I’ve talked to hundreds of business owners and almost without exception their prime focus in regard to their website is to have it appear high in the rankings of Google. Without wishing to demean such a laudible endeavour. I have never heard in the any of these conversations  the word “conversion”. It’s as though the only thing that has to be done is get truck loads of visitors to a site and they will buy and we’ll be banking truck loads of dosh (cash) to the bank.

It appears the underlying assumption is that once the traffic starts arriving they will naturally start buying or registering - no questions asked!

Unfortunately, the reality different. People may be attracted in coming to your site because it is listed high in Google, but on arrival they are confronted with many obstacles that prevent them from either buying or registering.

There can be many on page factors that make it difficult for people to perform the action you would like them to do. For example, there can be a lack of congruence (continuity) between the search engine listing and the page (in other words what you have promised on the search engine listing, is not what is obvious or delivered on the page). Further, a page may have too many conflicting options that make it difficult for visitors to select from. Or, the process for purchasing may be too difficult and confusing. It is always a bad assumption to make, that because the page looks good, it will perform its function and convert.

I see no point in optimising a page for search engines, if no effort has been made to optimise the actual landing page so that it becomes easy for a visitor to not only fulfill their objectives in coming to the site, but also yours.

I am sure I have said this in a previous blog, I can see no point in undertaking search engine optimisation on a page if it currently performs poorly in terms of conversion. Getting more visitors to the page will not increase the conversion rate when there are inherent on-page issues that first need to be corrected and tested.