When you created your small business website, you created it for a purpose. In most cases it is to have an information page where those that search for your products / services / website can find you. But always, your main aim is to … increase your sales.
We would all love it to happen overnight, but it doesn’t. You have to work at it. So many websites are sitting in the background with no one going to them or knowing about them. And that’s where I and my Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert peers come in. We bring the knowledge on how to optimise your website to work through the Funnel of Google Search.
Top of the Funnel – Become Visible on Google Search with SEO
The first step in the funnel is for your website to be visible.
Think about it … how often do you you go and pick a business off a search page on page 2, let alone page 10 or more that your website might be sitting on. It just won’t happen.
The aim is to have more appropriate keywords for your business (words that people would use to search for your business) and then to move to the front page of those searches. This is known as getting more impressions.
That is the first metric you need to focus on – improving your impression numbers. In Google Search Console you can see your impressions on the performance page.
There are a number of ways that SEO experts can help you move your page up – with keywords, technical issues like speed of your site, structured data and many more.
Middle of the Funnel – Clicking through to your Website
Once your site has becoming visible in the list of businesses that could provide the service, then you want the prospect to actually click on your site. A lot of people will click on the top ones but you can entice them to your page as long as you are on that first page and you have enticing text that promotes your site. That is called the meta data. And a lot of people don’t take the time to make this wording pop! If you don’t, Google will default text in … and it may not be appropriate, or inspiring for that click.
In terms of metrics you will be looking at your clicks and your click through rate (sometimes shortened to CTR). We look at both, because as you increase your impressions your click through rate might look bad initially, but you are still getting a lot of clicks, but you are looking at a bigger bucket.
Bottom of the Funnel – Conversion to a Sale
When we get them going to your page, you then have to look at converting that prospect to a real sale.
You want your site to be easy to navigate around, and you want it to be fast, as people don’t want to wait anymore. You also need a call to action, direct them to what you want them to do. And of course, make your products and services as appealing as you can – be the solution to the problem that your prospect is experiencing.
Make sure that you put metrics in place to capture conversion metrics. If you have an online store then these will be provided by your ecommerce provider but if your call to action is to contact your business then make sure you ask new clients, how they found out about you and track it.
Summary
Remember that to increase the size of your conversions, you need to increase your clicks and that means you need to increase those impressions.
If you need assistance in doing that then check out our affordable SEO Small Business packages.
