Small Business Saturday Blog

Everyone knows the importance of SEO to their online business. But the real key is to convert those clicks into paying customers. Anyone with a passing interest in the world of search engine optimisation will be quick to assume that it is all about improving search engine rankings and directing more visitors to your small business website. While increased traffic is never a bad thing, it is of limited use if your visitors only stop for a few seconds before flying on elsewhere. Indeed, if more people are clicking “back” than are staying around, then something is evidently going wrong, and you need to know about it or it could do more harm to your business than good. Click through rates are in many ways the prime indicator of just how much your website is helping your business, and improving conversion rates is key to increasing your business’s bottom line. If traffic constitutes the quantity of visitors, then conversion rates equate to the quality. Here, we take a look at some easy ways of improving click through rates for your small business site.Remember the BasicsIt is easy to get caught up in the latest hot topics in SEO and digital marketing, whether it is PPC, video content or social media involvement. However, the biggest factor in getting regular, repeat visitors to your small business site is to have a website that they want to visit. That means fresh, engaging and relevant content, presented in an attractive way. Make sure your content is regularly updated and remains relevant to your visitors. There is no bigger turn-off than to visit a site and find it is discussing a product release or industry event that took place months ago - it is the equivalent of entering a shop in March and seeing mouldy Christmas decorations on the walls.Make it SnappyToday, everyone seems to be in more of a hurry than ever, and that is certainly the case when it comes to our online activities. The truth is, with super-fast Internet connections, people no longer have the slightest tolerance for slow-loading pages. Even though your business is small, there’s no excuse for a slow website. If you want to compete with larger corporations then you need to ensure that your webpages are loaded within a matter of a couple of seconds, otherwise your visitors will have gone elsewhere. There are any number of free speed tests around, including Pingdom, which allows you to sign up for free and then runs regular checks to make sure your pages are performing as they should.Build a Relationship When it comes to running a small business website, the importance of building relationships with your customers, both current and potential is key. No matter how hard you try, you are never going to achieve 100% conversions. After all, we all like to shop around before we make a final decision. However, it is worth thinking about what you can do with those who choose not to click through so that they are not lost forever. Make it easy for visitors to get in touch by including telephone and email details in your headers. You could also consider the equivalent of a “maybe” button in your calls to action - where they can leave their contact details while they think about it and you can stay in touch.Check your Channels Resources within Google Analytics can give a wide variety of invaluable information as to just how well your site is performing for you. By looking under the “conversions” tab you can get detailed reports on conversions by search criteria that show you what is working and what isn’t. However, that is only half the story. There can be a tendency to assume that any drop in SERP results is due to a decline in organic search, when this is not necessarily the case. Google’s Channel Grouping report will segment your searches according to organic, paid, referrals and so on, to give you a clear insight as to where you need to focus more attention.Blog contributed by Jackie Fisher