One of the frustrations of helping other people market their product or service on the web is, often times, a lack of control over the way that product or service is presented on the website, the website design — or even the product/service itself.

There are some things that search marketing can accomplish, like helping your site achieve better rankings for relevant keywords and a growing channel of valuable traffic, but long term success depends on turning those new visitors into actual customers (hopefully over and over again). If the site and/or product lacks the ability to turn those new visitors into long term customers, even the best SEO isn’t going to help much.

A lot of internet marketing consultants, myself included, have begun to make site usability and conversion optimization part of our list of services. However, many companies are resistant to those suggestions when they’re coming from the “SEO guy.” I guess for a variety of reasons (which I’ll probably save for another post).

So, here are a five site issues that SEO/SEM can not fix — that will affect the long term success of your online business:

1. High Bounce Rates. Bounce rates above 35% or so should be of concern. While it IS true that targeting the wrong keywords can cause high bounce rates, if your bounce rates are high across the board you have a problem. Think of it this way: If your bounce rate is 50%, every visitor is actually costing you twice as much as you think it is. Chances are users aren’t immidiately seeing what they expected when they clicked on a link to your site. Look at what keywords are being clicked and make those the emphasis of your landing pages… and USE LANDING pages. Don’t send all your traffic to the home page!
2. Low Rate of Return Visitors. A site with a very low return visitor rate usually makes search marketing largely unscalable. Growing traffic and sales over time depends on turning one-time visitors into repeat users. Otherwise, you end up paying (in some fashion) for nearly every visitor every time they visit your site. Your site’s growth potential is only as big as your budget. This will not bring long term success. You have to figure out why qualified users aren’t returning.
3. Higher Than Average Cart Abandonment. Looking through analytics data many times reveals that users make it all the way to the purchase page, or even 1-2 steps into the purchase process and then abandon/exit the site. Some of this is expected, but with an overall internet-wide abandonment rate of around 60%, there is always room for improvement. If your rates are above this average, you have particular reasons to be concerned. Think about how difficult the process is, how it can be simplified, credibility, security and even return policies and guarantees.
4. Bad/Wrong Pricing. The science of pricing is not something that I pretend to be an expert in. However, I do know that the wrong price can kill a great product. Comparing prices online has never been easier. A user has to see value in your offering that matches or exceeds the price point. Maybe the pricing really is okay but you’re not presenting the benefits of the product in a way that excites the user. Sell the sizzle.
5. Lack of Focus. A site without a clear focus… better yet, a PAGE without a clear focus is doomed to fail. You should imagine that each path through your site is a guided journey from entry to checkout. Every action that the user has the opportunity to take should lead them one step further toward that goal. That means that if you’re not really using social media to turn visitors into customer, then skip the Facebook and Twitter icons. Dig through path analysis data. And if you’re not sure that your pages are focused, try a service like crazyegg.com that can help, cheaply and easily, visualize what users are paying attention to when they reach your site. This is sometimes a huge wakeup call for subpar layout and design.

Too often site owners point fingers when trying to figure out why things aren’t working. While sometimes that blame may be well-founded, it’s important to remember that the best search marketing can’t fix a broken website.

What did I leave out?

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC

What do you get when you pay some anonymous person to “build links” for you? A big pile of crap And no benefit to you, your company or the search engines. Forget the fact that the blogs your “link builder” is spamming are more than likely filtering out their comments and at the least are employing no follow tags; getting links from irrelevant blog comments on random sites isn’t doing you any good.

However, some of those comments that are sitting in the filtered spam list of my two blogs are a little entertaining to read. I love the way some spammers write conversational looking posts when it’s obvious the “poster” never read what they’re posing on. Here are a few of my favorites:

On a post about an SEO conference:

I have been considering purchasing a steel structure for our farm. We have phoned a few companies and we have been given quotes from 4 . We positively like one for sure. I am in suspense a big shot here has some experience with buying a contemporary metal storage building. Here is the store I prefer:

DELETED LINK

I am looking for skilled answers from the subscribers on this forum from everyone who has purchased or erected a steel framed riding arena previously. What questions should be advantageous to raise. What makes one contemporary steel store better than another. We are mostly interested in building a metal horse areanas for the company. Click the link to see the brand I am fond of best.

Every and every assistance is treasured.

On a post about Clark Desert Boots (wedding prep?!)

Cool dude! First of all, the theme is good and the way you present stuff is simply amazing! And your post is quite good. Although this is the first time I visited your blog but the information you provided have obliged me to bookmark you blog because i will need it for my wedding preperation.

I was just chatting with my friend about this yesterday at lunch . Don’t know how we got on the topic actually , they brought it up. I do recall having a excellent chicken salad with ranch on it. I digress…

On a post about a travel humidor for cigars:

Although I would�ve preferred if you went into a little bit more detail, I still got the gist of what you meant. I agree with it. It might not be a popular idea, but it makes sense. Will definitely come back for more of this. Great work

And this spammer knows exactly how I feel!

lol a few of the commentary many people enter are kinda silly, at times i think about whether they in actual fact read the article and threads before writing or whether or not they merely read over the subject of the blog post and craft the very first thought that pops into their heads. nonetheless, it is pleasurable to read through clever commentary once in a while instead of the exact same, old post vomit which i continually observe on the internet i’m off to enjoy a few rounds of facebook poker adios

But, my absolute favorite:

Big boobs�

Maybe that ones not SPAM after all…

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC

I’ve mentioned that, while I provide them, I am not a huge fan of ranking reports for SEO programs. Most Recently here: The Future of SEO Services. So, I decided to come up with a pro and con list.

