For the life of me I just can’t understand it! Why are so many website owners fixated about appearing high in search engine rankings as though it’s going to be the biggest determinant in their online success?

The fact of the matter is SEO must be placed inside the context of internet/online marketing. If you do not have a online marketing strategy, SEO becomes an expensive waste of time.

Often when I have talked to business owners and managers about the marketing of their website, they become frustrated because they are getting little or no enquiries or sales from their site. The immediate response is that they need more traffic.

More traffic is not necessarily the answer. If you have got, for example, 2,000 unique visitors coming to your site each month and you are getting little or no conversion, doubling the traffic will not change the conversion rate. There is something fundamentally wrong with the content of the site.

This means that either your offer is not right or sufficiently compelling, or that it is not targeted to a narrow enough audience.

We’ve all heard that content is king on a website, and that is absolutely true. However, it is not any content. It is content that is crafted to gain Attention, draw Interest, create Desire and drive to Action.

It often seems a shame that with most website developments, the development of content is left to the owner. In most cases, owners of the business are just not the right people to develop sales copy. There is no doubting that they have an intimate and deep knowledge of their products or services, but in presenting in a compelling way, rather than in a matter-of-fact presentation, is something else.

To be fair to owners, the only real visible model they have to go by for the presentation of text is existing website. And lets be honest, nearly all of them are failures and sources of frustrations to their owners.

The real issue I have is with many web designer companies, who make huge and extravagent  promises about getting their clients’ site to list high on Google. They carry on about Meta tags and the frequently changing algorithms of the search engines, in a way to clock profound mystery.

The fact of the matter is:

• No one can guarantee you high rankings on Google
• Google is not under any obligation to list your site
• Search engine algorithms do not change with any great frequency
• Good compelling and targeted content is how you will get targeted traffic to your site

Ok, without wanting to offend the real SEO experts. There is a real place for SEO on a site, and they do have a distinct knowledge mix to bring to the party, but it must be within the context of Online and internet marketing.

Everyday thousands of people are searching the Internet for exactly what you’re offering. And, people are coming to your site, but more often than not, they’re leaving at the same speed they arrived. How could that happen? Generally speaking, visitors don’t arrive at your site by accident, they’re in the market, they’re looking. The challenge you’ve got as a website owner is to turn these lookers into buyers.

As a general rule, the average conversion rate on websites is between one and two percent. This means that about 98% of lookers (and lets assume they’re looking for what you’re selling) do nothing and leave. They’ve left your site without buying, even though you had what they were looking for. What went wrong?

What if you were able to increase your conversion rate by, let’s say, 2%? What would that mean for your bottom line, and how much extra money would you see in your bank every month?

You may be thinking this doesn’t apply to you because you’re not selling products online. But same principle applies if your objective is to generate leads from your website for the services you sell.

Over the next few entries, we’re going to be examining the biggest reasons why people leave your site without making an enquiry.