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Monday: Conversions

In Chapter 1, we explained how important it is to track the success of your SEO cam-

paign. In marketingspeak, these measurements are called

metrics

. Today we’re inter-

ested in only one thing: conversion metrics. Different organizations can have vastly

different metrics, ranging from the number of people buying your product to how

many third graders download your science report. Whether it’s online sales, brand

awareness, or just eyeballs you’re after, you know what your conversions are because

you defined them way back in Chapter 1.

If your website has a system in place to track conversions, it’s time to gather

some data. The least you will want to know is this:

how many conversions has your

site logged per month over the last three calendar months?

And if you can get addi-

tional information (for example, total conversion rate for

all

visitors versus conversion

rate for

search engine

visitors), by all means, do. The more you document today, the

more you’ll know about the success or failure of your SEO campaign in the coming

months.

You may know how to get this data by yourself, but if not, it’s time to enlist

your IT, sales, or PR team members for the information you need. If you haven’t done

so yet, be sure to welcome them to your SEO team, and tell them what an important

task this is for the future of the organization…it may even be time to hand out some

bribe cookies!

To be sure, if you haven’t been tracking conversions, you may think you have

nothing to document today. We disagree. Somewhere, somehow, there must be some

information about how your website is performing for you. If there’s a request for infor-

mation form on the site, how many people have used it? If you suspect that people are

researching your company online and then ordering over the phone, see if you can get a

salesperson to back you up. Or, just write down your suspicion. Even a guess is better

than nothing here.

If you’re pretty sure that the website hasn’t given you any business, or recogni-

tion, or whatever it is you’re looking for in the past three months, make a note of that,

too. If you’re starting from zero, congratulations! Your improvement will be very easy

to measure.

Now:

Open up a new blank document and record your three-month historical conversion numbers

and any additional conversion data you can gather. Save this in your SEO Idea Bank; you’ll need it again in

Chapter 8.

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