Relax. Chances are, everything is just fine. Though you may be leaving money on the table that is within your grasp, the good news is a few simple changes can reset the course for you and gather in that missing revenue.

If you haven’t already heard of it, conversion optimization is the process of improving your website’s conversion paths to improve the capture of revenue. Often through a series of simple, small changes, websites see increased revenues. Too many times we focus on building the website, or integrating the latest shopping cart platform and overlook work items that when completed will help funnel users to conversion points faster and more directly.

And while conversion rate optimization (CRO) often includes actual work to your website, if just as often requires a new approach to showcasing content and selecting what content to showcase. Trust is a prerequisite for driving conversions, so you need to be looking for every opportunity to engender trust with your users. The combination of trust and straight-forward conversion pathways is a recipe for success.

While some feel conversion rate optimization work is common sense, it’s only common sense if you think to do the work yourself. Many successful companies turn to conversion optimization work, not because times are tough, but because they want to dot the “i”’s and cross the “t”’s. During the work, many are shocked to see such a difference in their conversions.

A few months ago, while writing my second book (Turn Clicks into Customers), I met Ben Jesson from www.conversion-rate-experts.com. After a few conversations, I knew he was the real deal and the work they did was solid. Ben came through for me big-time with excellent case studies around conversion optimization from their clients. Now, just a couple days ago, Ben reached out to let me know about their latest conversion optimization case study. Man, do I wish this had been available for my book!

Their latest work centers around the low cost holiday provider Sunshine.co.uk. Not surprisingly, their work together brought big improvements in the bottom line. How much of an improvement? They’re on track to have a year-on-year increase in revenue at the tune of more than $21 million USD! Check out the graph…

So you have to ask yourself: How well does your website convert? Could you benefit from conversion optimization work? I personally think every website could benefit from this type of work, as it yields amazing insights into how users interact with your website and points to seemingly obvious, yet overlooked, areas for improvements. If you are investing in search optimization to get more traffic, you need to be investing in conversion optimization to make sure you maximize your opportunities.

Conversion optimization is what will unlock the untapped potential in your current website, so before you redesign anything, invest in some conversion rate optimization work to see where work needs to be done. Then get cracking to claim that missed potential revenue.

iAd-versity: After what seemed to be a good start with iADs, now come the waves of dissension. It seemed like all at once folks started to complain about the slow roll-out, tight controls and the creative input that Apple is demanding. Erik, we all know why advertisers are ponying up dollars to be on this platform, but can a model that so significantly infringes on agency turf survive? Isn’t the final say whether it works or not? It’s been successful for the brands that have rolled out on the platform — could this system Apple has in place actually cut agencies out of the picture? Won’t brands eventual balk at paying twice for the same ad — once to the agency and then again to Apple who gets to recreate it? Who will win that fight? Apple’s notorious penchant for not sharing metrics seems to have also arisen on the iADs platform — will they need to establish more transparency if they want to survive? Previous so-called “walled-garden” models have always broken down (the mobile carriers themselves offer a good example), so is it just a matter of time?

Google Bids Up Bidding: An interesting fracas flared up in the search world this week. Eric Goldman, writing over at Search Engine Land, called Google to task for it’s practice of participating in its own Adword auctions. Duane, could you explain the heart of Eric’s argument? It’s obvious to a layman that bidding in your own auction is not fair, but Google doesn’t seem to think there’s a problem — why not? Even though Google says that it believes in the system and abides by its own rules, doesn’t their participation artificially increase the final bid of certain keywords? Goldman makes the argument that they essentially have a system where they can always win in bidding — is this a fair analysis? The one problem I had with Goldman’s piece was that it didn’t take into account customer perceptions regarding house ads — don’t consumers look at house ads differently than third-party ads? Does the presence of a house ad really drive down the results of a paying ad? What is the solution — shouldn’t Google have the right to advertise on their own site?

Facebook Places: Facebook finally announced Places, their long-anticipated geo-location service that strips all the fun of foursquare and makes your whereabouts public for little to no purpose except that they have 500 million users and it’s bound to be a success. Joe, did I get it right? Can this actually provide the engagement level of the first-movers in the space? Was it smart for foursquare to still try to compete — the other competitors are doing deals with Facebook, right? Do you think Facebook will evolve and diversify Places with more game-like elements or is what we see now what we’ll get? Is diversifying with game functions what they expect 3rd parties to do? What about the ad possibilities — will their sheer size of audience guarantee them success in signing up businesses?

