Meredith's husband: 0:24

So this one is about conversion path Path.

Meredith: 0:27

Path Like a path in the woods you follow.

Meredith's husband: 0:31

Kind of, except it's a path from Google to your thank you page is what it is it's the path. When you're talking about SEO, we're trying to get users from Google to your thank you page, literally.

Meredith: 0:42

Which means they reach out, submit something and receive the thank you.

Meredith's husband: 0:48

Correct. You only get to your thank you page by doing the action. Whatever the action is Right, add the cart by now. Contact you, whatever it is.

Meredith: 0:56

Now in my new website, I don't think I've created a thank you page Well you will.

Meredith's husband: 1:01

You'll have one before it goes live. Typically what you do. If it's an obstacle for you at all creating a thank you page, you just take your contact page and you duplicate it, but you remove the contact form and you just put your thank you message. Oh, how about that? Yeah, but yeah, the conversion path.

Meredith: 1:20

So last week you remember the fifth rule, the pillars of SEIQ, the fifth rule was that you do it, so you get something out of it.

Meredith's husband: 1:31

Yeah, pretty good, really. Yeah, it needs to do what you want it to do. Your website needs to do what you want it to do.

Meredith: 1:37

Your conversions. There we go. Those are the rules.

Meredith's husband: 1:39

This is the reason you have a website.

Meredith: 1:41

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 1:42

You don't have a website because you had some spare time.

Meredith: 1:44

You don't want to build a website. Well, there must be one person.

Meredith's husband: 1:48

If money were no object, I would sit around and build websites.

Meredith: 1:51

You would yeah what I like. How are you doing that? I know you do.

Meredith's husband: 1:55

I love SEO. I just moved my website to Wix. By the way, we're going to do an episode about Wix because Wix is awesome. I bagged on Wix for many years because Wix was terrible.

Meredith: 2:03

I remember that.

Meredith's husband: 2:04

I just moved my site to Wix and it's crazy, awesome, really.

Meredith: 2:07

And.

Meredith's husband: 2:08

I've been getting into the nuts and the bolts and doing my own SEO.

Meredith: 2:12

Of course, and I remembered. I love this stuff. Oh baby, that's great.

Meredith's husband: 2:18

Okay, so your website needs to do something.

Meredith: 2:21

Yes, so SEO that's very good, I think, and that's a great episode. We're done. That's gold right there. If your website doesn't do anything, you should make it do something. Thank you, and scene.

Meredith's husband: 2:32

So the goal of SEO, like I've said before, not high rankings. People typically think, oh, what are you trying to do with SEO? You're already trying to get on the page one, Page one. Oh, that's all. No, the goal of SEO is to get conversions from Google.

Meredith: 2:47

Which I remember means that you have Google showing your website in the first 100 places.

Meredith's husband: 2:58

So the conversion path is all the steps that somebody's going to take, from first seeing your website listed in Google to visiting your site, to navigating your pages, to taking your call to action, to your thank you page. That's the conversion path.

Meredith's husband: 3:14

Now this is especially important because there's only two ways you can get more business from your website, two options. You can get more people to your website yeah. Or you can get more yeah, no. Just how you get more business. If you want to get more leads from your website, how, what do you need?

Meredith: 3:33

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 3:34

You either need more people coming to your website.

Meredith: 3:36

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 3:37

Or you need to have more of the people who are already visiting your website to contact you.

Meredith: 3:43

Say that one more time.

Meredith's husband: 3:44

Okay, you get the first one right. You get more visitors to your website.

Meredith: 3:47

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 3:48

If you want more leads from your website, you got to get more people to visit your website.

Meredith: 3:51

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 3:52

Another way to increase the number of leads that you get from your website is to focus on the people who are already visiting your website and just get more of them to contact you. It's the conversion rate.

Meredith: 4:03

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 4:04

Conversion rate is very important. It is the holy grail of metrics in website stuff.

Meredith: 4:10

Shall we give it a little.

Meredith's husband: 4:12

Oh, I'll put the sound effect in later. Oh, very nice.

Meredith: 4:15

Is it gonna be better then, oh?

Meredith's husband: 4:18

No, I'm gonna actually use that as the sound effect.

Meredith: 4:20

Thank you, you're welcome. I'm gonna make a clip.

