So, youve taken a competitive keyword, carried out some great on site activity for your client, carried out a varied and high quality link building campaign and youve hit the coveted number one. Traffic increases, sales have increased and your client is over the moon. Congratulations. Job done. We can all go home, right?
Well, maybe not.
Achieving rankings really is only a portion of the job with SEO. Once you hit number one there is still more that you can do to enhance the benefits from that keyword for your client.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate optimization enables you to get more from your traffic. Increasing your conversion from, lets say, 1.5% to 2.5% from visit to sale would mean an increase from 15 to 25 sales per 1000 visits. As your traffic scales up through SEO, this will make a significant difference to the revenue generated by your campaign.
Use heat mapping software and Analytics to fully analyze your users behavior before making any assessment as to where conversion could be improved and then roll out changes using A/B testing in order to be certain of the effects of your proposed changes.
CTR Optimization
Depending on which set of statistics we read, were told that the quantity of searchers who click the first organic result is anywhere from 15% to 40%! In my experience, this can often be narrowed down to between 22% and 32%. But either way, being aware of click through rate from SERPs is essential to understanding your true performance in search. Google Webmaster Tools data (which can now be integrated into Google Analytics) will give you CTR data from search. If it seems particularly low, then look into ways in which you can enhance it.
Its always nerve wracking to make changes to page titles or meta descriptions on pages that have achieved number 1 rankings for competitive keywords. But nonetheless, your title and meta description are key factors in assisting users to decide on which of the results they see that theyll click on. Dont remove your keywords from your title and description, but look at the wording to see whether you can entice more clicks from the searchers.
More clicks is more traffic and more sales!
Social Sharing Buttons
Being number 1 for a well searched keyword is going to result in a decent visitor count so youll want to get as much from those visitors as possible. Aside from the conversion (sale, enquiry or whatever your goal is) you could use your existing traffic to drive more through social sharing. Make it easy for your website visitors to share your website with the implementation of social sharing buttons. More users sharing means more eyes on your content and potentially an increase in visits to your site from social platforms or engagement with your brand on social websites. Social engagement is also increasingly important in SEO, so could have a knock on positive effect on all your other rankings too.
What do you do to get the most from your increased search rankings?