Getting free clicks and traffic from organic search is a huge win for any business. All of my projects consistently deliver ranking gains that result in new traffic to your website. However, the real goal (and art) is driving actual sales from that new traffic.
As a fellow business owner, it's no secret that sharing your value and convincing customers to pull out their credit cards takes a lot of refining, learning, and more.
To address this, I'd like to share my favorite tools for maximizing new traffic (and maximizing our SEO work together).
These tools either improve reporting so that you know how much your SEO efforts are paying off, improve user experience to increase conversions, or put your hard-earned SEO content to work on other marketing channels. Check out the sections below.
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Website Messaging Framework That Helps Convert Your New SEO Traffic to Sales
Easy User Experience Insights: See How People Are Engaging with Your Content (and maximize their experience to maximize conversions)
Tracking Phone Calls and Lead Forms from SEO/Organic
More tips coming soon!
Note: Some links in this article may be sponsored links, meaning I may earn a commission on sign ups, but I only promote tools that I have tried and 100% believe in and know to provide real value. These links may also offer a discount to you as well, so be sure to use these links for possible cost savings.
My Top Tip on Driving Conversions from Organic Traffic
My top tip is simply to remember that a new visitor to your site may not be ready to purchase. They may still be researching, evaluating other options, managing their budget, etc,
That means that a purchase might not be the next step they take.
Consider using an email sign up as your conversion KPI from organic traffic, and then use an email campaign to nurture them to conversion.
Here is a podcast episode I really like that talks about effective email nurture campaigns:
You can access the episode here
A Website Messaging Framework to Authentically Bring in Sales
Marketing efforts are consistently great at driving traffic, and not everyone will be ready to buy and maybe will never buy from you. However, a percentage of people are in a place to buy, and you have to work efficiently to bring them into your orbit and toward purchase.
I have loved and seen results in my own business by following Donald Miller's StoryBrand framework, as well as other great advice from his book and podcast Business Made Simple.
Here's a free, interactive tool that allows you to write your own messaging following this framework: https://onlinesalesscript.com/
And here's a podcast episode that talks about this framework:
I also highly recommend reading Donald Miller's book, How to Grow Your Small Business, which includes a section on marketing messaging framework.
Easy (and free) User Experience Insights: See How People Are Engaging with Your Content
And maximize their experience to maximize conversions.
Several tools allow you to watch user recordings to see how people are interacting with your content, which helps you optimize their experience and help smooth the path to sales.
My favorite (free) tool is Hotjar, whose free version allows you to watch user recordings.
The free version has more user recording limits, but I have found it's plenty for my small business, at least for quick user insights.
Know What's Working: Tracking Phone Calls, Texts, and Contact Forms from SEO/Organic Traffic
This allows you to track how much business SEO is driving if your business receives leads via phone call or text (and you can track your contact form as well).
Call Rail - Track Phone Calls and Leads from All Marketing Efforts, Including Print Marketing
Note that this tool is typically only worth the investment if you get leads from phone calls (or texts). If you only have a contact form, you can track those for free in Google Analytics (and it will tell you how many form fills came from SEO/Organic). I recommend Google Analytics for form-fill-only situations.
CallRail uses SEO-friendly call-tracking numbers on your website which allows you to see which marketing channels are generating phone call leads, including print marketing.
You can also listen to the calls and mark them as a qualified lead, and this is also a great way to come up with content ideas by getting a sense of what terms your leads use and what questions they are asking.
Tracking Form Submissions in Google Analytics
If leads submit a contact form, you can use Google Analytics to see how many of those lead forms are coming from SEO efforts.
The easiest way to track form submissions in Google Analytics is to set up your contact form to redirect to a thank you page upon completion, like www.yousite.com/conact/thank-you. Then, you can set up a goal in Google Analytics to trigger a conversion when someone reaches the thank you page (and therefore has submitted the form). Google Analytics can then give you information on what marketing channel the submission came from, what page they converted from, and what page they originally landed on (useful for SEO because that tells us what the ranking page was).
For many businesses, this setup may require hiring a developer or analytics expert to set this up, but it can be done quickly and sourced on Upwork or Fiverr. (Email me for referrals on my own preferred Upwork vendors).
I'll continue to add to this post, so check back every couple of months! You can also email me or comment below with any follow-up questions.
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