SEO Conversion to Sales?

[NickJushchyshyn]

We've had a lot of threads spinning around for the last year or so focused on how we can optimize our websites for search engines. I'm curious as to how effective SEO efforts have been for folks in terms of landing work.

My own focus is on sports photography, where our photographers cover teams, leagues, schools, and tournaments, shooting action, portraits and team photos throughout the year. With all these photos posted to the web, we already get thousands and thousands of hits and traffic from our target market.

So, while we've implemented a few elements of SEO, and do have fairly good ranking on some search terms, our overall site design really revolves around showing our work off to the families that are visiting the site to look at their photos. We want to show tournament families that we do portraits, and visa versa.

Just wondering if we should consider implementing more SEO elements, even if that means toning down the amount of imagery we're showing now, which is intended to show of our photo quality.

Has anyone that has implemented SEO and increased the page rankings actually seen a significant boost in sales and leads through their SEO efforts?

[tracknut]

Great question, Nick. While I'm an advocate of doing a certain amount of work for SEO, and avoiding the obvious dumb mistakes that will get you poor search engine rankings, my opinion is that for many businesses, SEO is in the last 5% of the leads.

I do dog sport photography, and like many folks I suspect, would say that personal contact and referrals are by far my #1 generator of business. My guess is you'd say the same thing. But once in a while, I do get someone contacting me that says they found me through Google, liked what they saw, and would like to schedule me for a shoot. It's those times that I am very happy I spent some time on SEO for my site. But as I say, that's in the 5% area - whether you'd call it a "significant boost" or not, I doubt.

By the way, I'm not sure why you'd equate implementing SEO with reducing the imagery on your site?

Dave

[TheHoff]

Good points from Dave above. There is no need to change the amount of imagery just to add more text. You may change some Flash to Javascript/jQuery and that might help (as now you get image Alt tags that Flash lacks).

And it was a good question to start with. It is impossible to say without knowing the intricacies of your business and how getting more new, but relatively untargeted, visitors would help it. Are there visitors that would be consumers of your product that you are not reaching now? It sounds like most of your business comes from passing out cards and such at the events so customers know where to go for the photos.

Would getting unsolicited traffic help much? Do you think there are schools out there you're not reaching that might find you through Google? You do have a unique model where more Google visitors doesn't necessarily increase into more sales if you're already getting the people who would buy to view them and you'll likely just increase your lookey-loos.

[NickJushchyshyn]

Yeah, I don't use flash for any of my main pages. I think the gallery is the only page that uses flash.
I guess I'd gotten a couple SEO recommendations to use less imagery and more text content. I think someone once said "it's image heavy" .. which I found a bit amusing given that it's a image based business.

Our focus for growing our business at the moment is bringing on new leagues for team and individual portraits. Our intent is that when families come to the site to look a photos for a tournament or team we've already covered, they would see our portrait work and think about hiring us (if they're on the board of another league) or at least recommending us to the coaches and/or board of other leagues their kids participate with. So far this aspect of the site seems to be working.

So I look at the site to consider further SEO enhancements like more descriptive content on the home page, maybe a blog, etc. ..and started thinking that the site might start to get crowded, and less focused. I'm on the fence about how much effort and what changes we could/should make to enhance SEO, wondering how effective that effort would actually be in terms of growing the business ... and want to make sure we stay focused on the overall objective .. creating interest in our work once some one DOES reach the site.

[TheHoff]

Right. Focusing on improving conversion is a great goal if you already have a good deal of targeted traffic. You'll do better increasing the amount they buy vs. trying to influence more people to come.

You're welcome to post in my "SEO Makeovers" thread if you want some input on that part. While this is an image-based business, we are still years away from Google doing meaningful image recognition and incorporating that into the search rankings. Text is still king for SEO.

[dmccabe]

I am Senior Web Project Manager and we do serious pro level SEO solutions (Fortune 100 sites).
We just started using this program. It is just a front end interface to gather data from Google Trends, but the way it is organized is fantastic.

Try checking out this program: http://www.marketsamurai.com/

They have a free trial and the MAIN feature they give away FREE: Keyword Analysis

It hooks into Google Trends and give a user SUPER detailed keyword analysis. I am not affiliated with this company at all. Watch their video demos that explain how the program works - and they give some really good SEO tips.

I have been following TheHoff thread and he is correct on just about everything he suggests. And I bet he will love this program.

[Picture North Carolina]

Originally Posted by dmccabe

Try checking out this program: http://www.marketsamurai.com/

I had previously heard about this and found that reviews seemed to be universally positive, even from noted sources. My only concern was that (if correct) it utilizes the Google keyword tool. That's fine, but if google ever changes the tool, and they probably will, if the MS people are not proactive and on top of things, MS will stop functioning.