Pros:

• Can chart progress of an SEO program over time.
• Illustrates value of SEO to clients/boss.
• Can track important keywords against competitors.
• Tracks ranking of your brand name and its variations.
• Can highlight site issues due to design changes, links, keyword changes, etc.
• Can help identify pages that are not ranking for targeted keywords.
• Can be a great addition to an overall report package – along with traffic and conversion data.

Cons:

• Easily manipulatable by which keywords you decide to “track”.
• Weighs each keyword equally – which can be deceiving to clients/boss.
• Can over value the importance of rankings to clients/boss.
• Rankings change daily. Getting bogged down in the details of why a single keyword changes by one or two positions is usually a waste of time.
• Different data centers can produce widely different results.
• Will increasingly become irrelevant with localization and personalization of search results.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few… Anything you can add? How do these pros and cons stack up against each other?

*For a great comparison of ranking report software, visit Matt Diehl’s post here: 3 Rank Reporting Softwares Reviewed.

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC

I just read a great article by Mike Grehan about the future of Search Engine Optimization. The question, “what is the future of search” is getting asked a lot lately. It’s changed a whole lot since I first got involved just about 10 years ago.

One key element that Grehan points out is that SEO is a really a function of marketing, which I don’t think many people outside the industry (and some inside) really understand. He says,

…even though industry leaders acknowledge that SEO is much more of a marketing process than a technical effort, there’s still a lot of fixation on crawler activity and indexing.

Most new clients and even developers I work with tend to think that I can put up some meta tags and do some voodoo to their code and, POOF, their site will be “optimized.” A lot of people (and, again, developers) call me a week before a new site is set to go live and say, “can you make sure this is optimized?”

Another thing Grehan mentions that stands out to me is:

Personalization and digital asset optimization will end 1999-style ranking reports, as search engine results will be based on blended results from end-user specifics, such as geographic location, time of day, previous searching history, and peer group preference.

Thank god! I’ve already started to ween myself, and clients, off of ranking reports. And with the availability of good analytics programs (like Google Analytics), there is really no need to base success on a handful of keywords. Ranking reports are easy to manipulate, inaccurate, can provide a false sense of SEO success (or failure) and, today, really have very little value.

It HAS to be about conversions! 1000 #1 placements aren’t any good if users aren’t going to and taking action on your site. Unfortunately, the search industry is still pushing rankings (Guaranteed #1 in Google!) as the be-all and end-all of SEO success. Let me make this my new motto:

Rankings are not an End, But a Means to an End…

Another key here is that great rankings and great traffic still aren’t any good on a broken site. This is why I’ve started to include a site analysis incorporating usability best practices as part of my standard SEO offering. My job is not rankings, it’s to help my clients succeed.

Another thing to point out from Grehan’s piece is that SEO is really turning into Reputation Management:

Reputation management will become more important as marketing continues its reversal from a broadcast medium to a listening medium.

It’s part of your overall marketing message. It’s about having a consistent marketing message acorss all channels and monitoring the voice of consumers. It’s social networks, it’s blogs, it’s public relations, it’s search results, and… just a little bit of voodoo. (-;

The Future of SEO – ClickZ

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC

I’m not sure how earth shattering this is, but this post from HotelMarketing.com refers to a study showing that most people searching for a hotel are using a search engine to find hotels rather than going directly to a hotel’s corporate site. No big surprise that the internet is helping to commoditize hotel rooms just as it assisted in pushing airline tickets that same direction.

For most people, I believe, hotel rooms are booked primarily — in this order — for their location (city & state), price, proximity to desired landmarks, amenities, and then brand loyalty. No real scientific data there, just my gut instinct on how the average person goes about finding a hotel room for a family vacation, weekend getaway, business trip, etc.

I don’t doubt that brand does come into play if there are two hotels that match closely on the other factors. But average people don’t much care if it’s a Hilton or a Radisson in most cases. So, searching by destination, as this study suggests, seems perfectly matched to my theory. And, if you look at the search data you’ll find that a city name with a qualifier such as “discount” or “cheap” are the next most popular.

The danger for OTAs and Search Marketers or resellers depending on search marketing, though, is the risk of becoming nothing more than a price and amenities comparison engine that enable users to pick out a property, from a location search, and then go directly to the chain’s website to book the room. This study suggests that just that is happening:

“The BDRC said bookings are increasingly being carried out on hotel sites but third parties such as Expedia (40%), Lastminute.com (36%) and Ebookers (22%) continue to feature prominently during the research stage.”

If all you sell are hotel rooms, how do you differentiate from the rest of the pack? How do you use all of those great rankings to convert visitors to buyers?

Here may be a clue… The PhoCusWright Travel 2.0 Consumer Technology Survey, published in December of last year, says that,

“When it comes to making travel purchasing decisions, most American travelers would rather see the options for themselves than simply act on the recommendations of others. In fact, travelers want to view the options in detail via pictures, online maps and video.”

Frankly, I’m surprised at the fact that hotels aren’t trying harder to compete head-on in search engine marketing. Aren’t they leaning on their brand a little too much? Or are we just doing the hard work for them?

Search engines dominate how consumers look for hotels

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC