Those familiar with the 80/20 rule (also known as Pareto’s Principle) know that you get 80% of your success out of only 20% of your work. Concentrating on the quick things that generate the most money is something that everyone in the business world should have at the top of their priority list.
Naturally, we want all of our pages to rank higher in the search engines. The trouble, though, is that getting pages to climb higher in the search engines involves a considerable amount of work. You want to make sure that work pays off. If you know what pages are your best converting pages, concentrating on getting those pages to rank higher will be a more productive use of your time and effort.
In “How to Increase Conversions for Your Best (and Worst) Performing Keywords in 6 Steps,” Ken Lyons outlines a process for figuring out which keywords are the easiest ones to concentrate your efforts on. Unlike some people who concentrate on search numbers and click-through rates, Ken focuses on conversion statistics. After all, if you already know which pages convert well, you just need to figure out how to steer more people to them.
Use Google Analytics to Identify Your Top Performing Pages
The process begins with identifying your best converting keywords using Google Analytics. That is done by navigating to Traffic Sources>Sources>Search>Organic and then selecting your conversion goal. If you sort by conversion rate, you can easily see what your highest converting keywords are.
Next, in the Secondary Dimension drop-down menu, navigate to Traffic Sources>Landing Page. This will show you what pages are generating the keyword conversions. Then, look up each keyword and make a note of its current search engine page position. There are various tools out there that make it easier than just Googling the keywords and wading through all of the results until you find your listing. The Google SERP Rank Checker Tool is a free one that you can use, for instance.
Make A SpreadSheet to Help You Identify Targets
Open up a spreadsheet and create columns for the following:
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Keyword
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# of Visits
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Conversion Rate
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SERP Position
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Landing Page URL
Fill in the data for each of your highest converting keywords. When you are done, you’ll have a much clearer picture of what pages would be the best to spend your time on.
Deciding What to Tackle First
There are many different ways you can tackle this. Trying to get pages that are just off of page one onto the first page is one of the things that I like to focus on first. The most recent data shows that page one on Google search results receives 91.5% of all traffic compared to only 4.8% for page two SERP listings.
All depending on how much profit you make for any given product, another approach would be to tackle the highest profit URLs that have good conversion rates.
And, of course, if you’ve got a page ranking in spot #3 or #4 that is converting well, getting it to spot #1 or #2 can double or triple the profits from that page.
One thing to take particular note of is if you see the same page turning up multiple times for different keywords. Concentrating on moving a page that converts well for multiple keywords lets you kill more than one bird with one stone.
Sorry, I can’t make the call for you here. Every website is different but at least you will have all of your important data organized now and can make an informed decision.
There are many different ways of getting a page to rank better. My first step is always making on-page improvements, making sure the title tag, H1 tag and the keywords I am targeting show up on the page at least once or twice. Then, I look at ways I might be able to naturally link to the page from other internal pages of the website. And, of course, looking for backlink opportunities to the targeted pages and increasing social mentions are always the next step.
The rest of Ken’s article talks about how to boost lower converting keywords. In a nutshell, he says you need to compare the high ranking pages to the low ranking pages. In most cases, you’ll immediately see why the higher converting pages do better. The content of the page is almost always better suited to the keywords that drove visitors there. Creating content that better satisfies the query used to reach the page almost always makes it convert better.
Personally, I wouldn’t waste much of my 20% on the lower converting pages unless those were higher profit pages and there was a clear, simple reason they don’t seem to be working. Again, only you will be able to make that call.
Taking this little bit of time to organize your data will help you determine where your time will best be spent and should lead to a better action plan for boosting your profits.
Of course, even doing this takes time and dedication – something that many people simply do not have. We specialize in getting websites to rank well for their most important keywords. Head over to our Contact Us page and we’ll be happy to give you a custom quote for your website needs, whether it is SEO, social marketing or even managing your pay per click ads!
