Columbus SEO and Digital Marketing Blog

​A conversion happens when you get people who visit your website to take any action designed to lead to an immediate or future sale. While it can be a long road from getting a person to give you a social media share or signing up for a newsletter to an actual purchase, even these types of conversions are getting future customers into your funnel.
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Make a purchase, submit a form, click an offer, read an entire blog post, reach a landing page – these are the conversions you want to see from website visitors to grow your business. The percentage of visitors who take an action, or convert, is your conversion rate.

Increasing website conversion rates is a high-ranking goal for any growth-focused marketing strategy. To raise your conversion rates, you first must determine what it is you want your website to achieve for your business. Which website conversions are important for your business are dependent on the purpose of your website?

If you sell products or services online, then the most important website conversion rates will center around purchases. But most local businesses use their website to grow awareness, generate leads, and convince website visitors that they are the best option to fulfill whatever need the consumer is searching for. If you fall into the latter category, website conversions that feed lead generation will be the most important.

Once you determine which conversions are the most important, you’ll need to know what your current conversion rate is for each action you want your website users to take. The easiest way to determine your website conversion rate is to use a tool like Google Analytics, where all the data sets you need are just a few clicks away.
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Here is how conversion rates are determined: If you have 10,000 website visitors a month and 500 take one of the actions you want them to take then your conversion rate is 5% (because 500/10,000 is .05). A website conversion rate of 100% is impossible, but you should optimize your website for conversions so you can get this number as high as possible.

1. Get Micro-Commitments
Micro-commitments are small steps you ask your visitors to take towards a conversion goal. They are so small that your website visitors don't need to think too deeply about doing it because it doesn't cost them anything.
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You can build on these micro-commitments to create engagement, familiarize visitors with your brand, and move them through your conversion funnel.

​2. Use Enticing & Bold Calls-To-Action
Calls-to-action tell your website visitors what to do next. Clearly communicate the benefits of taking action now and use power words to inspire conversion. Remember, it is important to deliver what you promised immediately.

3. Get Website Visitors on the Phone
Use call back solutions like phone lead engagement software on your website to convert traffic into leads and new customers. This new click-to-call technology lets you build on high-value engagements; creating a unique experience for prospects and customers. Click the link below to see a highly effective example.

​4. Build Trust
Use social proof such as reviews and testimonials on your website to build trust. With trust, you are more likely to get the desired conversion.

5. Use Soft Conversions and Nurture Leads
Soft conversions are actions that indicate a demonstrable interest in your products or services. Every visitor to your website isn't ready to buy right now. An overwhelming majority of your online traffic is seeking more information before making a final decision. Smaller conversions such as opt-ins for free information can still be valuable leads, though they may require more time and nurturing.

Using Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to increase your website conversions needs to be part of your digital marketing plan. You don't need to implement all of these CRO tactics to increase your conversions within days or weeks.
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Start where it's easiest for your business optimize today. It's possible to see small wins almost immediately, so try one or two CRO tactics at a time, track effectiveness, discard what isn't working and invest in the activities that make a difference.

Janeiro Blackmon is a Columbus web consultant that has helped clients increase their online presence in cities across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Need help with your local SEO strategy? Call or text 614-736-9861 to ​Get A Free Website Audit!

If you are in business, most likely you have a website. If you don't currently have a website, you know that you need one, and you should reach out after you read this article, so we can take care of that for you. For now, let's just assume that you have a website (since we already established that you need one), now you need a plan to get people to visit your website. There are many ways to get to the end result of consistently having boat loads of visitors to your site. However, one of the most efficient techniques is making your website more visible to search engines. Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) is what we are referring to, and this article contains some advice that you may use to increase your visibility on the web. You may be wondering why being found on search engines is important. Well, the websites that dominate the search engines organically or naturally, usually get the most traffic. You may also be wondering, why is website traffic important? Well, the website that gets the most traffic has a better shot at turning that traffic into paying customers that can't wait to hand you their money.   

First things first, content is king! You want to make sure that you have unique content on your site. This means no cut & paste cookie cutter information. You want to make sure your information is not found anywhere else on the web. Search engines "crawl" all the content on your site to determine how relevant it is. They also check to make sure the content is original. If you use streaming media on your site like audio clips or videos (which I highly encourage for reasons I'll explain in another post), make sure you include transcripts of the content, so the search engines know how to rank your content. Implementing this strategy can help improve your rankings on the search engines. The more unique, authoritative content that your site provides, the better.

If you want to outsource your SEO to a third party, make sure that you feel confident that they can get you the results that they promise. Depending on what you need to accomplish, it may take an upfront investment to implement high level S.E.O. strategies, so finding the best price is not necessarily the best factor to base your decision on. Also, you want a solution that can grow with your business and your budget, but you don't want to hire someone that is too cheap. Often times, this is a clear indication that they are amateurs and most likely will not provide quality work. This will prove to be a waste of time and money. The last thing you want to do is waste time because S.E.O. does not happen overnight. You should expect to go into a long term relationship with your new SEO consultant. They should be able to produce visible results within 60-90 days depending on where you are starting from. There are many questionable companies that say they provide internet marketing and SEO, but they do sloppy work. Red flags are apparent if they are not willing to educate their clients on the process or use language that is over their clients head to mask the techniques they are using. Serious marketing Companies that know what they are doing should be confident in their results enough to guarantee their work. Also, they should be able to describe the process in an easy-to-understand way, so you know what you are paying for. While S.E.O. work isn't cheap, it is necessary and if you select the correct company, your bottom line will thank you.

​Increasing your search rankings can really be like watching paint dry. It is definitely a game of patience. There really isn't anything sexy about it. You will not see immediate results, you will most likely see gradual increases in the traffic to your website. Especially if you have a brand spanking new website, the optimization process may take months for results to show. Online business and offline business are very similar. Either way, it is going to take some time to build up your visibility on the web, so your ideal customers can see how awesome your business is.

Another key to great rankings is the number of quality links pointing towards your site. Make sure that the links coming to your website, as well as internal links within your site, use keyword phrases as anchor text. Using keywords is essential to rank higher in search engine results, but if you saturate your page with keywords, it may hurt your rankings. However, you definitely want search engine spiders to recognize your relevant keywords, just be careful not to overdo it. Check your site twice to make sure that the internal links have properly related keywords in their anchor text.

Keep in mind, search engines use algorithms, and they change quite often, and everything that works now probably will not work forever. As a result, you should always try to stay up to date with the latest changes in the search engine optimization industry or hire an S.E.O. expert in order to ensure that your website keeps dominating the search rankings like a boss.

Janeiro Blackmon is a Columbus SEO consultant that has helped clients increase their online presence in cities across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Need help with your local SEO strategy? Call or text 614-736-9861 to ​Get A Free Website Audit!