The Importance of SEO and Conversion

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Co-Founder: Lightburn

• Interactive Agency focused on helping client

drive revenue via the web

www.lightburndesigns.com

Founder: Cooper Safety Supply

• Online ecommerce company that sells safety equipment

• Started in late 2006 as an experiment within Lightburn to sharpen our skills in

ecommerce, search marketing and search optimization

• Multi-million dollar business

www.coopersafety.com

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

The Importance of SEO and Conversion

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

What is SEO

&

Why is it important?

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

What is it?

SEO refers to the techniques and strategies that help your website rank

higher within the search engines.

Why is it important?

Higher rankings = more site traffic = more potential to sell your products

or services

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

A few facts and figures:

• Americans conducted 13.6 BILLION searches in July 2009

Google - 8.9 Billion

Yahoo! - 2.6 Billion

Bing - 1.2 Billion

• Google Index is estimated at 1.5 TRILLION pages

2009 PR + Summit

What are people searching for?

• Knowledge and Solutions (Answers)

• Products and Services

• Entertainment

SEO Demystified

What are people clicking?

2009 PR + Summit

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Understanding the factors used for rankings

On Page Factors (35%):

• Content & Meta Data

• Friendly URLs

• Linking Structure

• Freshness of Content

• Broken Links & Redirects

Off Page Factors (65%):

• Links

Off Page Factors65%

On Page Factors35%

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Links are the biggest off page factor in achieving high ranking search results

Site

Links

LinksLinks

Links

Links

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

What does it this have to do with PR?

• Search Optimization and PR should to be

treated as a team

• PR helps drive SEO Results

• SEO helps drive more PR opportunity

SEO

PR

SEO

PR

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

PR

Awarenes

s

Conversation

Links

SEO

Rankings

PR / SEO Lifecycle

Bloggers, Journalist, Site Owners

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Content Driving PR and SEO Opportunity

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

PR Driving Awareness and SEO Opportunity

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Negative Tweet displayed on Mint’s Blog Home Page

Provides opportunity to communicate with the community

Content Driving PR and SEO Opportunity

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

What is Conversion Optimization

&

Why is it important?

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

What is it?

It’s getting more ACTIONS from the same amount of traffic.

Why is it important?

More actions = more revenue

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Examples of Conversions

• Buying Something

• Signing up for a trial and/or offer

• Subscribing to an email list or RSS feed

• Reading multiple blog posts

• Getting someone to Tweet your content

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

Invitation to subscribe to RSS feed

Digg

Popular Article ListSocial Network Sharing

Mint.com Sign-up Offer

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

What does Conversion Optimization have to do with PR?

Conversions provide the fuel to further expand PR and Marketing

efforts and grow.

2009 PR + Social Media Summit

“I highly recommend keyword analysis, looking at server logs to figure

out new content to add, thinking of new hooks to make your site

attract more word-of-mouth buzz, pondering how to improve

conversion once visitors land on your site, etc”

Matt Cutts (Google Engineer)

www.mattcutts.com/blog