The Followback Question: BeanCast alum, Rupal Parekh asked a question this week over on Ad Age about whether brand competitors should be doing more followbacks on Twitter, including following competitors. So let me pose her question to you, Jim: Should Steve Jobs be following Eric Schmidt? Isn’t the choice to followback more about how you use Twitter (push medium vs. engagement medium) or should all brands be actively following back their followers? Admittedly she’s right on the money when she says you only get a portion of the Twitter benefit when you’re just about push messaging, but isn’t it better to have some involvement rather than none at all? A recent study by ExactTarget (as reported in Adweek) shows that most Twitter users follow a brand to learn about future product announcements — so is there really all that much expectation for interaction anyway?

Scamming To Make A Point: Finally, the FTC took an unusual tact in helping consumers understand the dangers of online financial fraud. They set up a fake mortgage lender site to solicit people’s personal data for mortgage applications. Then when you went to apply, it says that you’ve been had and delivers you a stern talking to. So Joe, while this is very clever, is this kind of fear tactic helpful?

As always, the Beancast Marketing Podcast brings together thought-leaders in marketing from various disciplines (plus me). This week saw a pretty cool group:

Joseph Jaffe (@jaffejuice) (Chief Interrupter, Powered and Author of Flip the Funnel)

Jim Louderback (@jlouderb) (CEO, Revision 3)

Erik Proulx (@eproulx) (Founder, Please Feed the Animals and Producer of Lemonade)

…and me… Duane Forrester (@sportsguy) (Senior Program Manager of In-House SEO, MSN)

Listen via the following links ya’ll:

The BeanCast RSS feed:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Marketing Podcast

The show notes for your show:
Episode 116 of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast

The direct file link:
Listen to Episode 116 of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast

The iTunes link for The BeanCast:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Marketing Podcast on iTunes

The iTunes link for Fast Takes:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Fast Takes Marketing Podcast on iTunes

The Fast Takes RSS feed:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Fast Takes Marketing Podcast

The BeanCast AudioBoo Page:
Hear more BeanCast Marketing Talk at AudioBoo

Zune Link:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Marketing Podcast on Zune

…and check out Bob’s newest venture: Ad Age Outlook (linked to iTunes podcast)

By now most folks have heard that Google has made a change to their algorithm which allows the SERP page to display one domain across most-to-all of the organic results shown.

Without going into too much detail, I’m going to drop these links on recent conversations and articles to get you up to speed if you missed this tidbit of recent news:

After having a few days to watch this new change in action, and to test various phrases to see what results are returned, I’m left with a couple thoughts:

Currently, this all leads me to believe that this change, while beneficial to the brands affected, will have less down-side affect on other websites. I mean, you haven’t built your organic keyword strategy around targeting your competitors brand have you? If yes, then you well may be impacted greatly - and I have to say, this was not a wise course to chart in the first place, now, was it?

I think the big brands will see more brand-related traffic coming to them, which is reasonable, given it IS their brand. This will also serve as a bit of a flag for smaller and emerging brands - if you see a full page of results around YOUR brand, it’s an indication Google feels you’ve “reached the big time”. Could this be an actual, track-able metric for brand awareness online? Well, maybe not really, but still, if you’re using rank tracking as a reportable metric, you might as well slip this one into the bunch as well and hang your hat on it. (If you cannot tell, I’m not a fan of rank as a metric… )

Now, before the whole industry spins out of control bemoaning this change, again, I’ll suggest folks relax and have a beer. Here’s what struck me last night as I drifted off to sleep (yes, I dream about search, too)…

I was once told the percentage breakdown of clicks on SERP results went something like this. Please understand, this data was from a third party source (I trust him, he’s industry, successful, and well known). It was not meant to be absolute and I’m rounding things off a bit here. In practice, as your WMT accounts will show, the actual figures vary greatly based on actual keywords, so an average such as I’m presently is more for illustration, than action. I’ll also state this plainly: This is NOT Bing data. So here goes…

