How to maximize conversions of search engine traffic

Two of the most prevalent sources of website traffic are "organic" search engine traffic and paid traffic. Many sites struggle to gain acceptable search engine traffic, and resort to buying hundreds of dollars worth of ads to compensate for this. While buying traffic does work, the conversion strategy is usually all together different from search engine traffic.

With paid traffic, the best way to convert is often by sending the visitors directly to a targeted landing page, with few options other than the buy button.

Maximizing conversion results from organic search traffic is altogether different. It is difficult to write strong direct response copy, and optimize it for top search engine rankings. You just don't have control of which of your pages will show up for a given search term.

The bottom line is, you can't control where people will enter your site, and you have little control over what they will see. When working with organically search traffic, we move to using "internal site marketing tactics."

Internal site marketing refers to elements of the site which drive people to act- such as promoting a whitepaper, prompting people to request more information, visit the forum, sign up for a trial, register for the newsletter, etc. How these are presented and promoted will have a huge impact on the actual benefit of organic traffic.

The best part about them, is that they can be tested and optimized! Although testing with "global" site traffic introduces noise, if you run your test out longer, you'll still be able to get a pretty good indication on what works and what doesn't.