The value of Conversion Optimisation from a FUFISM perspective

Because we are looking at Conversion Optimisation from a #FUFISM perspective we firstly need to remind you what we mean by the term +fufism   

FUFISM is an acronym for Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media and also a marketing philosophy where SEO and your target market research are two of the primary areas that need to be integrated into your total marketing strategy through effective and properly  managed use of the social media

Next we need to describe what we mean when we talk about Conversion optimisation, and how this works

 

In internet marketing, conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the method of creating an experience for a website or landing page visitor with the goal of increasing the percentage of visitors that convert into customers. It is also commonly referred to as CRO.

Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of increasing website leads and sales without spending money on attracting more visitors by reducing your visitor "bounce rate". A conversion rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who complete a goal, as set by the site owner. Some test methods, such as split testing or A/B testing, enable one to monitor which headlines, images and content help one convert more visitors into customers.

There are several approaches to conversion optimization with two main schools of thought prevailing in the last few years. One school is more focused on testing as an approach to discover the best way to increase a website, a campaign or a landing page conversion rates. The other school is focused more on the pretesting stage of the optimization process. In this second approach, the optimization company will invest a considerable amount of time understanding the audience and then creating a targeted message that appeals to that particular audience. Only then would it be willing to deploy testing mechanisms to increase conversion rates.

Next we need to understand the term BOUNCE RATE

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site. Bounce rate is a measure of the effectiveness of a website in encouraging visitors to continue with their visit. It is expressed as a percentage and represents the proportion of visits that end on the first page of the website that the visitor sees

Search engines also use this, but they have a timed version where a user is allocated a time to click on a call to action statement within the page, and if this time exceeds the predetermined time then a bounce is recorded. This time factor is set by the search engines, and us as site owners and marketing professionals have zero input to determine this time factor.  We also have no clue as to what this time factor is. 

From my research it appears that partial bounce rates do exist (at least for Google)  and that the time is not set in stone, and may vary according to the complexity of the search term as well as the polarity of the search term.

Next we  need to understand the term CTA or Call to action,

 In terms of online marketing a CALL TO ACTION is a reference to a link within the content which the marketing team has placed strategically to entice the end user (your target market) to click on so that they may proceed to the next stage of the conversion funnel.

Using the above definition, we must assume that every navigational link on the page is also a CTA. These navigational links may not necessarily be part of the sales  or conversion funnel, but they are never the less important CTA's which allow your end user (your target audience) to move between pages and gather the information that they are looking for.

Next issue to confront is what is a #SERP

A SERP is basically the result that a search engine returns when an end user types a query into the search box and either clicks on search or presses the return key.  This result is mostly pre-calculated by a search engine after your pages are indexed, using a host of different criteria, such as  but not limited to:

• page rank, 
• domain rank, 
• your key words in page,
•  your inbound marketing, 
• your social media marketing, 
• your content marketing,
•  your SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• The semantics relating to your in-page content
• All your other SEO efforts, both #IPSEO (Inpage Search Engine Optimisation) and #OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation)

Now that we have an understanding of the terminology used here, lets get to grips with  the value of Conversion Optimisation in terms of the bounce rate, and as such your SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)  If an end user does not stay on a page long enough (in terms of the search engines perspective) to gain any value from their visit to the page then this will have a negative impact on the bounce rate from the Search engines perspective.  One way to eliminate this negative perspective from a search engine is to have the end user click on any CTA within the page.  The search engine does not care of your perceived value of this click in terms of your sales funnel  or conversion funnel, and NO CLICK = bad news for bounce rates

Bounce rates are currently (October 2014) one of the primary signals being used by many search engines including Google as SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to determine their SERP's

It thus follows that CO or Conversion Optimisation is a key element in your SEO strategy,  and if not done properly, the damage to your online marketing can and will be considerable.  What most SEO practitioners forget to tell you is that any bad bonce rates have a culminate impact on your domain rank, your page rank, your site's trust factor issues and some other ares that are critical to getting top notch SERP's

My advice to you is thus that you should monitor all your bounce rate issues, and ensure that any pages with a high bounce rate be evaluated in terms of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and CO (Conversion Optimisation) policies and that you rectify these as soon as you can




Sources of research for this article

THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE  AND EXCLUDES ALL INTERNAL SOURCE AT INFO4U

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_Rate_Optimization
2_ http://www.meteorsite.com/search-engine-optimization-seo
3) http://www.meteorsite.com/conversion-optimization
4) http://www.meteorsite.com/blog`
5)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_rate
6) http://www.web1marketing.com/glossary.php?term=bounce+rate
7) http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/bounce_rate.html
8) https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en
9) http://www.epower.com/google-analytics-glossary.php


J also evaluated many Google plus posts and conversations  mainly with these profiles but also many others  +fufism +David Amerland +Eric Enge +Joshua Berg +Jaana Nyström +Plus Your Business! +John Dietrich  +SEO  +SEO on Google+ - Search Engine Optimization  +ReelSEO +Mark Robertson +Jeff Huber  +Ammon Johns +Rand Fishkin