Page 1 of SERPs

Page 2 of SERPs

Now, if we assume this data hold even an ounce of water, how does the new brand-centric shift in Google’s results affect things? Well, if those non-brand results on the first SERP page are shifted lower, then those still-useful and relevant results will begin to occupy territory usually thought of as being of secondary value - namely, the second and third SERP pages. This shift could manifest in changes to the CTRs we see on page 2 & 3 of the SERPs in fact. As users become accustomed to the brand-first display, there is a chance they’ll actively seek out the 2nd page with its variety of results. This could see users shift value to these results, effectively driving UP CTR on the 2nd and, potentially, 3rd SERP pages. Now, this is all speculative, of course. In the bigger picture, the brands will absorb more traffic originally intent on finding them, but for those on the fringes seeking conversions, this *could* signal a new form of filtering, rendering “better value searchers” making it through to the 2nd and 3rd SERP pages..

If a user seeks results beyond the first page actively, they must be more intent on seeking a result, else the first page results would have captured them. We should be asking, if they were willing to work harder to find the desired result, are they more likely to convert when they reach that desired result? They’ve already demonstrated an intent to seek data further than most searchers. Will this translate to those searchers being viewed as more valued? Will this “filtering” result in more conversion-oriented searchers being found on the 2nd and 3rd SERP pages now?

I find this line of thinking is highly intriguing…you can feel free to label me a nutter.

On the topic of visual search for a minute now, before I wrap up, I think it’s about time Google got with it. Bing’s release of their excellent visual search functionality earlier this year heralded a new direction for the major engines (disclosure: I work for Microsoft.). Images have long been a popular form of search, but using that area to actually search for things was a bit hit or miss at the engines until Bing rolled out their new space.

Now, with Google’s purchase of Like.com to add muscle to their own visual product search space, we’re going to truly see a shift in user interaction. Now searchers will virtually window shop for popular products, allowing them to interact with richly detailed images to see the potential purchase from all angles prior to placing it in the cart. Clearly visual search will play a much bigger role in online shopping in the future. Why else would these two huge companies (MSFT & GOOG) invest so heavily in it?

No matter how you cut it, though, the world has shifted. How much remains to be seen, but you can count on one thing that’s for sure…

This timing is directly aimed at lining up big-brand & product searches in time for this upcoming holiday season. With the effects of algorithmic changes needing weeks to months to be fully felt, this organic release slots in perfectly to help big brands potentially post record breaking sales figures this coming Black Friday. Add in the effects of introducing a dramatically improved product search space and the overall result could be huge for all involved.

Maybe these changes are less about relevance and more about saving the economy? THAT kind of PR would certainly help GOOG adhere to their ethos of doing no evil. With so many bemoaning this algorithmic shift and nay-saying, perhaps they simply need to take a bigger view to understand Google is truly out to save the country…

OK, OK, I’ll take off my tin-foil hat now… LOL

Still, if this shift drives online sales volumes higher, one thing I’ll be thankful for this fall is the huge investment that continues in the world of search.

I found a reference to this project on a recent HARO email (Help A Reporter Out) - if you’ve ever debated the value of signing up for this service, stop debating and sign up. It’s simply a great resource for finding excellent ways to gain exposure for a variety of projects. But I digress…

Holly’s article is meant to be a solid resource women in business can turn to in the quest to get ahead across a variety of areas of business. Even those trying to get back into business will find worthwhile titles in this list. Cribbed directly from the blog post, here are a few of the titles that made the cut:

YOU, Inc. The Art of Selling Yourself, which I co-authored with my husband, Harry Beckwith. I wrote the book with women in mind, that so often women sell themselves short, or are afraid of patting themselves on the back. This book provides the tools to overcome fear, objections, and obstacles, and points women in the right direction to sell what it is that everyone buys: YOU.

Suggested by Christine Clifford – Christine Clifford Enterprises

BRAG: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without blowing It by Peggy Klaus. I think women more than men, have a tough time “boasting” about their successes. This book shows how to do that with authenticity.

