PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

High Rankings Advisor
Consistency is key to increasing paid click conversions. Say that three times fast. It’s the mantra that Karon Thackston uses when crafting PPC ads for clients of her copywriting firm, Marketing Words. “Including the same keyphrases you target in the PPC copywriting throughout the rest of the steps in the conversion process can make or break your end results,” Thackston says. It doesn’t seem like rocket science, but you wouldn’t believe how many marketers using search don’t keep consistency in mind.

Offline marketers have had a few decades worth of trial and error to learn that the messages in TV ads need to match the ones in print, on billboards and even in-store. With paid search, that translates to using the same keywords in an ad’s title, in the body copy, on the landing page and even to the shopping cart and support pages.

But take it easy when it comes to the actual ad itself. “Don’t try to close the sale with your PPC ads. That’s not their purpose,” Thackston says. “The sole purpose of PPC ads is to drive visitors to your site, where they can collect enough information to take action–whether that means buying, subscribing, joining or whatnot.”

Promotion World
So you snagged a top spot on Google for a particular keyword–only to slip down a few days later and see some random upstart in your place. Think something’s gone wrong with your links, your content or your robots.txt file? Could be. But it could just be the Google Everflux–or the constant refreshing of the giant’s index.

“Lately I have been noticing a lot of jumping in the top listings. Links out of nowhere are appearing, links being dropped and my own links moving up and down much too quickly for my comfort,” says Titus Hoskins. “Even six months ago the Google main index seemed to be a whole lot more stable than it is now.”

Matt Cutts acknowledged the Google Everflux idea himself in an early 2007 blog post, saying that the refresh that typically happened once every few weeks was now likely happening on a daily basis. To keep up with the changes, Hoskins says that you need to keep building quality links and content daily–with a special nod to social bookmarking sites.

“No matter what warp-speed Google finally decides upon, valuable content is still the key to getting top rankings in any search engine,” Hoskins says. “Adding fresh, valuable relevant content to your sites each day will keep them in the picture.”

ISEdb
“Since the ‘purchase’ is the ultimate conversion, it is imperative that you remove as many obstacles from the customer’s research-to-buy cycle as possible,” says Stoney deGeyter. This means having adequate search functionality and clear navigation paths, so that customers can quickly find product and pricing info, get their shopping cart full and check out with no roadblocks.

In terms of content, be sure to include features like side-by-side product comparison guides and customer reviews and ratings. If possible, list product availability–as even if something is out of stock, it’s better for customers to know up front than when they get to the checkout screen.

Meanwhile, don’t be afraid to up- and cross-sell your customers during their research and purchase process. “Provide a list of related products that typically go along with any current items in a shopping cart or product being viewed,” deGeyter says. “If applicable, allow shoppers to purchase additional services such as product engraving, customization, gift wrapping, etc. These features can make a nice up-sell opportunity while giving the visitors that customization offer that they need for special purchases.”

I’m Not A Doctor
“The Doc” (a search consultant based in San Diego) was working on a site that had consistently ranked within the top three organic results for a keyword, when one day he noticed it had slipped down to the tenth spot. At first, he thought that there might be duplicate content issues, a possible need to tweak the URL structure for canonicalization or maybe just build up more inbound links.

But after fiddling with those factors and waiting about a month, there was still no change. Frustrated, the Doc found that sometimes snagging rankings means going back to three basic questions: Does the keyword appear on the page? Does the site have a keyword rich h1 tag? And are the title tags and Meta data optimized? “By asking these three basic, but extremely important questions I found the problem,” the Doc says. “The homepage did not contain a keyword rich h1 and the target keyword only appeared in the text once.”

He added the target keyword to the h1 tags, sprinkling it into the homepage text as well, and saw the site return to the top three rankings within two weeks. “So, if you are having a hard time in your SEO campaign, take a step back,” the Doc says. “Take a deep breath. Go back to the basics.”