You may think you have the best looking and funkiest website on the planet but did you realise that the design of your site may actually be preventing you from making sales? It’s been a widely (and wrongly) held belief that a well designed website with lovely graphics will attract more sales on it’s own. Whilst this “may” work for a very tiny number of websites the facts are that fancy design is well down the list when visitors first look at your pages.

Web users know what they want – so don’t make it hard for them!

Web users have evolved. They’re less impressed by fancy design and more concerned with what they want. They’re spoilt for choice and will typically only spend 4-10 seconds evaluating your front page before deciding to stay and read on or puke and go check a competitor. Obviously you want them to stay and buy so we need to find out what’s causing them to leave – cue the heatmap.

What are heatmaps?

Heatmaps are invisible click counters that measure where your visitors click on your web page. Whenever a visitor clicks on your web page the heatmap records where they clicked and stores this for you to view later. If many visitors click on a certain link then the colour of these clicks are displayed as “hotspots” hence the term heat maps.

In online marketing heatmaps are used to obtain vital inofrmation about where visitors are clicking on and equally what they are NOT clicking. From this we can make improvements to the website and subsequently make more sales.

The heatmap image below shows hotspots generated from visitor clicks. These are popular so we need to keep these. The areas where there are little or no clicks are wasting valuable space and should be replaced by other better links.

So why would you deploy a heat map?

Heatmaps can provide you vital information on how visitors are reacting with your website. The click hotspots that are generated tell you that these are areas that visitors are interested in whereas the areas with very few clicks are not. From the heat map you can then adjust your website to move these non performing areas to a lower part of the page and replace them with your important calls to action such as a buy now or register now link.

Keep your best performers in sight

We know from hundreds of heatmaps that up to 95% of all clicks occur in the area before visitors have to scroll – this is called the “fold”. More importantly however – this means that 95% of your visitors will never scroll if what they want is not on the page! So do you really want to hide that buy now button at the foot of your web page?

How a heatmap improved our client’s sales.

Look at the Google analytics snapshot from one of our client’s websites. Their website was already doing quite well but we knew we get some extra sales so we deployed a heatmap to see where they were clicking. After a couple of weeks we noticed very definite hotspots and very definite cold spots. We removed these coldspot links and replaced them with warmer links from other areas of the site. The result was that traffic increased, bounce rate dropped, visitors were staying on pages longer, sales improved and the client was happier*.

* We can provide details of this case study on request if you are interested in conducting a heatmap study for your site. Please contact us for more information.

Image below shows clear performance increases accross the board after changing the layout of the site to increase sales. The red dot signifies the change in design. Note the graphs show increases (good) for time on site, pages per visit and a decrease in bounce rate (also good).

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Discovering your key phrases using Google Analytics

Log into your GA account, click on view report for your website then click on the date range dropdown in the top righthand corner to display the date range calendar. Select a date range of around 6 months and click apply.

Next click “Content” from the main menu on the left then scroll down the page a little and you should see you list of options for drilling down your keywords. See below;

Click on the entrance keywords link and wait for the page to load your list of keyphrases. Scroll down and click on the dropdown and select 500.

The page will then reload and this will display your list of keywords and keyphrases with your main target keyphrases occupying the first 10-15 places. There may be more of your main phrases depending on how many pages you have optimised for these terms but for simplicity lets assume it’s the first 10 results. Any phrase below these can be considered as longtail and it’s these phrases that we’re interested in.

As you scroll down the list you should notice combinations of your main keyphrases surrounded or blended by other words. For example say your main keyphrase for one of your pages was “search engine optimisation”. Because people have used a multitude of different searches you may see different combinations of your main phrases such as below.

buy search engine optimisation services
top search engine optimisation consultants
where is the best search engine optimisation company
best price on search engine optimisation
search engine optimisation consultants in scotland
search engine optimisation company in edinburgh

So why all the variations?

People are smarter at searching nowadays and they realise that they may need to add extra words in the search to obtain a more accurate result. Google has provided a result based upon other words that match the users search and has indexed your site in their listings.

Determine your longtail keyphrase position in Google’s SERPs

The next step in the process is to select one of your long tail phrases and see where it is listed in Google’s results. To do this simply copy the longtail phrase and search for it on Google. Chances are you may not be on the first page but don’t worry about this – just drill down until you find your page in the results.

When you find it, click on the link that says “cached” below Google’s description for your page. The next page displays the highlighted keywords in the grey bar. Google also highlights the same key words in your page’s content. See image.

This will tell you how many times the words appear as a phrase or as single words and from this you have several options for optimising your page for this specific longtail phrase such as…

1. Add the exact phrase to a paragraph in your page

2. Provide a link from one of your other pages using the exact phrase in the anchor text

3. Ask for a link to your page using the exact phrase in the anchor text

4. Create a new page and use the exact phrase in the page title, h1 tags, paragraphs etc as you would for optimising a standard page

5. If you run a blog then create a blog post optimised around this phrase

6. If you post regularly on a forum or a blog then use this exact phrase in your footer or blog post linking back to your page.

Of course there are many ways you can incorporate your longtail phrase in your pages and that’s part of the attraction. The main purpose is to rank as high as possible for these phrases and hopefully you will rank higher and sell more online.

If you would like to know more about lontgtail optimisation then please contact us.

How do you know which pages are your exit pages?

If you have Google Analytics installed then you can identify the pages that your visitors are leaving from to move to another site. These are called your “exit pages”. To identify these pages, log into your analytics account then select, content>top exit pages from the menu on the left. You will see a list of pages that your visitors last viewed. Take note of these and write them down for the next part.

How do you make money from these pages?

