure I had all the right pieces in place. I doubt that many people reading this post are as well versed on the intricacies of Local SEO as David.

How about mobile? You have the choice to either delve into the details yourself or do as other talented in-house SEOs have done and hire someone like Cindy Krum who wrote the book on Mobile Marketing. Literally.

"Mobile SEO is a niche within a niche, and it is pretty specialized. Top in-house SEO's have brought me in to help with mobile SEO, simply because they don't have time to learn the niche. There is a lot to know, and it is easy to make mistakes. Mobile is still a small part of most in-house SEO's traffic, so they want to know that things are set up correctly, but they don't have enough bandwidth to devote to learning the niche or even shepherding the project."

Cindy Krum is the CEO and Founder of Rank-Mobile, LLC, and author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are. She also hosts a weekly radio show called Mobile Presence, acts as an SEOmoz Associate, responding to Q&A about mobile SEO.

Why bumble around yourself on such specialized niches when you can focus on the pieces you know best and outsource those pieces to a more qualified expert? You don't need to be everything SEO all the time. Give yourself a break!

2. Too Much to Do. Too Little Time.

Effective SEO is a lot of work. Managing the internal politics can be a full-time job unto itself! Perhaps you are confident that you have the strategy nailed down but you just can't get your projects through the pipeline fast enough. In order to keep things moving while you consider the next big project it can help to hire an outside consultant.

"I outsource as necessary for specific tasks, not for general consulting or strategy. Specific examples include content creation for new pages on a site, link building, and social promotion of blog content. This has generally worked out well as I'm able to shape efforts and budget across all aspects of Internet marketing while having a specific challenge or need addressed by the consulting company."

John Santangelo is an Internet marketing professional based in Jacksonville, FL and currently works in-house as the Search Marketing Manager for a staffing firm.

Once you've established what needs to be done, hiring an SEO consultant can help you push through a task list and get closer to your goals.

3. Fresh Perspective

Working on the same website for years on end can get mighty boring. You can only come up with so many interesting articles related to nylons, and if you have to rewrite the homepage title tag one more time you're going to scream. With boredom comes creative stagnation. Bringing in the right SEO consultant can help get the creative juices flowing again. Fresh eyes bring fresh ideas to help your business grow.

At SEOmoz we used to provide whirlwind audits in our boardroom. The client would bring along their best and brightest SEOs, marketing folks, and development staff. We'd go through their site and point out areas for improvement. One particular client comes to mind; well known brand, important website, talented SEO expertise... They'd blocked an important directory in the robots.txt. Sometimes when you are too close to a problem you can miss little details like a line in your robots.txt or an important redirect.

4. Educational Purposes

At SEOmoz we often sold an educational component along with our site audits. We'd go in with slide decks and teach anywhere from one to dozens of in-house resources some of our knowledge. This empowers the in-house team to move forward on their own, knowing a little more. Training can be formal or otherwise. Topher describes his outsourced project as a learning experience.

"As the in-house at CNN.com I have used a agency (Bruce Clay) and have brought in an outside consultant. I think a good SEO has to know what they don’t know and I do not know mobile SEO well at all. I went and asked about for a mobile SEO expert and Cindy Krum's name came up all over the place so I brought her in and she was great. I am still not an expert on Mobile SEO but I for sure know a heck of a lot more now then I did before because of her."

Topher Kohan is the SEO Coordinator for CNN. He joined CNN, a division of Turner broadcasting and a Time Warner company, in early 2008 after two years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

5. Validation

SEO enhancements can be expensive to implement and sometimes take months or even years to complete. Based on high level experience across more web properties, an outsourced consultant can help you prioritize your enhancements and validate your project plan to ensure you make the most of the development investment.

"Outside SEO consultants typically have very broad experiences with a variety of websites and industries. Our role is to come along side the in-house team and help them manage the process of inserting SEO into the overall marketing and web production schedules and tackle the different hurdles associated with that. The in-house SEOs are our biggest allies to help us navigate the internal roadblocks and in return we are their biggest allies for getting their projects implemented."

Todd Friesen in the Vice President of Search for Position Technologies Inc. and has been working in SEO and online marketing since 1999 with many high profile clients such as Nike and the NCAA.

At SEOmoz we enjoyed working with strong in-house SEO individuals or teams for our consulting gigs. I suspect that this is true for most SEO consultants that specialize more on strategy and less on implementation.

6. Collaboration

As in-house SEOs, a lot of folks work independently. It can be refreshing and rewarding to expand on the one-man show. Marty describes how he and his employer benefit from expanding his team from time to time to meet a need.