Meredith's husband: 4:22

So the conversion rate. To give you an example, let's say I may have actually done. Used this as an example before. Let's say you want to double the amount of business you get from your website. Okay, one way to do that, and this is what people typically think of immediately, it's just make twice the amount of pages, right. You get twice the number of people to visit your website. Right, that should do it right Right.

Meredith's husband: 4:43

These are the same thing done. Or you can double the percentage of people who are contacting you. How, now? Well, that's what I'll get into in this conversion path. But imagine if you had. Conversion rates are gonna range for a lead gen site like a photographer, a lead generation. So you're not selling something, you're trying to generate leads with your website.

Meredith: 5:03

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 5:04

We call that a lead gen site. For a lead gen site, a conversion. A typical conversion rate is gonna be anywhere from half a percent to 2%.

Meredith: 5:13

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 5:13

Now imagine we're just starting and we have a half a percent conversion rate. So that means out of every 100 people on average, just half a person, Half a person, half a person contacts you. I would use a thousand, but then I gotta do math again 20. Okay, let's say one. Let's say you have a conversion rate of one. So every 100 people visit your website, one person contacts you.

Meredith: 5:38

Yeah, I think we could just start with that.

Meredith's husband: 5:40

So if I were to say, okay, we're gonna work on improving your conversion rate and we're gonna take it from a conversion rate of 1.0 to 1.2. Yes, okay, that might seem like a pretty insignificant 20%. But it is exactly, it's 20%. You just increased your business by 20%.

Meredith: 5:59

I can't even believe I came to that number.

Meredith's husband: 6:01

I hate math and you can do that pretty quickly Like it would take a long time to get 20% more visitors. It would probably take a while to get 20% more visitors from Google, whereas something like a improvement to your conversion rate, something like that could happen almost overnight. How Like if you were to work on the steps. Let's talk about the steps.

Meredith: 6:21

Take me to the steps.

Meredith's husband: 6:22

In a second, but first it's important to do this to work on your conversion rate first, not only because it can have an immediate impact on the people who are already visiting your website, but if then you do get more people to visit your site, then you are converting them at a higher rate too, so this is a good place to start.

Meredith: 6:42

You don't wanna put the cart before the horse.

Meredith's husband: 6:46

I think that's right.

Meredith: 6:47

It is right, because then the horse is just gonna walk right into the cart and smash everything. And you gotta start all over, and the poor horse is gonna be very hurt.

Meredith's husband: 6:55

Okay, so the first step in the conversion process is going to be what people see in Google. Right, that is starting to give people a first impression.

Meredith: 7:04

Wait, you have to say that again because I was imagining this poor horse alone. Say that one more time for your wonderful wife who loves you.

Meredith's husband: 7:11

The first step on the conversion path is when people see your website in Google.

Meredith: 7:17

Yes, okay, or they see information about you on Google.

Meredith's husband: 7:20

People are already generating a first impression before they even get to your site.

Meredith: 7:24

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 7:25

And we've talked about this before. This is why we wanna focus on your Google business profile. Make it really impressive, as you can.

Meredith: 7:31

It makes a difference. That makes sense. It really does make a difference. It's one first impression.

Meredith's husband: 7:34

And that's kinda cool because it's kinda like a covert first impression. People don't really expect what they see on. Google was placed there by you.

Meredith: 7:43

True.

Meredith's husband: 7:43

It's kind of.

Meredith: 7:44

Unless you run your own business.

Meredith's husband: 7:46

Well, I think when people see something on Google, they think it's more objective.

Meredith: 7:49

Yeah, this is true, you know.

Meredith's husband: 7:51

But the second step along this conversion path is the landing page. There's five steps.

Meredith: 7:59

We're pretty five-ish.

Meredith's husband: 8:01

The landing page is whatever page people land on on your website. It's not always gonna be the homepage, might be a blog page, but there are steps you can take that will help to improve your conversion rate.

Meredith: 8:12

We've talked about the three On any page, any page.

Meredith's husband: 8:15

The three questions that people ask.

Meredith: 8:17

Where are you? Where am I? What am I seeing?

Meredith's husband: 8:21

Pretty close. Yeah, Question one when?

Meredith: 8:23

am I.

Meredith's husband: 8:24

What is this place? Question two what is there to do? Here what is this magical? And question three what is the decision I need to make before I leave this website?

