Conversion Rate Optimization Tips and Tools

March 31, 2010
 

Bruce is out of the country this week, so Virginia, Paula and Aaron Landerkin start off the show with an SES New York recap. A couple of themes that stood out at the show were tactics for automating Twitter and strategies for Web analytics 2.0. Twitter is generally expected to be a personal mode of communication, yet some automation can be implemented, such as announcements, new blog posts or events. When it comes to Web analytics, keynote speaker Avinash Kaushik warned against data puke and the importance of tracking micro-conversions.

Then Scott Fowles, an SEO analyst at Bruce Clay, Inc. and an evangelist for conversion rate optimization, talks to Virginia about a couple of CRO sessions at SES New York. Tim Ash, a landing page optimization strategist and host of a WMR show by the same name, presented his Conversion Ninja Toolbox at the conference. The tools help marketers and webmasters view their pages as a user sees them and understand the actions that are being encouraged through visual and language cues on a site. Similarly, Also at the conference, Bryan Eisenberg, a CRO strategist, presented 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites. The implementation of just a few of those pertinent tips may help a site optimize its conversions.

Finally, Virginia, Paula and Aaron return to look at SEO Eric Enge’s in-depth interview with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web spam team. Google takes part in a delicate balancing act with the SEO community, in being transparent while not giving away the farm. For instance, in the interview, Matt Cutts explained that PDF files are crawled and indexed but he declined to say if links in PDFs are followed. In the interview Matt also said that there was a loss of PageRank through a 301 redirect, however Aaron insists that a 301 redirect is still the SEO’s preferred choice for redirecting URLs.