Suggested by Kelley Briggs – DesignWorks NY, LLC

Undress For Success: The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home by Kate Lister. Unlike the many “change-your-life” books that promise much and deliver little—Undress4Success provides expert, practical advice about: 1) what home-based jobs are available, what talents they require, what they pay, who’s hiring, and how to land one; 2) how to use the Web to search for work-at-home jobs and business opportunities without being scammed; 3) how to turn professional talents into a freelance business; and 4) how to convince an employer to adopt a telecommuting program.

Suggested by Kate Lister – Author

Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service, The Disney Institute. Be Our Guest (or “BOG” as we affectionately call it) communicates the power of operational excellence. The BOG helps convey the need for everyone to work collaboratively and to develop common service standards to achieve the greatest results, which then also ensures public support.

Suggested by Annie Norman – Librarian

Those are in no order, and the rest of the list is at the website, so head on over and give the list a look-over. There are some great titles in there for everyone, covering a range of topics from tax prep to marketing. An excellent resource.

It’s pretty mind-blowing to see your book in a language foreign to you. It’s very different looking through it trying to match up what you think the content is with your memory of where chapters were in the English version.

Next up I’m expecting to see the launch of my current book, Turn Clicks into Customers, early in the new year (2011) in Chinese, for Singapore and Taiwan. That will be very cool to lay my hands on.

I also seem to be getting more feedback and questions from both books lately, so I wanted to offer up a huge thanks to everyone for buying the books and reaching out. I’m super busy at work, as always, but try to get responses back to folks asap all the same.

Can’t wait to start listening? Click here (direct link to an MP3 file)

Though this week’s podcast is titled “Smell Like Duane”, there much more here than smelling like me, I assure you!

This time we talked about a range of topics including (direct from Bob’s show notes to us, so credit to him for the ideas and verbiage):

When Popularity Meets Effectiveness: Everyone’s talking about Old Spice. They just took a Grand Prix in Cannes for the “I’m on a horse” commercial, and this week they launched personalize video responses for a day, mainly responding to social influencers questions. And yet Adweek ran a piece this week highlighting the fact that there’s often a disparity between popularity of an ad and it’s effectiveness. Case in point, Old Spice sales are down 7%. Helen, is there a point where no matter how good an ad campaign is, it should still be killed if it’s not moving product? Is effectiveness the only true measure of marketing? Cannes is talking about having an effectiveness award next year — is that an important move or just an appeasement? Shouldn’t effectiveness be part of the equation for every award that’s handed out? Is the effectiveness debate myopic — does it just serve to highlight that marketing is more than just the advertising and promotions? The charge has been made that with Old Spice in particular is product that makes you smell like your grandfather — so can even the best ad campaign change perception about a product that’s dated? Is it worth anything to a brand to keep advertising and raising brand perception when clearly there are “problems” with the product? Is creativity really an essential component of effectivess as a recent study from the UK’s Institute of Practitioners of Advertising suggests? In their study they found that campaigns that were honored with awards also were 11x more effective at delivering sales — does this say that creativity is the key or that smart marketers also work toward having creative ads?

High-End Moves To Direct Sales Online: It used to be that designer labels would never do anything to jeopardize store placements. So direct-to-consumer selling of any kind was taboo. But now most of the luxury brands have opened up their own e-commerce sites. Joe, is this a smart move for these brands or just a short term response to declining sales that will lead to diminished brand value? Is it just a reality that consumers have less patience for brand experience delivered in-store? Does e-selling actually help a brand deliver better on brand promise by eliminating the haughtiness of the high-end store — does it afford better control?

Digital Dilemma: The numbers are often conflicting, but digital as a whole is facing many questions these days. At a Sun Valley conference this week, Tech companies were eager to showcase to media companies ways to move beyond banner and search ads. But Duane, if clicks are falling as a whole can we really expect interactive video ads and better presentations to be any more effective? Social was supposed to be the next big wave, bringing relevance to the equation — so why are CPMs for Facebook averaging 56 cents while the Internet average is $2.43? We’ve often debated on the show whether brand impression is just as important as a click when it comes to online advertising, but why are buyers and brands so reluctant to believe that? Is the promise of the “click” the Achilles Heel of digital — did we over-promise and now that the industry is maturing we find ourselves saddled with an untenable foundation?

