Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [129]
Additionally, some SEO specialists over-optimize the home page in an attempt to have it rank well for as many keywords as possible. Unfortunately, this tactic results in a cluster approach to gaining rankings. By placing all the keywords and subjects on a single page (the home page), the result is a page that attempts to meet the needs of thousands of visitors with only a few words and concepts but little clear direction. The result is a home page that ranks for many general terms but provides little context for direction. As Seth Godin points out in Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync? (Portfolio Hardcover, 2007), “No one visits a website’s home page anymore—they walk in the back door.” Basically, every page on your website is a home page. Every page is an opportunity to gain a conversion or help the visitor find related information. Simply getting a visitor to the home page is not good enough because visitors want and are able to enter at the appropriate page and the most relevant page to their interests. When they don’t see the information they want, the visit does not last long. Getting visitors deeper into the website, based on their interests, creates better visits and, in turn, better sales and conversions. In analytics studies for research and for clients, the findings are consistent. When compared with the visitors who search on the same word but who enter at a “deeper” page in the website, they tend to stay longer, do more, and convert at a higher rate.
A research project for a client brought this into a clearer focus. Visitors who used the same keyword for their search entered the website at one of two primary pages: the home page or the category page. The home page of this website typically ranked in the top three results in the search engines. The visitors entering at that home page had a significantly higher bounce rate and a lower conversion rate when compared to the site average. The category page was on the second page of results and averaged a ranking of #13 in the same timeframe. The visitors who entered at this category page (for a search on the exact same term) stayed longer, looked at more content, had a lower bounce rate, and doubled the average conversion rate!
Once this behavior showed itself on one website, it became a template for analyzing visitor behavior on other websites. Consistently, visitors tended to convert at higher rates when they entered the website closer to the destination than if they had entered at the home page. Although there were many theories as to why this behavior was taking place, the most logical theory that fits the most evidence was that the navigation on the home page was not clear enough to help visitors quickly find the information they needed to make a quick decision to find the direction of the content.
For visitors who do enter at the home page, whether by search, by direct navigation, from a bookmark, or from a link, they are expecting direct cues to the deeper content. Visitors on your home page typically have a mission in mind, and the construction on your home page must show the purpose of the business and a clear, understandable structure of content. Without clear information architecture utilizing clear language and easy-to-read content, a visitor will grow wary of the visit, especially if they cannot trust the layout of the content.
Using the Home Page for Direction
The 1970s sitcom M.A.S.H. had an iconic symbol in the center of the camp: a road sign with the destinations to the hometowns of those serving in the camp. The home page should be like that sign: it should point the way to the information the visitor needs (see Figure 12-1).
©iStockphoto.com/[RTimages]
Figure 12-1: The home page points the way to the content.
The tools to