Google’s Conversion Metric

As search engine optimization evolves into a more well rounded marketing discipline, SEOs are revisiting more traditional marketing objectives. No longer does the job stop at attracting visitors to a website. Conversion tracking is the name of the game.

Rand posted “When an Action Comes Around, You Must Track It” over at SEOmoz but I feel he missed one very important metric that can directly affect search engine rankings. Google has it’s own conversion metric based on user behavior which will become an increasing factor in rankings as time goes on.

I don’t know the exact number of Google toolbars installed, but I am estimating it’s in the millions. Combine that data with the data from Google Analytics and you have a very comprehensive sample group to determine user behavior.

If someone finds you in the #1 spot for your targeted keyword and clicks the link to visit your site, Google knows if they go on to visit multiple pages or if they drop off after the first page. This behavior is a very strong indication whether the user found what they where looking for. If a large enough percentage of visitors never go beyond that one page, then that would be a very good indication to Google that they need to drop you for another site that shows signs of being on topic to the searchers needs.

All statistics programs track page views per visitor, but they do not treat these numbers as conversions. You will need to manually segment them based on search queries and add conversion values. Now determining what value to place on these types of visitors is up for discussion. Any takers?

So go and check your stats program. If the average page views per visit coming from your search terms is anywhere near 1 , then it’s time to do some tweaking to those pages. Give the visitors what they are looking for or be prepared to no longer receive those visitors.