The iConference: The iPhone 4 issues came to a head this week with Consumer Reports saying that even though it’s the best phone around, they still can’t recommend it because of the antennae issue. Also Bloomberg reported that Apple knew about the problems ahead of time, but released the phone anyway. And finally Apple responded with a press-conference to refute the claims and offer either a free bumper case or full refund to customers who weren’t happy. Dan, did Apple handle this with the right tone or will there still be hell to pay? Would this be an issue if it were any other phone? Is it even a problem in the end if folks are still buying the phone no one is returning it and there’s a legitimate fix?

Comcast No Longer Cares: Finally, this week marked a surprise announcement from the de facto father of Internet customer service. @comcastcares, Frank Eliason announced he will be leaving Comcast and sources say he will be heading to Citi. First, Joe, what has Frank’s impact been? We’ve often been critical of the “Twitter magic trick” approach to customer service — in the end did Frank’s great work for Comcast only serve to highlight how broken the rest of Comcast’s customer service was?

Here are the links not just to this episode, but to a TON of other Beancast related things. Heck, even if you’re rockin’ a Zune (my personal thanks to you), Bob has you covered!

The BeanCast RSS feed:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Marketing Podcast

The show notes for this show:
Episode 111 of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast

The direct file link:
Listen to Episode 111 of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast

The iTunes link for The BeanCast:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Marketing Podcast on iTunes

The iTunes link for Fast Takes:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Fast Takes Marketing Podcast on iTunes

The Fast Takes RSS feed:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Fast Takes Marketing Podcast

The BeanCast AudioBoo Page:
Hear more BeanCast Marketing Talk at AudioBoo

Zune Link:
Subscribe to The BeanCast Marketing Podcast on Zune

You can keep up directly with Bob and his ever evolving, crazy collection of marketing contacts via his marketing podcast website: www.beancast.us

I suppose it had to happen eventually, though I’m grateful he snagged a copy and sent the screenshot my way. maybe it’ll be a new sport - spot the online brand name in the captchyas…LOL

…and no, it’s not a photoshop - things like this do happen as the captchya pulls from english language words…

For years many in the SEO industry have been blindly focusing on “simply seo”. To be fair, it’s tough to fault anyone for doing this. To get even the most modest of SEO programs running and delivering results is no small feat. Truly, it was a time of walk before we run in the industry. More recently, however, some industry folks have been modifying their suggestions to be more inclusive. To better encompass the entirety of what a website truly needs to make it in today’s online world.

Shari Thurow’s Search Engine Land article (clicky) is an excellent primer on the topic. I think Adam’s addition to this line of thought is likewise, excellent. Mostly, I just like that this concept as a “baked whole” is getting airplay more prominently. I long ago stopped giving “SEO advice” when folks approached me. Instead, I began asking slightly invasive question to better understand their landscape. Were they treating SEO as a stand alone item? What else across their site were they investing in? How are they managing conversion optimization, etc.?

Gone are the days of SEO being a stand alone discipline. Today’s SEO needs to manage search, social, conversion optimization, content selection and creation, site architecture, design, technology implmentation and more. It’s not the “simple” career choice it was 7 or 8 years ago…LOL

That said, I, like many in the industry, readily welcome this change in focus. More to the point, it’s about time this coming together of factors was viewed as a single approach. You want Best Practices for SEO? Don’t forget the site, the users and the conversion when doing SEO work. How’s that for “best practice”?

I noticed this week some conversations around Latent Semantic Indexing popping up again. This surprised me given this is an old, old topic in the world of SEO. I can’t tell if this is just folks discovering the topic for the first time and discussing it, or if there has been actual movement on this front by the engines. I haven’t heard anything myself from the engines directly on the topic that’s “new”, but it could have easily slipped past me as the last 2 weeks have been a blur. 2 weeks ago was SMX Advanced here in Seattle, and this week was back to back for 4 days with meetings.

Right now I’m rewatching The Talented Mr. Ripley and yearning to go back to Italy. Might have to plan a trip soon. That or buy a Vespa or some other scooter…! Not sure I’ll end up as cool as this guy (Florence, 2007), but it’s worth a try.

I’ll need to spend some time revamping the site over the next few days, so if you see weirdness, it’s me frigging around in the back end a bit.

In the meantime, follow me @sportsguy on Twitter…