"It really benefits me to be able to divvy up the responsibilities for things like site architecture, internal linking, etc. to an outside firm/person I trust while I focus on other important tasks like content migrations and cleanup with our internal web team. I find it very useful to spread the workload in order to be able to launch a redeveloped site sooner rather than later and in most instances it is also more cost effective in the time savings."

Marty Martin is an SEM/SEO with a broad range of experience working for colleges and universities, regional and state tourism, government and business. He is employed currently as an in-house SEO for Leisure Publishing Co., Inc. in Virginia.

7. Overcome Internal Politics

Of course you know your stuff when it comes to SEO. That is how you got your in-house SEO job, right? Then why do you spend so much of your time selling the value of your projects and negotiating for resources? One challenge that a lot of in-house SEOs face is finding the time to do actual SEO work. External consultants can help pave the way to get home grown ideas implemented.

	"Sometimes in-house SEO departments need help convincing another department that their ideas are solid. We do a lot of consulting that helps the different departments learn how to play together throughout the development life cycle."
Jessica Bowman is an SEO Expert, international speaker, member of the SEMPO Board of Directors and works with companies to figure out what they need to build a successful in-house SEO program.

8. Breadth of Knowledge

As an in-house SEO for a growing business, the challenges you face for the first time have more often than not been considered and successfully addressed by another SEO somewhere out there in cyberspace.

	"A number of our clients have in-house SEO teams and we love working alongside them. There's quite a range of reasons why we'd be brought in. One of the most common reasons is because we have specific experience across a range of sites or in solving a specific tough problem."
Will Critchlow is the Director of Distilled, an SEO and internet marketing firm in London and Seattle.

Lets say you've inadvertently landed yourself a Google penalty. How do you diagnose the problem, get it fixed, and request forgiveness with a successful outcome? A consultant who has helped other websites work their way out of a penalty situation can be invaluable.

There are plenty of less dramatic examples. How do you implement a WordPress powered blog as a sub-folder of a .Net site? How do you handle millions of constantly expiring pages (as is common with job boards and classified ad sites)? How will you write a compelling link bait piece?

Action Items

The next time you get push back when proposing to hire an SEO consultant, choose from the reasons outlined in this post to support your case.

1. We need specialized expertise.
2. We have too much to do. We'll get this project moving faster if I can get some help.
3. We can learn a lot from an outside expert.
4. We want to double check our strategies before we get going.
5. We would benefit from collaboration with other SEOs.
6. A consultant can help us work through the concerns of marketing/IT/executives.
7. We need the help of someone who has done (insert complicated initiative) before.

In-house SEOs hire outside assistance for all kinds of things from strategy, implementation, retainer, special projects and more. Are you an in-house SEO that has worked with external SEO experts? I'd love to hear your experience.

Happy optimizing!

Posted by Lindsay

Choosing the Right Keyphrases - Especially for the Smaller Sites!

Hey there folks! Today's post is a hands-on walkthrough of some of the decision making used when choosing the keyphrases to target. Producing a list of the most important terms in an industry is nice, but actually choosing the right keyphrases is essential. The post was largely created in response to a question submitted by Kien in the comments of my last post.

What to Expect

This post should provide you with real-life examples of the keyword decision making process and help you make sense of the output from the revamped Keyword Difficulty Tool. If you're already a hardcore keyword research (and keyword difficulty) guru, this is more of a refresher, but should provide valuable insights to journeymen and perhaps a bit more transparency into how to choose the right keyphrases for your site (plus a bit of a tour for those of you who haven't used the Keyword Difficulty Tool for a while).

While you may get more value from this on smaller sites, and those that are newly launched, large sites with specific keyword targets may benefit, too.

Two Different Camps

There are really two separate and distinct camps on keyphrase research implementation: those who always go for the highest volume search terms that are moderately relevant to a page and those that also give consideration to the competitive landscape for a certain term. Regardless of which camp you fall into, this tool can be immensely useful. If you find yourself in the "competitive" camp and always go after the highest volume term no matter what, the Keyword Difficulty Tool could and should still be used to track your linkbuilding efforts vs. the competition and to have some understanding of if/when you might be able to rank for the term in question. There's no point in setting goals (even if they are lofty) without having some idea of how to reach them.

Image: Ebaums World

However, if you are in the camp that likes quick results and has a bit more time to give to the keyphrase research process I strongly recommend going the extra mile to indentify realistic targets for the short-term and keep those lofty ambitions in the back of your mind to be addressed as a site grows, gains new links and hopefully acheives higher authority and trust metrics.

But what if my site is brand new?

