A proper Google SEO audit relies on immense data collection. Many of the tools listed in the previous section were recommended because of their abilities to collect all that data. We’ll cover how to set them up here.
When collecting data, don’t just focus on site visitors. While new and returning visitors are important metrics to record, you’ll also want to track how many of those individuals turned into actual leads or clients. This process is referred to as website “conversion monitoring.”
A “lead” or conversion is an individual who attempts to contact the business and is a potential new customer. In most cases, the lead could come in two forms;
1) Calling the business or
2) Filling out a contact form on the site.
E-commerce sites don’t have “leads” per se. Instead, e-store owners focus on buyers and can monitor each step of the sales process, from site landing to the eventual purchase. Each step of the sales process is a small conversion. But the ultimate conversion is when a site visitor completes a purchase.
Monitoring your website’s conversion rate offers unique insight, such as if your site is good enough to turn visitors into leads. You can determine which marketing campaigns are working and which ones aren’t. Or which campaigns are generating the highest return on investment (ROI).
NOTE: Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of leads by the total number of site visitors in a given time-frame.
Monitoring a site’s conversion rate puts you in a prime position to improve it. Success comes when you:
- Manage to improve your site’s conversion rate
- Do so without having to increase your online marketing budget
- All while simultaneously increasing the number of leads and conversions
The steps above will also improve your campaign’s ROI.
For example, if your site has a conversion rate of 2% and you’re spending $1,000 a week for marketing, driving 1,000 visitors to your site, only twenty of them contact you (2% X 1,000).
While each lead is costing you $50 ($1,000 / 20).
If you manage to increase your conversion rate to 5%, all of a sudden the number of your leads jumps to fifty (5% X 1,000) and your cost per lead drops to $20 ($1,000 / 50).
Needless to say, with much lower cost per lead, you can now increase your marketing budget and reap the benefits of experiencing a major boost in all new viable leads.