I have been on the business development team for the website WholesaleKeychain.com (WSK) since 2002. Over those years the website has gone from selling 15 to 1,500 products.
As the business grew from just selling automotive keychains to one of the largest supplier of keychains, search engine competition started to set in.
It easy to obtain a high ROI when you are the only company selling a niche product. Conversion rates from 4% – 12% are common in small non-competitive niche markets. As WSK product line grew, the company realized that conversion rates on automotive keychains were not comparable to more competitive keychains; for example digital photo keychains or heart keychains.
Since I am the internet marketer for WSK this became a huge problem. The company was not seeing a ROI when promoting the new keychains, even though they were the same marketing efforts that were working for our automotive keychains. ROI was good for automotive keychains, but not for all new keychains added to the site. Profit margins sunk to 12% in 2009 compared to a 20% to 30% profit margin in years past.
This was a problem. The reason I am writing this blog post is because I was expressing this problem to a friend and after thinking about the problem he brilliantly said, “Does anybody really care where they buy a keychain online?”
It was a question I never really thought about. Amazon.com has high customer loyalty. Websites like BestBuy.com, Walmart.com, and Walgreens.com have high customer trust. Coming to the realization that many customers could care less if they purchased a keychain from WholesaleKeychain.com or UltimateKeychains.com never occurred to me.
So I decided to analyze conversion rates for WSK top 100 organic search (Non-Paid) & PPC search (Paid Search) keywords and see if any correlation existed between ranking #1 in the Google’s Organic Search Engine Results or #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, or #10. The results are below:
Organic Search (Non-Paid) & PPC Search (Paid Search) – Conversion Rates
Average Non-Paid Search Conversion Rate: 3.41%
Average Paid Search: 2.75%
What Did I Learn: More people trust organic search engine results than paid.
Ranking #1 vs. Ranking #2-10 in Google – Conversion Rates
Average Conversion Rate – Ranking #1: 4.25%
Average Conversion Rate – Ranking #2-#10: 3.17%
Average Conversion Rate – Ranking Page 1 – Page 2: 1.41%
What Did I Learn: More people trust a website that ranks #1 than #2-#10.
Summary: Search Engine Optimization does more than drive traffic to a website. Ranking #1 in Google also increasing your brand, reputation, and ultimately causes more products to be sold from a website.