Once you have identified your exit pages, edit your page by placing an advert such as a Google adsense ad, an affiliate link or a display banner in the top, middle and bottom of your page. This way you maximise the opportunity to make some cash as the visitor scrolls down the page. It really is that simple!

What if you don’t want to display 3rd party adverts?

No problem! You can still maximise potential for your own site and reduce your website’s bounce rates. If you’re not keen on having your site display 3rd party adverts then why not maximise the potential for your visitors to view other pages on your own site? It could be a special offer, a promotion or a signup page for a newsletter. Do exactly the same thing – place your own adverts or text links at the top centre and bottom of your page and we’re certain you will see an improvement!

Whilst Google’s Analytics gives you all the key data on where your visitors came from, what pages they access, what key phrases they used etc., this is all the before information. Analytics doesn’t tell you what your visitors do when they are actually on your website, and this is extremely valuable information to have.

If you have a site that is attracting decent traffic but failing to convert your visitors into customers then a heatmap can help identify areas where your site could be performing better. As well as showing you what your visitors do click on, it shows you what your visitors do not click, and this could be the most important button on your website – the “buy me now” button.

Image below shows where visitors have been clicking on the web page.

Heatmaps are special invisible overlays that record the areas where visitors click when they visit your website. They are invaluable when trying to identify underperforming areas in a web page. You can view these clicked areas then make adjustments to optimise your pages for the best possible levels of conversion.

For example, say your website sells pens/pencils. Your website looks great, your traffic is great but visitors are not buying your products. A heatmap will identify all the areas your visitors are clicking and not clicking. It may be that your “order now” button is not in a prominent position and needs to be moved to a different area of the page. Or it may be that your visitor has to scroll and by this time they have lost interest and went elsewhere. Either way a heatmap will identify these problem areas.

If you have an underperforming website then we can install a heatmap and analyse the areas that require improvement. Give us a call or contact us now to discuss your website.

SEO Edinburgh - results for Wynn Consulting

The search engine optimisation SEO of Edinburgh company Wynn Consulting are showing marvelous results on Google. We have optimised the site for key phrases relating to Government consulting searches.

Wynn Consulting rank on page 1 position of Google for their major key phrase “public authority consulting”.

The terms were carefully researched, selected then tested against other search phrases. We implemented multivariate testing for several months combined with heat maps to determine the best phrase combinations to attract searches from key “recruiter” personel withing local and government authorities.

From the results of our page testing we have seen the quality of visitor increase. Average site visit times increased markedly indicating the right type of visitor was reading the services. Bounce rates were reduced dramatically and the site is now ranking extremely well for key search phrases. This has seen a marked improvement in quality traffic and enquiries.

From heatmaps and testing we determined the best website optimisation so that users would be drawn to key areas of the site, or focus on press releases.

As part of the SEO we gave user training so that we could hand over the monthly updating to the client to make their own onpage optimisation adjustments inhouse.

SEO Edinburgh , keyword analysis and onpage search engine optimistion.

• Onpage optimisation
• Link building
• Social media marketing
• Google product (froogle) marketing & optimisation

Improvements seen since campaign start:

• NEW TRAFFIC:
  58% increase – excellent improvement
• INCOMING TRAFFIC:
  Search engines – 48% – up by 42% – excellent increase
  Direct traffic – 45% – aiming to reduce this to around 10%
  Referring traffic – 6.5% – up by 6.5%
  [Previously 96% of visits came from direct traffic which was very poor. ]
• BOUNCE RATE:
  10.04% down from 18.9%
  Bounce rate is the number of visitors who leave your site after arriving on any landing page.
  A lower bounce rate percentage is better.
• AVERAGE TIME ON SITE PAGES:
  5mins 31 secs
  This is excellent improvement and correlates with low bounce rates. Page view times are encouraging on the product pages implying that visitors are reading product information.

As can be seen from the Google Analytics screen capture there is a definite trend increase in traffic sine we took over the optimisation. Page views and vists are following similar trends indicating that visitors are finding the site sticky. The Pie chart was previously all green which was very bad meaning all traffic was direct. This has shown a marked swing in favour of search engine traffic filtering through the organic results.

So what is Google analytics (GA) ring fencing?

Basically, its when your SEO Company registers your website on a free Google Analytics account but denies you access to that same account. Your website could be stored on a single account or a parent account with up to 50 other websites.

Here’s how it works:

Your SEO company contracts to provide you with monthly reports as part of your SEO package. They add your website to a GA account then place some Google tracking code on your website. After a week or so you receive your first report (usually by email). However the problems arise later when you ask for access to your online reports. You make your request only to be told your reports are “confidential”, “too complex” or you could “view the reports of other clients”. Hence your data has been “ring fenced”.

Why it benefits the SEO company.

This benefits the SEO company because they can lock you into their services in the following ways: 

• You can only obtain the reports from the SEO company
• You have to rely on the SEO Company for technical expertise on your data

but there are darker sides that benefit them such as:  

• They get to charge you fees for generating the (free) report
• They can threaten you with losing your historical data if you…
  • stop using their services
  • move your SEO to another company
• Tell you can lose your rankings (yes some actually say this!)

Conclusion

Any ethical SEO company should provide you with your own analytics account to which you can access your data any time. They will not charge you fees for reports but a small fee to set up the account is reaonable. They will not make claims about losing historical data or losing your rankings.The data if free and it is yours!

It is fair however to be charged for analysis of these reports and any adjustments to your website. The reports provide valuable data aimed at professionals which can be used to improve the performance of your website.

If your SEO Company is ring fencing your GA account then perhaps its time to look for alternatives.