As a general rule any newer sites should probably be aiming for the "less-moderately competitive" types of keyphrases for the most part. The one exception to this rule would be for exact match domain names.

If you can afford to look at these metrics in this light you can scale up the competitiveness for your terms as you improve the quality and competitiveness of your website.

Image from: Rand's Post on Multiple vs. Singular Keywords

Thinking about it logically (with the above graphic in mind): if you could rank first for a term with 30,000 global monthly searches or somewhere on the fourth or fifth page for a similar term with 300,000 global monthly searches which would you choose? The optimist might choose the second option, but the truly intelligent will pick the first for now and aim for the second option down the road. It doesn't take superior math skills to figure out that a small fraction of 1.2% of clicks from the 300,000 searches will not amount to anywhere near 42.1% of 30,000 searches.

I'm not saying it's always better to play it safe, I'm just saying that realistic goals will help you achieve more in the short term, and the opportunity to re-evaluate these goals will help you in the long term.

Does this keyword require a new page? How many terms can I target on a page?

This depends on a couple of factors. It depends, again, on the competitiveness of the terms but also largely depends on the strength of the overall site or page on which the keyword is being targeted.

As covered in Rand's post in March on this issue, a highly competitive term deserves "single page targeting". This is true in most instances and particularly good advice for smaller, newer sites. The way this works is somewhat backwards, but experience suggests stronger sites can target multiple terms on a page yet also can afford to rank for a larger number of long-tail keyphrases. This may seem a bit unfair, but it is what anecdotal evidence has shown me.

The long and short of it? If your site is big, unless the keyphrase is highly competitive it can probably be targeted on a page targeting other similar terms as well. However, if the phrase is extremely competitive it deserves it's own page.

In the case of smaller, newer sites there are forces working against the best approach. On the one hand, smaller sites will have fewer pages indexed and will not have a great deal of authority to rely on and spread throught the site. On the other hand, this also means they cannot drop the term "breast augmentation" on the same inner page as "breast enhancement" and expect to rank for both terms.

How do I know if my Site is Strong Enough to Rank for that Term?

The Difficulty Tool pulls in some nice metrics from the rankings that allow you to see a fair bit of information about the other sites ranking for a particular search term or phrase. It won't always be a simple case of "my page/domain is stronger than theirs, thus I will rank". There will always be other factors: is the keyphrase an exact match for the Top Level Domain [TLD]? Are the other sites targeting multiple terms on the page or just the one? How many inbound links does the other page have? How relevant is this specific keyphrase to your term?

I think you get the point here, it won't always be a simple fix but let's look at an example to try to get a clearer idea of how to work through this.

Let's look at an example from a recent client project I did for a plastic surgeon (honest). In doing research for terms around plastic surgery for a brand new website I tried to get my head around some of the inner nuances of some of the terminology and procedures to try to better understand search behaviour. As you can see from the above research the broad match search volume for breast augmentation is considerably larger than the others [insert corny joke here], however the local search volume is quite comparable for the top two terms and they are about equally competitive.

This particular area of research can be quite complicated because you also have to look at the intent of the searcher and weigh that with the product offered. The term "boob job" whilst funny, is probably not likely to lead to serious searchers who are considering having a selective surgery so that coupled with the lower search volume means we can probably get rid of that one for now (though it might be worth bearing in mind for future link bait).

As an aside: by doing a bit further research into the types of pages that rank for the two terms and looking into search behaviours a bit it actually seems that people searching for "breast implants" are also not likely to be the highest converting traffic and there are certain social stigmas associated with the various terminology. So, in this case we can actually probably rule out breast implants (in terms of the main target of the top level page) because it is not likely to lead to highly converting traffic. This does not, however mean that we won't want to target the term at all, just that it may move down the priority list a touch.

So, the very first step has helped us eliminate two of the terms for the time being- so we're making some progress! The next step is to compare the terms that seem as though they might both be realistic targets for the page but are also relatively similar in terms of competitiveness. Although the scores assigned by the Keyword Difficulty Tool can be very helpful when comparing a term that is ranked as a "10" versus one that is ranked as a "95" these "difficulty scores" do not provide enough information alone when comparing two simialrly competitive terms. Thankfully, the tool gives us a lot more data to work with.

As you can see above, although "breast augmentation" seems to be a slightly "less competitive" term based on the diffculty metric there is a clear outlier within this chart (which we can go ahead and guess is going to be Wikipedia without even having the rest of the data) that looks like it will be extremely difficult to outrank even if the top spot seems slightly weaker than for "breast enhancement."

