This interview with Bart Olson of Keyword Catcher and Frank Baker of Kreature Digital is part of the Convirza Webinar Series. The following is the Q&A portion of the presentation.
McKay: Yeah, here’s a couple that people are asking. One of the questions that people are asking about Keyword Catcher specifically, Bart, is how much programmatic effort does it take on the site itself to get the content to dynamically generate? What is the process for that? How does it work? Is it just JavaScript to switch out? What’s the process there?
Bart: Oh, yeah. Good question. So this is built to be extremely easy to install. It’s plug and play. There’s a snippet of code that you put in your body tag, or the head tag of your site, or the footer. And that way, it would populate across every page of your site.
And it’s just a asynchronous loading JavaScript. So it won’t slow down your site. That’s basically long way of saying it won’t slow down your site. And, yeah, so from the back end, there’s a whole interface that allows you to select which page you want to change content on for what keyword traffic and you would insert a different image. And it would dynamically load that image for you for that specific traffic.
And that could be… you could change text, you could change images. Basically anything that’s HTML, you can dynamically swap in something different for that traffic. So it literally takes about 15 minutes to install. We just tell you where to paste the code on your site. And from there, you can dynamically change what you need to.
McKay: Great. Based on what you said, Bart, it sounds like it’s the exact same method that we use for dynamic number insertion when people and phone numbers get switched out based on the source and the campaign and the keyword, etc. So just a snippet of JavaScript.
I know that, for example, if people are familiar with the way call-tracking DNI works, it’s the same method it sounds like. And then, I know that AB testing sites use similar methods. So it’s pretty common and, as you said, not terribly difficult.
The other question that we’re getting a lot is what kind of data do you have, Bart, about when people do switch out the content based on a factor that you can switch it out based upon? What is the difference in conversion rate on the site? Do you have data points around that that you could give us?
Bart: Oh, sure. If you go to KeywordCatcher.com, we have some right on the homepage if you scroll down to the bottom. And I could pull that up here and show you.
McKay: And then while you’re getting to that, Bart, the other question that people are asking to both of you guys–and I’d love for you both to respond to this. What is the biggest challenges you think companies have? Is it that you see and does it depend on the industry? Is driving traffic really the bigger issue in the new SEO climate? Or is it a conversion issue?
And I’m sure it’s obviously a combination of both. But maybe you could both speak to that, some of the biggest challenges in each area.
Frank: Well, from my standpoint and what I see — and it does, it drives my industry. But there are some major points that are kind of true across all industries. Obviously driving traffic to your site, you want people to be able to find you. You want to be able to show up in front of the people that are looking for your product and service.
Most people don’t have all the traffic that they want. Now, like I said before, all traffic is not created equal. And there are people… I worked with a company that was getting thousands of people to their site every day, thousands. And it was coming from places that were not really specific to what they were doing. And their conversion rate was horrible on this traffic.
We came in working with them. Their traffic went down a little bit as far as where it was coming from. But their conversions skyrocketed. And they were getting ten times the amount of conversions on three-fourths the amount of traffic. Because we were getting the right traffic to the website.
When we were talking about longtail keywords and making them rank well for the types of keywords they wanted to rank for. And not just their name and not just broad search terms, does that make sense?
McKay: Yeah, that does. That makes perfect sense. Bart, can you speak to that, too?
Bart: Yeah. I’m finding that… I mean, I deal with this every day. So for me, I just feel like one of the biggest problems is just not having a great funnel on your site to convert the traffic into sales. And that’s just having the tools and the savvy to know where the traffic is coming from and to give them what they want. So sometimes, it takes a little bit of leading on some expertise in that area to realize what you can do and how best to do it.
So for me, it’s landing page, building separate landing pages is pretty tedious and time-consuming and expensive. But if you can swap in dynamically, just small pieces of the page, an image, some text, something to really grab their attention for that specific traffic, it goes a long way. And I kind of feel like that that’s one of the biggest problem areas that I’ve noticed.
McKay: Great. And then, give us some quick tips, if you can, of things we can do right now, Frank, to improve traffic to our site. If there was something that generally we can all improve on, what would that be? And I would ask the same question to you, Bart, about conversion on the site.
Frank: Okay. Each company is going to be different. Each company has strengths and weaknesses as far as where their clients are coming from. If I said one of the things that was most beneficial that I see that 90% of people are weak in is creating good content on your site, blog content, you know, those types of things. If you don’t have a blog, get one. If you don’t have a website, obviously get one. But if you don’t have a blog, get one and post to it weekly.
I know that might seem difficult, but there’s a lot of stuff out there and there’s a lot of interesting things. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about your product, like I said. Once you start posting to your blog, you’re already generating social media content. It’s already there. All you have to do is repost to your blog or post a link to your blog.
So a lot of these things play hand in hand. But you need to be generating content about who you guys are, what you are, be it your products, your services. But not only that, generate content around your business. What’s the culture of your business? Who are you as a… people want to buy from people they know and they like. So who are you as a business? I would suggest that would be my one suggestion is get a blog, generate good content, get that on social media.
McKay: Great.
Bart: For me, I think I would say look at the traffic that’s hitting your generic pages, like your homepage. And see if there’s room for improvement to tailor to that traffic better. I would say that’s a good starting point.
Because you’re going to see varied sources of traffic. And then I’d say also look at what traffic is coming from social media and see how you can tailor to that better as well. And that would include creating mechanisms for them to use that platform.
So that, for instance, if you see lots of traffic coming from Facebook, and it’s hitting your homepage, make sure that you have a good “Like” button visible above the fold on the top of the page. So that if they like what they see, they’re able to do some feedback using that mechanism. And that’s going to play hand in hand with what Frank’s been talking about, too. It’s going to boost your SEO and it’s just a proven way to improve your marketing.
McKay: Great.
Bart: That’s something I’d recommend.
McKay: That’s awesome.
Bart: And if you have the time, I’d say post 150 blog posts in 50 days like McKay did at Convirza. That’s a pretty amazing case study of having great content, you know?
McKay: Yeah. That’s awesome that you mentioned that. So those of who don’t know, I’ll mention this real quick and then we’ll conclude, we did an content experiment where we posted three blogs a day for 50 days. So 150 blogs in 50 days. We did it on weekdays only.
And a couple of days ago, we published the findings of that, so it was ten weeks, essentially. Some of the traffic results were pretty interesting. I’ll just throw a couple out there and then I’ll send everybody the link in the e-mail afterwards.
But, yeah. Our blog traffic increased by about 210%. Our organic traffic to the blog increased 514%. And then the organic traffic to the site increased 70%.
So it’s a pretty… for a company of our size, we’re not huge. To produce that level of content every day, it takes a commitment. But it paid off, so we’re going to keep doing it and see what the heck happens. But anyway, I appreciate you mentioning that, Bart.
Bart: No, it’s a good example.
McKay: Yeah, I know it’s pretty fun to see the results. So gentlemen, thank you.
