There’s a lot of buzz about search engine optimization, or SEO, and you might wonder why. After all, aren’t your customers finding your website from your business cards, posters, TV or radio ads? Of course, some people are coming to your website from those locations, but there’s a potentially-untapped market that isn’t finding your website, because you’re not number one on Google. Consumers might want exactly the products and services that you provide but don’t know about you, which is exactly why it’s so important for you achieve that number one spot. Did you know that you can determine just how much your business can benefit from this position? Lately I was making successful online marketing campaign for one of my clients, well known NYC law firm. Here are my tips from that strategy:
Determine Search Volume
Search volume is simply the number of people who are searching for your industry keyword. Whether you’re a florist or sell luxury kitchen knives, you know exactly what term you want people to be using when they find you. If your business is location-based, you may want to include that information in your keyword.
To determine how many people are already using the target keyword, you can head to AdWords, a service from Google. The free keyword tool from AdWords lets you type in several criteria, including search keywords. Google AdWords will give you a report for the number of global searches for your keyword. You might be surprised by just how many global and local users want the product or service that you sell. Location-based businesses should take note of the local search volume and not global.
For our example, a “web design Chicago” sees 12,100 monthly, local searches.
Apply Click-Through Rate
In simple terms, click-through rate, or CTR, is the rate of users to actually click to the number one search result on search engines like Google. The CTR for the first two or three entries is always much higher than those of lower search results. According to a recent study, the top result on a Google SERP has a CTR of exactly 36.4%, which means that a third of the search volume is actually going to the number one website.
Thus, our Chicago-based Web design firm can hope to reach 36.4% of the 12,100 searches, for a total click-through volume of 4,404 clicks or visits per month by calculating 12,100 x .364.
From Clicks to Conversions
While every potential competitor hopes to achieve the same number of visits for the industry keyword, your individual potential varies depending upon your conversation rate. Ideally, all of your visitors would make a purchase; however, studies show that actual conversation rates are much lower, between 1-2%. If you’ve already calculated your conversation rate, you might find yourself close to the average. Congratulations are in order if yours is higher.
You can then use your conversation rate to see how many of your potential visitors are also potential customers. For example, 2% of 4,404 — .02 x 4404 — visits is just shy of 89 visitors.
The Value of an Order
Finally, you’ll want to determine how much revenue your business will see from those 89 visitors. When you multiple the number of visits by the average order value, you’ll see just what it means for your company to rank number one on Google. In our hypothetical, we’ll say that each order values at $500 — 89 x 500 — for a total of $44,500.
Be Careful with Calculations
Of course, this is just a rough estimate of how much revenue a high rank can bring you. Variations in search volume, click-through rates and average sales rates aren’t constant. You’ll want to periodically reevaluate the equation when Google releases a new CTR or your conversion rates change.
This doesn’t mean that your company won’t see any business from search engine traffic or that all your sales comes from that source. However, it provides hard proof that being number one positively impacts your bottom line.
Richard Hasson is well known blogger and Internet marketing strategist. He made numerous viral campaigns for his clients, helping them improve their online presence. Currently he is a content contributor for www.newyorkstatedivorce.com , reputed law company from New York. Here are some tips about what he did to helped them to achieve no.1 Google rankings.