Similarly, the overall landscape for "breast enhancement" actually seems a bit more realistic as a target for a new site. Thus, in this case (based solely on the likelihood of ranking) we would actually choose to target "enhancement" rather than "augmentation." And try to work our way up to the more difficut term by building links to the site as a whole and specifically trying to target this page before shifting our approach on the term targeting. But before we make this a final decision, let's have a slightly closer look at what the competition really looks like.

As you can we were right in assuming the 5th spot for the "augmentation" comparison has been taken by Wikipedia, though not on a page directly targeted towards "breast augmentation" (hence why it's probably riding as low as it is in the rankings).

Meanwhile, setting aside the Wikipedia page it looks like the top spot for "augmentation" is actually being held by a rather weak site that happens to have great anchor text in the domain. This is a perfect indicator of just how much benefit having a strong TLD with exact match anchor text can be, but unfortunately this sort of tactic won't help much when you're trying to land the client who wants a "tummy tuck" instead.

So, what do we do?

In an ideal world, the client would be a great big site with loads of authority and without much sense. They will have been targeting "boob job" and have 302'ed all of their old links so we can make some quick changes and win. In this case, we go after all of the terms, do a bit of linkbuilding and we'll probably turn out just fine.

Meanwhle, in the real world situation we would recommend going for "augmentation" as our targeted term for a couple of reasons.

Labeling/Usability Fail

First, it is probably the "best" of the keyphrases in question. It targets the right kind of customer/searcher (we know this based on existing data and background insights on behaviour) and it has the highest search volume at the broader level.

Second, this keyphrase actually makes the most sense for the page we set out to build. As a top-level page it gives us the opportunity to (over time) target some of these other terms on the page (with the exception, maybe, of "boob job") . Augmentation is the most generic term and will allow us to discuss "implants, reduction, enhancement, etc."

Third, after having looked more closely at the sites/pages currently ranking for these terms it actually seems like it will be easier to rank for this particular keyphrase (please note that Wikipedia is not even directly targeting this keyphrase in this case).

"But what about all the other keyphrases? I don't want to waste them!"

This is where the post comes full circle. If you're building the small/new site the most sensible option (in the short term) is to create a page that is optimised for as many of these pages can be justified and for which you have research. As we mentioned ealier on, you can't just go after every single keyphrase in the industry on individual pages from the get-go because they won't all be indexed.

Try just to use some common sense: create the augmentation page high-up within the information architecture, construct a page for "reduction", "implants" and "enhancements" and forget about "boob job" for now. This term may get some traffic but if it doesn't fit with the theme/tone of the site then save it for the linkbait and build strong links to these inner pages now.

This technique creates much more work. But with a brand new site this is to be expected. Try to structure things in a manner that you can get rid of some of the smaller pages targeting extremely similar terms without impacting usability. This is essential and will make your life much easier in the future.

"What if my client is a massive site with great links?"
We should all be so lucky. This is obviously a different ball game we're talking about here. But, if you are fortunate enough to have a Domain Authority that is considerably higher than your competitors for the keyphrase(s) in question you aren't going to struggle too much and you only need one page to rank for a number of terms.

Image via: 3 Meeses

If this is your starting point, I would advise creating one hub/landing page for all "augmentation" related terms. If your site is strong enough the Wikipedia example quite clearly illustrates that some of these other pages may be superfluous.

There's no need to jam all these keyphrases in the title-tag either. If there are enough inbound links and the site is trusted enough you can probably just go for the highest search volume terms so long as the term is related to the service offered (never forget usability!), if you are in this position kick back, relax and just wait for the little guys to catch-up!

Sam is based in London as a lead SEO at Distilled. He hopes you've enjoyed this post and is looking forward to your comments, questions and concerns!

Can Google Real Time Search Have Its Own Home Page Now?

Google’s Real Time Search is awesome. I’d love to point more people at it, but I can’t. That’s because unlike many other specialized Google search services, Google Real Time Search doesn’t have its own home page. That sucks, and it’s time to change.

Want to search for images on Google? Head over here to Google Image Search. Videos? Here’s Google Video Search. Books? Google Book Search. Heck, even Google Patent Search has its own home page. I can point readers at any of these with a simple URL. But to point them at Google Real Time Search, I have to explain things. Painfully. Like:

1. Go to Google
2. Search for something
3. Look on the left side of the screen, in the new Search Options section
4. Click on the “Updates” link or the “More” option to get to Updates, if you don’t see it
5. Now you’re getting results from Google Real Time Search

Or:

1. Go to Google Trends
2. Look for the “Hot Topics” section at the bottom left part of the page
3. Find the “More Hot Topics” search box
4. Search for something to get Google Real Time Search results

This is stupid. It’s time for Google to put Google Real Time Search out on something like realtime.google.com or social.google.com or whatever. But get it done. If Bing can manage to put its real time / social search service on a dedicated page, Google can do the same.

