The Leaky Bucket Mistake
Companies lose vast numbers of potential customers because of un-optimized, “leaky” websites that lack the right conversion points, i.e. calls to action that convert visitors into customers or leads. An effective site holds a visitor’s hand, leading him through a pre-determined path that ends in a conversion point. Each visitor is addressed with a customized value proposition, and a corresponding persona-based conversion point. By strategically populating the site with such conversion points, each visitor is presented with the path of least resistance towards becoming a customer, while fewer visitors “leak” away.
The Design Over Usability Fallacy
Visitors are also more likely to leave without converting if they can’t quickly locate what they need. Unfortunately, usability is often not the priority of the traditional designer who is more focused on look-and-feel. The solution is to follow a usability-centered approach to web design that minimizes frustration and massive visitor exodus. Moreover, if a potential customer senses that using a company’s website is not straightforward, confidence is lost in the company’s ability to provide an easy-to-use product.
The Cross Our Fingers Mistake
Poor site performance is often the result of a lack of understanding of which visitor behaviors could and should be tracked through analytics, such as:
Bounce rate – the percentage of users who immediately hit the back button and leave the site.
Path to conversion – illustrates a visitor’s thought pattern prior to conversion. A site’s best conversion paths should be noted, and the underlying logic applied to under-performing paths.
Traffic sources – provide valuable insights about profitable and non-profitable visitors.
To leverage performance data into actionable items, use techniques such as A/B or Split testing as well as multivariate testing to continuously test and refine different versions of a specific process or aspect of a site, ultimately eliminating waste and maximizing profit.
The Set It and Forget It Mistake
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements must also be optimized through ongoing analysis and testing. However, many companies set up their campaigns but analyze them once a month and rarer – the surest way to waste a PPC budget.
One key reason for ongoing optimization is the dynamic nature of the paid search model whereby an ad that ranks first one day may rank last the next. Rank is determined by many factors outside the advertiser’s control, such as changes in (a) competitors’ bids and relevance or click through rates, (b) search engine ranking algorithms (i.e. how Google calculates Quality Score), or (c) general user behavior. While different in nature, all such changes can occur rapidly and without warning.
Another key testing/optimization ground is ad copy. Poorly performing ads fail to properly qualify visitors, and must be quickly revised or removed from the campaigns to reduce wasteful spending.
The Lonely-Keywords Mistake
In PPC campaigns, keywords are the advertiser’s friends, and, with exceptions, the more the merrier. Each highly-targeted search term (i.e. “corporate antivirus software trial” vs. “antivirus”) that is omitted from the campaign represents a searcher who might see your ad for a less-targeted but more expensive search term instead. The highly-targeted “long tail” search terms represent high-value customers who can be brought to your site inexpensively. Some of the best campaigns out there have many tens of thousands of keywords and we have certainly not seen any successful campaign with less than 300-500 keywords.
The “How Much Did that Sale Cost?” Mistake – Not Tracking Marginal Advertising ROI
If one out of every 10 PPC clicks results in a purchase, to make a profit the profit margin must be greater than the cost of the 10 clicks combined. Thus high-competition, high-traffic keywords aren’t always a good idea because they are the most expensive. To ensure PPC campaign profitability, conversion tracking, one of the best features of search engine advertising, must be implemented. Once conversion tracking is enabled, it will be clear which ads yield an acceptable return on investment and which ones don’t.
SEO Mistakes: Too Much Flash
In an attempt to make a website visually impressive, many designers use Adobe Flash to present the primary content, while neglecting to use the more-traditional HTML. This approach renders websites essentially invisible to search engines because they can’t read Flash. If Flash must be used, be sure to include desired search terms using ‘alt’ tags, that function as labels for search engines. Also consider giving visitors the option of viewing content in HTML. The bottom line is that important content must be presented using HTML at some location on your website. This will ensure that search engines — and prospective customers — will be more likely to find your company’s site through organic search.
SEO Mistakes: Not Using Descriptive URLS
Not using descriptive URLs and meta-data are simple but common SEO mistakes. Here is an example of a descriptive URL: http://www.GenericSoft.com/products, with the page title ‘Products’ clearly visible in the URL. Using a descriptive URLs allows search engines to easily catalog pages site, and helps the engines display the most relevant listings when a related search is performed. The same search would be much less likely to bring up the same company’s ‘Products’ page in the top results if the page were located at a non-descriptive URL such as http://www.GenericSoft.com/15835ah#?/2th4a.
SEO Mistakes: The “Thanksgiving Dinner” Mistake
Back when the Internet was young, a company could assure high search rankings for desired keywords simply by packing its site with hundreds or thousands of instances of keywords, often as invisible wallpaper within the site based on tiny font the same color as the site’s background. Over the past decade, keyword stuffing has become subtle and can lead to bad standing with search engines. To avoid heavy penalties, keyword density should be kept to less than five percent of the words on a page.
Neglecting Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO efforts relate to on-site optimization practices, while off-page SEO deals mainly with off-site link acquisition. To a search engine, every inbound link is a relevance vote, validating importance and boosting rankings. Links from well-established sites are worth more than links from less-popular sites. Google refers to this ranking system as “Page Rank,” named after its founder Larry Page. While there are many ethically questionable means of gathering links (link farms, spamming, etc.), the most effective and accepted strategy is to produce truly remarkable content that acts as a magnet to both visitors and links. This and other off-page practices are collectively a critical component to any effective SEO program.
