Aaron Shear makes a compelling argument in a recent Search Engine Watch article. He explains that, when it comes to optimizing a webpage for the search engines, improper (or no) ‘targeting’ can severely detract from the ability of the page to rank highly for its chosen keywords.

Within the context of search engine optimization (SEO), ‘targeting’ means focusing the content of a given webpage on or around a particular keyword or keyphrase. The more targeted is your webpage, the more relevant your page will appear for the given keyword or keyphrase.

Higher relevance means a higher search engine ranking, which in turn means greater organic search engine traffic.

As Mr Shear states, the search engines evaluate webpages from the top left hand corner of the page to the bottom right hand corner of the page (including the page title tag). Further, search engines read the content from left to right, with the most important part being at the beginning of the text or tag.

Given this, the greater the quantity of information on a webpage, and, importantly, the more diverse that information is, the greater the dilution in terms of targeting. Which means, in turn, the lower the capacity of the page to rank highly for its chosen keyword(s).

The lesson? Focus your content as much as possible.

Try to avoid having one webpage about two or more different things. For instance, instead of having one page with “great deals on bicycles and tricycles,” aim to have one page on bicycles and another on tricycles.

And if you can be even more specific (depending on your keywords) even better.

I should also note that diluted or improper targeting also tends to cause a higher than desirable bounce rate - another factor taken into account by the search engines. A ‘bounce’ occurs when someone (or something) leaves a webpage the moment they arrive i.e. before the page loads. A high bounce rate indicates that most people find the content to be irrelevant… not good when the search engines place so much emphasis on RELEVANCE.

Source: Aaron Shear, “SEO Dreams are Made of This,” Search Engine Watch, November 18, 2008

A couple of years ago Simon (my business partner and husband) and I had an argument. We didn’t end up screaming or throwing things at each other, but it did get a little heated. But it wasn’t about one of us coming home late… or whose turn it was to do the dishes… or who was or wasn’t pulling their weight around the house…

It was about marketing!

Specifically, Internet marketing and how to design our websites.

In this case, Simon had his search engine optimization (SEO) hat on, while I had my ‘conversion’ hat on. As such we had different ideas about how to construct our websites.

We both agreed that designing a commercial website to ‘look good’ was not the most important objective (rather, it was to sell products or services), but when it came to designing a website to sell, we looked at things differently.

Simon wanted to maximize search engine traffic, so he wanted our sites to be ’search engine friendly.’ I wanted to maximize conversions, so I thought that every aspect of our websites should be engineered to sell. If this meant something wasn’t ’search engine friendly’ then so be it!

Simon argued that the site would miss out on lots of traffic unless it appealed to the search engines. He said, “What’s the point of having a highly converting site if there’s no one to visit it?”

I said, “What’s the point of generating a lot of traffic if you can’t convert it into customers? In any case, search engine optimization is only one method of generating traffic, so why should a website be designed with only that in mind?”

Yes, acknowledged Simon, but the search engines often generate the most traffic… and, what’s more, it’s free.

Who was right? We both were!

The truth is, many Internet businesses need both organic search engine traffic AND the ability to convert it into customers.

Why do I say they NEED organic search engine traffic? Can’t they just use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and non-search engine sources of traffic?

Well, you may be able to rely on PPC advertising alone, but you’d be missing out on attracting the vast majority of people who search on search engines. Eye-tracking research by Enquiro and MarketingSherpa has found that a fraction of searchers look at the right side of the page of search results. That’s right, where all the PPC ads are.

Now, plenty of people DO look at the right side – and these may well be enough to support your business.

But if ‘almost no-one’ looks at the PPC ads on the right, then ‘almost everyone’ is only looking at the natural / organic listings on the left. Do you want to attract ‘almost everyone’ or ‘almost no-one’ to your website? In other words, if ‘almost no-one’ amounts to 100 people a day… imagine how many the ‘almost everyone’ is!

And in case you don’t really care about generating traffic from the search engines, let me quote Dearl Miller of Trafficology who has said that 85 percent of all online sales originate from searches on search engines.

That’s a lot of sales to say goodbye to!

But if all this supports Simon’s view that website design should be based around search engine optimization, let me re-iterate my argument: loads of traffic is worthless if it can’t be converted into customers. I firmly believe that your website should be designed to sell.

Which leads me to how Simon and I resolved our differences.

Eventually, after we both calmed down, we agreed that there must be a ’sweet spot’ – likely to be different for every website – where the design achieves a balance between generating the most organic search engine traffic and converting the most visitors into customers, and where the result is the maximum possible profits.

So the challenge is to find that balance.

How do you do that? Simple. You test. Yep, you try something and see what happens. Or as we say, you innovate, test and track. Innovate, test and track. Innovate, test and track. On and on, with the aim to continually improve your profits.

And it’s profits that really matter. Not the amount of traffic. Not even the amount of customers or sales. Profits.

That’s what your website should really be designed with in mind. And, because no one – not even you – can really know what will yield the most profits, or even what the ‘most profits’ is, you must constantly innovate, test and track!