Meredith: 8:32

This is not my wonderful wife.

Meredith's husband: 8:35

Good God, that's the second step. Yes, third step is your CTA. What is the action that you are taking people to do? Now, this is a major one, cause you can make it very convoluted and complicated, or you can make it fairly easy.

Meredith: 8:49

I'm very good at the first.

Meredith's husband: 8:50

Yes, but this is where you wanna reduce mental friction. You wanna make it easy for people to reach out and enticing Like a warm ice cream spoon into the carton. Okay. The fourth step is your conversion page.

Meredith: 9:08

Okay, that's the contact me page.

Meredith's husband: 9:10

Yeah, the contact page, again, should be very simple Simple, fewer questions. Ask for only what you need with your contact form, don't ask for more. Make it simple when possible. Yes, don't have links pointing to other websites. Don't have links pointing to your blogs. Don't have other things for people to do?

Meredith: 9:28

Social media.

Meredith's husband: 9:29

Once people get to your conversion page, everything should be there. Like a testimonial is nice. Keep it simple.

Meredith: 9:35

Keep it friendly.

Meredith's husband: 9:37

Now most people would say that's it. That's the end of the conversion path.

Meredith: 9:41

Yes, but it's not. It is not, but wait, there's more.

Meredith's husband: 9:44

The confirmation page. We talked about the confirmation page, the thank you page.

Meredith: 9:48

We did the thank you page.

Meredith's husband: 9:51

I think we did right at the beginning of that episode, I think it was last week. The confirmation page Number one technically you need it in order to measure your conversions. It's helpful to measure how many leads you're getting. But number two, I think of it like the follow through and I know I make a lot of sports analogies.

Meredith: 10:07

You don't actually. Surprisingly, you don't make as many here as you do in life Every other day.

Meredith's husband: 10:15

So I'm going to use the analogy of a golf swing in this case. So when you're watching Tiger Woods and he comes, he takes his club back and he yes, he hits the ball. I'm not a golfer, if you can tell.

Meredith: 10:28

You are a good golfer.

Meredith's husband: 10:30

I've golfed, but anyway.

Meredith: 10:31

You are a very good golfer.

Meredith's husband: 10:33

He doesn't pull his club back and then swing and hit the ball and then stop immediately. He follows through even though he's already hit the ball, the ball's gone right, but his follow through and what he does during that follow through helps determine where the ball is going to go. Really, yeah, because if you follow through and you are turning your club one way, you're going to do one thing. If you're turning your club another way, it's going to do something different. Or we could, or you could think about it like a swinging a baseball bat, like a lot of times when you're teaching somebody to do these things, when your coach is training you, they're going to tell you what to do in the follow through. Okay, right, the point is that I'm trying to make is that once people contact you, yes.

Meredith's husband: 11:12

You don't send them to a blank page at that point. You don't send them back to Google. You at least give them a thank you message.

Meredith: 11:19

Yeah, if you want to acknowledge. Yeah, a closure, and now we're in motion.

Meredith's husband: 11:24

Yeah, and I think nowadays, I think you want to take it a step further. You want to follow through like a professional. You want to give a sincere message, something that inspires some confidence in people that, oh, I've made a good decision. You don't want somebody to have buyer's remorse right after they sent you their information. Like can you imagine if you, if you click submit, and then you went to a broken page?

Meredith's husband: 11:44

like like that's not going to leave you with a good feeling. Follow through like a professional. Give it a sincere message. I think the days of having thank you for your message We'll get back to you as soon as possible I think those days are over. Yes, that's like the bare minimum you could do. Yes, but now, at this point, you know, people ask me a lot well, should I give people my social media channels? Should I send them to my social media? Well, perhaps, after they have contacted you? Yes, yeah, now at this point, yeah, give somebody a slideshow to watch, give somebody your social media profiles.

Meredith: 12:12

Or how about? How about, like a, a special link to a gallery?

Meredith's husband: 12:16

Or yeah, something special, yeah, something that makes them feel special, something that makes I don't know something entertaining, something that makes them laugh.

Meredith: 12:24

What about what like a? A cute video of like a happy pig?

Meredith's husband: 12:27

Yeah, If you can leave people smiling at this point, that's the first step in in getting that person to be an actual client Want to self Google happy pig videos.