Jun 16, 2010 at 6:37pm ET by Danny Sullivan

A few thoughts on SSL Search

I’m incredibly happy that Google has added the option to search over SSL by going to https://www.google.com/ — note the “s” in “https.” I’m writing this blog post in a hotel right now because I’m in Europe for a week doing a series of tech talks, but I could just as easily be working down at local Dublin cafe with an open WiFi hotspot. In both cases, I might want to do a private search that the hotel or local cafe can’t see. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection provides an encrypted tunnel between my browser and Google, so other people can’t sniff what I’m searching for.

I believe encrypted search is an important option for Google searchers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked for secure search in the past (see this post from 2009), and I credit them for helping to put this on Google’s radar. Another inspiration that helped to spark this project was Cory Doctorow’s book “Little Brother.” It was one of my favorite books of 2008 and while I won’t go into the book’s plot here, it’s a quick, fun read. “Little Brother” also makes a compelling case for encrypting HTTP traffic on the web.

Some people don’t yet fully understand how SSL search works. I saw one commenter say “If they still pass in the search parameters in the URL (Get), what’s the point? People can still see what you queried, if they made them “post” messages it might actually do something.” It’s important to realize that even though you as a surfer can see the query in the url, the sites between your browser and Google can’t. Google OS demonstrated that by sniffing a regular HTTP query and an HTTPS query in Wireshark to show that the query can’t be seen going over the wire.

Thanks to all the people at Google who did the all the hard work and heavy lifting to deliver this. One of the main engineers behind the effort was Evan Roseman, a member of the webspam team who you might have met at previous search conferences. In fact, Evan was originally scheduled to be on our site review session at Google I/O this past Thursday, but we decided that launching SSL search took priority. I also wanted to say thanks and congratulations to the other Googlers (for example Andrew Widdowson, Nathan Dabney, and Murali Viswanathan, but also many, many others) who generously gave their time and effort to make the launch happen and happen smoothly. You might think that switching on SSL for websearch is easy, but for a website with the complexity and scale of Google, it’s really not. The launch wouldn’t have happened without a ton of assistance from Googlers from many parts of the company, and I sincerely appreciate it.

I hope you enjoy https://www.google.com and find it useful.

Our Idol: Matt Cutts

Google Caffeine, Has Your SEO Been Affected?

It’s been a few weeks since Google announced the rollout of its new indexing service “caffeine”. It’s been on the back of every SEO companies minds for months or even years when certain sites aren’t ranking or there are obscure websites ranking ahead of content rich SEO friendly sites. It was all about “caffeine”. Now the veil has been lifted on what caffeine is and does.

Courtesy of http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Caffeine aims to crawl and analyze web pages much faster than their old system. Allowing for more real time content showing up on google. They aim to provide “50% fresher results for web searches”. This surely benefits the theory of good fresh content on sites helps SEO.

Since this update we have seen no drastic changes in the google results we receive. Is this because we generally deal with sites with regular fresh content or is it across the board and all this buzz about caffeine is unfounded or is the coming months going to be the real test. Our question to our readers is have you seen changes? How has it affected you and you’re rankings?

Determining Whether a Page/Site Passes Link Juice (and How Much)

We've been hearing some requests lately for some really advanced, expert-level content, and this post is here to deliver. I've built up a short list of topics that deal with more cutting edge SEO, and if there's interest in this series, I'll try to make it a regular part of the blog. These tactics aren't black or gray hat (we're not advocates of that kind of thing), but they're very specific in use and tend to be at the opposite end of the "low-hanging fruit" basket.

The first in the series touches on a common SEO problem - determing if a link has value and how much. This tactic isn't low effort, so it should only be employed when the link or link source is particularly critical.

Testing Whether a Page/Site Passes Link Juice (and How Much)

Scenario: You've found some potentially valuable, but possibly suspect link sources. These could include things like a seemingly high quality directory that requires payment or a site you're worried may have aroused Google's ire for one reason or another. The need for a credible answer applies anytime you're unsure whether a link is counting in Google's rankings and need to know.

Tactic: Find a page that's already in Google's index and a somewhat random combination of words/phrases from that page's title and body for which it ranks in position #3-10. For example, with the query - http://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+presentation+morning+entitled+link, my blog post from last week on Link Magnets ranks #3. The query itself is not particularly competitive and the pages outranking it don't have the exact text in the title or domain name (a critical part of the process).

