A survey conducted by market research firm TNS revealed that 75% of all online shoppers said that company size was not a factor in having their online shopping needs satisfied. Only 15% said they preferred to shop with large retailers (Source: TNS).

More than 80% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engines (Source: Georgia Tech/GVU Users Survey). That means that about 650 million people use search engines to find web sites. It is very important to do the right things in the right order if you want to have high search engine rankings. It is not enough to submit your web site to search engines and to wait for the results.

Search engines use a variety of factors to rank web sites. You have to work on all factors if you want to achieve good results. Here are few of them:

1. Find the right keywords for your web site: The right keywords are not always obvious. It is very important that you target the right keywords before you start with your search engine optimization work.
2. Optimize your web pages for these keywords: Optimizing your web pages for your important keywords is crucial if you want to have high search engine rankings. Optimizing one or two pages is not enough. Search engines analyze all pages of your web site and they put these pages in a context. It is important that the combination of your web pages shows search engines that your web site is relevant to a special topic.
3. Submit your web pages to all important search engines and directories: After optimizing your web site for several keywords, you can submit your web site to search engines and Internet directories. Although search engine submission is not as important as it was (many search engines will find your web site through links on other sites), it can still help you to get your web site listed faster.
4. Get links from other web sites and make sure that these links contain your keywords: Links from other web sites are extremely important if you want to have high search engine rankings. Your web site must have good incoming links to get high search engine rankings. High search engine rankings are always the result of optimized web pages and good incoming links.

So you have a website and have made investments in getting it online on the Internet. But does it give you the results that you had thought of? Is your website adding up to your business or is it reaching out to your target customers?

After establishing a great website, however, you need to drive interested consumers to your site in order for it to have an impact on your business bottom line. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can be useful in bringing more targeted customers to your business website and SEO can help improve the conversion rates as well. Conversions are interpreted differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and content creators. To online retailers or e-commerce websites, a successful conversion may mean the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner advertisement. To content creators, a successful conversion may refer to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download or other activity.

All commercial websites can increase their ROI by focusing on the following:

• Increasing Relevant Traffic to the Website
• Increasing Conversions

A long term SEO plan to generate organic traffic from Search Engines is the most important because it is Google and the other major search engines that are the portals of choice when seeking specific information.

What is ROI and how can it be Improved?

Return On Investment (ROI) is a direct relationship between the total amount you spend and the total amount you earn from a certain internet marketing campaign.

Generally speaking, Return On Investment (ROI) is a performance measurement used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment and to compare the efficiency of one investment to the other or over a certain period of time.

The two most important factors to improve your Return On Investment (ROI) are:

• Professional Search Engine Optimization
• Website Conversion Rate Optimization

Let’s understand these in detail.

Professional Search Engine Optimization is probably one of the best internet marketing strategies to improve your Return On Investment. Basically, the idea here is to generate lot of organic traffic which will simply give much more exposure to the website for a long period of time. Once the initial cost of Search Engine Optimization services is paid, you do not need to pay much money to keep the achieved results.

A good Search Engine Optimization campaign can contain the following items or a carefully selected combination:

• Keyword research, analysis and selection
• Copywriting the main website pages and the landing pages
• Link building exercise to improve the link popularity
• Social Media Marketing to create more brand loyalty

On the other hand, Website Conversion Rate Optimization is a technique to increase your Conversion Rate, which leads to more targeted visitors and more sales from your targeted traffic.

A good Website Conversion Rate Optimization campaign can contain the following:

• Find the Unique Selling Points (USP) and make them clear and obvious in the website and landing pages
• Improve the website design to be more search engine friendly
• Improve the website usability and accessibility to make navigation and finding information, products or services easier
• Improve the content on the website to clearly present the benefits of products or services to be more convincing and compelling to your visitors
• Improve landing pages to accurately match your advertising campaigns and the keywords used in them
• Track the campaigns and analyze results to improve performance