What to do if you have high Google SEO rankings but no sales?
Building a successful business online takes time and dedication because there are so many different elements to consider. You may have optimised your website to secure solid rankings in key search engine results pages (SERPs) and are seeing excellent levels of high quality traffic, but this won’t automatically translate into sales and website conversions.
Here is my advice for making sure you are turning quality traffic into conversions:
1. Optimise with conversions in mind
So, you’ve got traffic flowing to your website. That’s great! Now you need to turn your attention towards securing sales, and understanding your conversion rate is an important first step.
A conversion rate above 2.3% is good for an ecommerce website, but if you’re not there yet, here are a couple of areas to focus on.
– Landing pages
If you aren’t securing a good conversion rate on key landing pages, it is a good idea to run some A/B testing. There are several areas you can focus on here, including adjusting the layout, tweaking the copy, and refining calls-to-action (CTAs).
– Blog posts
While blogs can attract large amounts of traffic, they don’t always translate into conversions without some careful optimisation. I recommend integrating CTAs within blog posts and ensuring that your content is positioning your services and/or products as tangible solutions to the problems your target audience is experiencing.
2. Enhance your user experience
Search engine optimisation (SEO) and user experience (UX) should be viewed as two sides of the same coin or two peas in a pod. But while many site owners have invested in their SEO, far too many websites just aren’t delivering the UX that consumers want and expect.
There are many different tactics that can be used to enhance your site’s UX, including fully exploiting CTAs on webpages, using white space to ensure that your web pages aren’t too cluttered or overwhelming, and utilising a consistent page layout so that users can easily navigate your site.
There are also some slightly more technical UX tactics that you can employ, including ensuring your page speed remains high, that your design is responsive to all devices, and that 404 errors are kept to an absolute minimum.
Don’t forget that while you know your sales funnel and the intricacies of your website inside out, your audience doesn’t. So, I always recommend having your UX evaluated by an unbiased person who will view it from an outside perspective.
It is also worth noting that testing and refining your UX should be an ongoing process to ensure that you aren’t being left behind by your competitor brands.
3. Edit your content for relevance and quality
The chances are that there is content on your website that hasn’t been reviewed or updated in a while. Editing content for relevance and quality on a regular basis is a critical part of ensuring that every part of your website is working for you.
If this task sounds overwhelming, don’t panic and start small. I recommend starting the auditing process with the pieces of content that are currently earning the most traffic. This is your opportunity to question whether each piece of content on your website is relevant to your visitors and whether it showcases your brand in the best possible light.
Although it can be tempting to simply delete older, irrelevant and poor quality content, instead consider how it can be improved efficiently or identify redirect opportunities to guide your visitors towards other pieces of content on your site that will provide the information they are seeking.
4. Leverage social proof to enhance your credibility
Consumers are looking for more than convincingly written copy when they are making purchasing decisions, so it is your responsibility to provide them with proof that your business can live up to the claims you are making.
To build credibility with your audience, it is a good idea to embed customer reviews and testimonials into key product and landing pages. Depending on your industry, it may also be beneficial to secure endorsements from relevant influencers with an engaged audience.
5. Identify opportunities to build trust with your audience
Many ecommerce businesses are already utilising things like social proof as a way to establish trust with their audience, which is an excellent tactic. I recommend going one step further and identifying further ways to increase trust with your audience, including highlighting the information of any professional associations or memberships you hold, sharing the awards that you have won and ensuring that any guarantee or warranty information is clearly displayed.
It can also be beneficial to incorporate links to publications and reputable news websites that you have been featured on, which will further cement your position as a reputable business that will deliver on the promises that you are making.
6. Leverage your data
You should be collecting significant amounts of data, so make a point to analyse it and understand the areas in which you could make improvements that will translate to tangible outcomes. Data can tell you so much about your website and is a valuable input to use, particularly when site visitors seem to be getting stuck somewhere in your sales funnel, as it can quickly highlight the steps you can take to remove this blockage.
Heatmaps can highlight the areas of each web page that your audience is paying the most attention to. You may, for example, find that your visitors are looking at the right hand side of a webpage and missing the key CTA that you have positioned on the left hand side of the page. This would be a simple fix that could drive significantly improved outcomes.
In conclusion
A robust SEO strategy can quickly drive good levels of high quality traffic to your website, however you also need strong content and UX strategies to ensure you are successfully converting those visitors into loyal customers. Website conversions is crucial to the success of your business!
There are many moving parts to keep track of here, which is why ensuring that each team is on the same page with regard to optimising every stage of the sales funnel is critical to driving the results you want to see.