If I now place a link with the exact anchor text from another page (like the blog post you're reading now), e.g. new york presentation morning entitled link, I should be able to see, once this post is indexed by Google's spider, whether it passes link juice. The result will be positive if the page moves up 2-4 positions in ranking and I can be fairly assured that the link is indeed "Google-friendly." With that knowledge secure, I can change the anchor text and/or repoint the link to the desired location. I don't simply use the anchor text I want initially because with competitive queries, a single link may not make enough difference for the ranking impact to be visible and I don't want to waste my time/money/energy.

(Metrics displayed in the SERPs via mozbar)

Special Requirements: To make the testing work, you'll need to be able to repoint the link, change the anchor text or 301 redirect the linked-to page (though the last of these is the least desirable, since 301s lose some link juice in the process and good anchor text is so valuable for ranking in Google). Also, here at SEOmoz, we don't recommend buying links, so while this tactic could be applied to that process, remember that manipulative links may later be devalued, wasting all that time and effort you spent acquiring them.

Results: With this technique, you can not only get a yes/no answer to questions about whether the link passes ranking value, but a rough sense for how much (depending on the position change - this can be a good reason to use pages that rank in the #7-10 range). Do take care to record the ranking positions of all the pages in the results and leave the test running for 1-2 weeks (longer if there's very fresh results ranking for the query). If you don't, other factors may conflate to hide the true results.

I'm looking foward to your feedback about this technique - and let us know if you're interested in seeing more of this advanced/edge-case content on the blog, too. Below, I've listed the topics I could tackle in future "Advanced" level posts.

• Hosting Pages on Third-Party Sites
• oDesk/Mechanical Turk for Content Development (and Link Research)
• Email Marketing for Search Personalization
• Modifying Product/Business Naming Conventions
• Spiking Search Volume and Capitalizing on QDF
• Protecting Inter-Network Links & Domain Acquisitions from Devaluation

p.s. If you do like this kind of thing, I'd also suggest:

1. Register for SMX Advanced: Seattle or SMX Advanced: London - both are quite good and SEOmoz will be sending speakers to both. You can use the code SEOmoz@SMX for a 10% discount to either event.
2. Check out the SEOmoz Expert Training Series DVD, which just launched last week. The video alone will get you pretty excited :-)
3. PRO members should check out our libraries of tips, video content and webinars.

I'm in Tampa, then Miami this week, but will finally return to Seattle for some much needed time in the office next Monday. Until then, blogging, commenting & email may be a bit slow from me.

Posted by randfish on March 30th, 2010 at 7:42 am Link Building

The Definitive How-To Guide For Conversion Rate Optimization

Let's start by asking one of the most important questions in conversion rate optimization (CRO):

A good question.

In this article, you’ll get:

• A clear and defined process for CRO
• Checklists to print and check off as you go

I’ll share the same processes that I use to consistently boost my clients’ conversion rates – sometimes even doubling or tripling them. (I specialize in industries like finance, gaming, travel and weightloss, where even a 5% increase in conversion rate can generate millions of dollars.)

This is the article I wish I could have read when starting out.

Conversion Rate Optimization - setting the record straight

If you only remember one thing from this article, make sure this is it.

Conversion rate optimization is…

• Finding out why visitors aren’t converting
• Fixing it
• That's it.

It sounds obvious, but a lot of people forget it – and they leave a ton of money on the table as a result.

Conversion rate optimization isn't…

• Split-testing the colour of your buttons (unless you really want to)
• Following best-practice and guesswork
• Based on misleading metrics

Let's look at the first point:

Don't split-test the colour of your buttons (unless you really want to)
The more people talk about CRO, the more you hear bizarre recommendations on the colour of your buttons and headlines, the alignment of form labels, and so on.

This is one real-life example:

"Making your headline red will increase your conversion rate 30%."

Let's rephrase the statement, using the definition of CRO above:

"I think that visitors aren't converting because our headline is black rather than red."

Putting it like this, it starts to sound less plausible.

Just because Youreapoorloser.com has a red headline, doesn't mean you should.

We need to start by finding out why visitors aren’t converting – then fix it.

The trouble is that statements like “green buttons convert better than red ones” and “short forms are better than long forms” are appealing, and quickly become considered “best practice”…

Don't follow best-practice and guesswork
It sounds counterintuitive to say "don't follow best practice" (especially in an article actually giving advice). To put it another way, don’t assume that just because it worked for someone else means it’ll work for you.

It's natural that we'll look for silver bullets – in fact, it's good to look for ways to get bigger wins quicker – but this kind of testing doesn't fit with a successful conversion rate optimization strategy.

