Rolls Royce under the bonnet

##Sadly, that means pretty much every business in every market is also competing for priceless Google real estate.

And boy, don’t Google know it. To call them the Trump of online real estate is probably a disservice. So anyway, you’ve created your SEO strategy…

You’ve researched your keywords on a variety of Keyword planners, you’ve checked the trends on Google Trends, you’ve set your keyword structure and assigned to specific pages…

…You’ve entered the meta data, tweaked your on-page content and arranged quality backlinks. Great. You’ve done everything the SEO bible says you should…

…And then you start your content creation. You go mad on landing pages, blog posts, white papering, article creating and generating anything else that you can contain keywords and might interest a prospect…

…Next, you pump it out through a variety of sources (as the SEO Gods say you should) and you sit back and wait for the visits.

And they come… And they go… And after a few months, you’re left wondering…

##Should you actually be focusing more on conversions if you want to make money from SEO?… Sound familiar? This is probably a long and common thought process to many SEO’ers and marketing teams out there.

So the decision is taken to shift primary focus away from driving traffic and towards actually getting visitors to opt in. To opt in to something. To anything.

And this is where things get REALLY interesting.

Because this is what actually sets the winners from the losers.

Lots of people can SEO a website up to the eyeballs…

But it takes a true marketer to understand what can be offered that is most desirable to your prospects at that very moment. And that is how you actually make money from SEO.

So, how is this done? Well, the honest answer holds three facets:

1. You need to offer visitors something free, valuable, relevant and ideally, unique – in exchange for an incy wincy business email address
2. Trial and error: You don’t know if it works until you try it
3. Visitor analytics: Finding out what works, know why it works and how to replicate success again and again and again and again…

Look at it this way, from all the SEO traffic that hits your site, roughly:

• 20% are not prospects and probably never will be
• 35% could be prospects at some point in the future. But are just loosely window shopping
• 35% are prospects in a research process and are exploring their options
• 10% are prospects. They know what they want. And they want to buy.

To make money from SEO, stop looking at the 10% that are ready right now and think more about the 80% that could become a prospect between now and the future. What can you offer them that is free, valuable, relevant and ideally, unique?

It goes without saying that by offering soft CTAs (calls to action) to 80% instead of 10%, your chances of opt-ins increases. Obviously.

Which is where your visitor analytics comes in…

Now you know who they are, your visitor analytics can also show you:

• How many times previously and since they’ve been to your website
• The specific source they came from for each visit (vital for working out CPA – cost per acquisition)
• What they saw before and after opting-in
• Their micro visiting behaviours
• Where they’re based and what they do
• What devices they’re using (vital following Google’s latest change!)
• How you can help them

#And most importantly…

…Where to direct your marketing efforts from here.

Because, let’s face it. Knowing who your prospects are, why they became your prospects and how to streamline other similar, beautiful prospects is the absolute holy grail of marketing excellence. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call intelligent marketing.

Your bottom line will love you for it too! (But that’s coming in another post!)

Paul Clarke