Conversion rates are hugely personal to your website – what works on someone else's website will only work on yours if you have similar objections. You've got to find out what’s wrong with your site – not what worked on someone else’s.

Don't worry about misleading metrics
Focus on the money. So don't worry too much about microconversions or other metrics. (The only reason people boast about increasing their "add to basket" conversion rate is often because they didn’t increase their overall conversion rate.)

Focus on the money and the conversion rate that’s directly linked to revenue.

Why CRO matters

Ok, let's start with the easy one:

1. Make more money

But wait... there's more! When you increase your conversion rate, it also means you can…

2. Increase advertising spend

After all, when your conversion rate increases, then PPC, affiliate marketing and other advertising will suddenly become much more profitable. And when you do that, you can…

3. Increase market share

The more you increase your conversion rate, the more traffic you can buy, the more customers you get, the more repeat business you get... You'll rapidly increase your market share. And it all starts with your conversion rate.

Conversion Rate Optimization – step-by-step

Make sure you download a copy of the checklists here:

That’s a real button. Click it!

Stage one: research and analysis

Become the customer
This is a massively important step – and one that most people skip. Don’t be that person.

Buy the product or service. And when you’re buying it, take screenshots and/or use Camtasia or similar to record yourself buying it. (It's incredible how many people haven't bought a product or service from their own site.)

Increasing sales starts with understanding what you’re selling, so when you’ve bought the product or service, use it as a customer would. Test it, take it apart and put it back together – even demonstrate it to others as a salesperson would.

Set up funnels in Google Analytics
Most companies haven’t even set up goals and funnels in Google Analytics (and if they have, they stopped working properly months ago). When they’re set up right, they’ll quickly show you where you’re losing traffic and where the biggest opportunities are.

If you need help setting this up, take a look at this excellent article on Google Analytics goals and funnels.

Use other analytics packages
Other analytics packages are great at showing you what’s happening on your website.

Crazy Egg will generate heatmaps of your website, showing you which areas are getting the most clicks. Yes, Google Analytics does heatmaps too – but not like Crazy Egg. They’ll even show you clicks on inactive elements – the things people are clicking on that aren’t actually links. Often this will reveal areas the visitors want more information on. It can be a great source of quick wins.

Crazy Egg – Look for clicks on inactive elements, as they can be a great source of quick wins.

ClickTale is several tools wrapped into one. It’ll give you heatmaps showing how far down your pages visitors are scrolling (perfect for your long spammy weightloss page). It can even record videos of your visitors’ sessions (which will help you get in the habit of looking at your site through someone else’s eyes). And finally, it has brilliant form analytics – you’ll see exactly which questions in your form are causing visitors to abandon the page.

ClickTale gives you access to a huge amount of data – including how far down the page visitors will scroll.

Do five usability tests
With several cheap usability testing companies available, there’s no excuse not to be doing it anymore. It’s one of the most profitable activities you can do. With sites like UserTesting.com (US and UK) and whatusersdo.com (UK), you’ll pay around $40 for a 15-minute usability test. At the end, you’ll get the video of their session, plus the voiceover as they navigate your site.

With sites like UserTesting.com and whatusersdo.com offering quick and cheap usability tests…

…there are no excuses not to do any.

Remember, don’t make your brief too prescriptive. You want the tester to use the site as they would if they weren’t doing a test – don’t make them follow orders. (You can even set them the same task on a competitor’s site to see what the competition is doing right/wrong.)

Survey your customers
By this stage, we should be building a good list of reasons why visitors aren’t converting – whether they’re usability issues (can’t buy) or objections (won’t buy).

We’ll gather more data on this with surveys. It doesn’t really matter how you survey your customers – so long as you do it.

You can create a survey with SurveyMonkey and email it to your customers and non-customers (but make sure to use free-text answers rather than multiple choice – we want the customers to tell us in their own words, not to pick the closest reason from a list). Or use a tool like Kampyle to gather feedback directly on your site. Or just pick up the phone and speak to them.

Talk to sales staff
Your website is the online equivalent of your best salesperson. So… find that salesperson and ask them to sell the product or service to you. (If you’ve got a Flip camcorder, use that to film it.) Find out what questions and objections the customers ask and – more importantly – find out what the answers are.

Flip camcorders – Keep one of these handy when speaking with sales and support staff.

Stage two: solutions

Create a list of all the objections + issues
Ticked everything off in stage one? Good. If not, make sure you complete it soon (seriously – if you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table.)

When you’ve got all the data, start a spreadsheet with a list of all the usability issues (can’t buy) on one tab, and the objections (won’t buy) on another. Highlight the ones that come up most often, or that you think can have a big impact.

Brainstorm ways to overcome them
Next, brainstorm ways to solve the usability issues and objections. Put the possible solutions into the second columns of your spreadsheet.

Look for hidden opportunities
Remember, it’s important to be creative with the solutions. Here are a couple of examples:

If you’ve got a low conversion rate on a form, do you even need the form in the first place? Take a look at posterous.com – a great example of removing the sign-up process altogether.

Posterous.com – “Look Ma – no sign-up!”

If you have to keep your sign-up process, but people are abandoning it, how do you fix it? Lovefilm.com are great at conversion. If you abandon their sign-up form, on your next visit, they’ll redirect you back to where you left off – even if you type in their homepage URL. (Abandon their sign-up form and you’ll see how.)

Lovefilm.com – “Haven’t I been here before…?”

It’s creativity like this which will boost your conversion rate. If you do the same as everyone else, your conversion rate will be the same too.

Prioritise the actions (aim for quick results and maximum improvement)
So now we’ve got the objections, the issues and the possible solutions. Next we need to tackle them in the right order. There’s an opportunity cost, so we want to start – not with the quick wins – but the quick and big wins.

Go through the list with your developers. Mark the ones that can be developed and tested quickly and easily. If they match up with the ones you highlighted above (that can have a big impact), you’ll know where to start.

Stage three: development and testing

Develop the variations and take screenshots
Now the fun part. Start developing the variations. Don’t be tempted to test too many things in each variation – you won’t know what’s increasing the conversion rate and what’s lowering it. Be scientific in your testing and you’ll get bigger wins quicker.

When the variations have been developed, make sure you take screenshots of them. We need to keep records of everything we’re testing. It’s easy to get 20 tests into a campaign and forget what you tested at the start. Be like Travis Bickle: “One of these days I'm gonna get organezized”.

Today is that day.

Set up Crazy Egg on variations
Don’t forget your analytics when you’re testing. Crazy Egg is a staple in my testing diet. If the Crazy Egg code is in your footer, it’ll be on the new variations automatically (as long as it’s an A/B test, not a multivariate test). Just set up a test at CrazyEgg.com and you’ll get a heatmap for the new page. Compare the two and you’ll have a clearer insight why one page is converting higher than another.

Test using Google Website Optimizer or other testing software
Google Website Optimizer is fairly powerful, fairly easy-to-use and – best of all – completely free. No excuses.

Google Website Optimizer – the price is right.

Now let me qualify those statements. It’s fairly powerful out-of-the-box, but you may want to hack it to do things like testing multiple goals. It’s fairly easy to use – especially if you’ve got a good developer – but there are alternatives that are easier.

For a detailed guide to testing software, take a look at whichmvt.com.

Stage four: review and expand

Log the results and screenshots
When the test has finished, log the results and store them with your screenshots of the variations. As we repeat this process, we’ll build up a folder of what works and what doesn’t. This is crucial.

Analyse the results (big losses are just as important as big wins)
Big wins are awesome. Big losses can be interesting too – just flip it around. So rather than saying, “Page B lowered the conversion rate by x%”, you should say, “Something about Page A effectively increased the conversion rate by y% over Page B.”

Then all we need to do is find what that something is. Take a look at your Crazy Egg screenshots and review your list of objections and usability issues.

If you got a win, can it be developed further?
The first question after getting a win is, “How can we develop this?” So if you added a testimonial to your landing page, what would happen if you added five more? Take the winning element to extremes and see how big a win you can get.

If you got a win, can it be applied to other parts of the funnel?
The second question is, “How can we apply this elsewhere?” Take the principle that increased the conversion rate – adding trust, emphasising a particular benefit, introducing a guarantee – and work out how you can apply it to other parts of the funnel.

These two questions together can magnify increases to the conversion rate several times over.

Stage five: repeat

As you can see, the process works in a cycle. The insight you get after completing a test will feed into the top – giving you ideas for other tests to try.

This is Conversion Factory's approach to conversion rate optimization.

After a few rounds of testing, repeat all or part of stage one (research and analysis). Do the usability testers still struggle with the same things? Are potential customers still uncertain about the benefits of your product? Either way, you’ll get fresh ideas for CRO.

Follow this process and you’ll quickly – and reliably – increase your conversion rate.

What now?

Thanks for making it through to the end. If you haven't already downloaded the worksheets, you can get them now.

If you want to get more articles on conversion rate optimization, sign up to the mailing list on conversionfactory.com and we’ll keep you updated.