home based business beginners

I see many questions about opt-in page conversion rates – such as what is a good number? And how do I get a high conversion rate?

It’s very easy to get a very high conversion rate…but there must be some qualifying done first.

Well, I have seen stories of people saying how they got something like a 52% opt-in rate. Other people read that who are getting only around a 10% opt-in rate and become frustrated and can’t figure out what they are doing wrong.

Well, let me just say that, you haven’t been told the whole story. The 52% opt-in rate comes from pre-sold traffic.

I was reading over a blog post from a year ago about a marketer who was getting a 52% opt-in rate from his opt-in page, and that was after improvements were made to the page to raise conversion.

NOTE: By the way, am I the only person who hates the term “Squeeze” Page? The image that you are squeezing the information out of your page visitor starts a relationship off on a bad note, no? Like an interrogation room where lawyers or police officers try to squeeze information from a suspect…anyway…

What is not stated is that 52% conversion came from pre-sold traffic. Meaning the link to the opt in page came from the marketers own list or recommendations from other marketers lists. (JV partners)

I hope you don’t think there was a bunch of time spent on free seo to get the opt-in page to rank high in the search engines or that numerous ppc campaigns were set up.

The opt-in page goes up, pre-sold traffic is sent there in the form of mailing list announcements and blog post links – boom…instant pre-sold traffic and a 52% conversion rate.

Let me give you some of my own numbers from pre-sold and cold traffic.

One opt-in page I used, when I was doing a small launch of a niche product, had over 4100 unique visitors and converted at 65.7% – (see, I did better than a big guru )

Another opt-in page I used for the same launch had 3000 unique visitors and converted at 78.4 – (wow, even better)

But, this was pre-sold traffic so if I made a bold claim of:

“Follow my opt-in page template and get a 65% opt-in page conversion rate and even as high as 78.4%”

…that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Sounds good, but not accurate.

I used the same opt-in page that converted at 65.7% on cold traffic. And the results…it is converting at 19%.

The type of traffic plays a huge role in the conversion rate of any type of page.

In the original blog post I mentioned above, in answer to a comment, it was stated that with good copy the conversion rate on cold traffic can get up to 25%.

So everything has to be qualified when you hear something like, “my opt in page is converting at 20%”

Also, is the cold traffic, traffic you control (ppc, banner ads, etc) or traffic you don’t control? (organic search results). All of this has to be taken into account.

So, do not get discouraged when your opt-in pages are converting at 12.3% and you read how some guru is converting at 52%

If you only send pre-sold traffic to an opt-in page you will have a high conversion rate.

If you send cold traffic to an opt-in page, you have to change your definition of high.

It is said that google loves blogs and ranks the posts of blogs very high and quick.

I was reading an article where Ken Evoy presented the opposite opinion. To paraphrase him, he said that when you look at search results, you hardly ever see blog posts among the results. You see a static “evergreen” websites.

This was someone saying the exact opposite of what is quoted online over and over again about one of the biggest benefits of using blog software like wordpress, and that is that “Google loves blogs and wordpress”

I tested it for myself to see if the search results were blogs or non blogs and here are the results.

First – I started out testing searches for the Internet Marketing “market” since that is the target audience of this blog.

I started with a basic search – how to sell online.

Test Results:

** I made some comments next to the results detailing some interesting stuff like if the site was a very high traffic site, what program it was made with, etc.

1) How to sell online:
Google keyword tool : 22,200 global searches

Search result page 1:

1 – non blog
2 – non blog (yahoo store page)
3 – Blog (”6 ways to sell your stuff online” alexa rank of 2154)
4 – non blog – sell.com classified site
5 – non blog (looked like a blog but was made with mozilla)
6 – Blog
7 – non blog
8 – non blog – ebay
9 – non blog
10 – non blog (about.com)

2 videos at the bottom of the page

** I usually don’t go past page 1 in search engine results, but some people do, so I did page 2 as well for my results.

search result page 2

11 – non blog
12 – non blog (craigs list)
13 – non blog
14 – non blog (dreamweaver)
15 – non blog (front page 6.0)
16 – blog
17 – non blog (about.com)
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – blog

Result: 80% non blogs, 20% blogs

Test 2

I wanted to test a search term that was more popular than 22,200 global searches.

marketing tips:
Google keyword tool: 74,000 global searches

1 – non blog
2 – non blog
3 – non blog (front page 4.0)
4 – blog
5 – non blog
6 – non blog
7 – non blog
8 – non blog (adobe pagemill 3.0)
9 – non blog (but probably cms)
10 – non blog (about.com)

separate section at the bottom with blog posts about marketing tips

2 videos after that on the bottom

—-

Search Results Page 2

11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – blog (alexa rank 398)
14 – non blog
15 – non blog
16 – blog ( alexa rank119,830)
17 – non blog
18 – blog (alexa rank 9,609)
19 – blog (bit set up like a regular site)
20 – non blog

Result: 75% non blogs, 25% blogs

Test 3

I thought maybe those searches were too general and I needed a more focused search to test so I came up with this next.

how to start a web based business:
Google Keyword tool: 1,600

1 – non blog
2 – non blog (but probably cms)
3 – non blog
4 – blog
5 – non blog
6 – non blog
7 – non blog
8 – non blog
9 – non blog
10 – non blog

——

Search results page 2:
11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – non blog
14 – non blog
15 – non blog
16 – non blog
17 – non blog
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – blog (time.com)

Result: 90% non blogs, 10% blogs – and the results are probably worse than this because time.com (#20) is not a “personal” blog but a large entity.

I then got even more focused with my search…

Test 4

how to overcome writers block:
Google keyword tool: 140 global searches

1 – non blog
2 – blog
3 – non blog
4 – non blog (about.com)
5 – non blog
6 – non blog (cms)
7 – blog
8 – non blog
9 – blog
10 – non blog (about.com)

—–
Search results page 2

11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – non blog (about.com)
14 – non blog
15 – non blog (blog like)
16 – blog
17 – blog
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – non blog (cms)

Result: 75% non blogs, 25% blogs
* blog like means it had the layout common to a blog, but was not a blog

There was a definite pattern. I decided to make a test away from the “internet marketing” crowd – so I tested Charlie Chaplin

Test 5

charlie chaplin
Google keyword tool: 673,000 global searches

Search results page 1

news: 3 news sites with time related info about chaplin

1 – non blog
2 – non blog
3 – non blog
4 – 8 images
5 – 2 videos
6 – blog (pbs.org)
7 – non blog
8 – non blog
9 – non blog (blog like – news a repeat of one of the news site links at the top)
10 – non blog

——–

11 – non blog
12 – non blog
13 – non blog
14 – non blog
15 – non blog
16 – non blog
17 – non blog
18 – non blog
19 – non blog
20 – non blog

Result: 95% non blogs, 5% blogs

Next, I went to a popular blog, chose a post to “find” and searched for a particular post on google using the title of the blog post.

I went to problogger.net knowing it is a very popular blog and when I was looking for a post to “find” on google I realized something. Most posts are about blogging.

I figured I would come back to investigate that tidbit more later on…

So, next I went to copyblogger (a blog I enjoy) to search for an article to “find” and there were also many posts about – blogging, as well as tips for social media like twitter.

So I picked one that would not have social media or blogging involved in the post as that seemed like it be a fairer test.

Test 6

The article I wanted to “find” was titled – how to write an article in 20 minutes

Here are the results

Search results page 1

1 – blog (copyblogger)
2 – blog (copyblogger)
3 – non blog
4 – non blog
5 – blog like (squidoo)
6 – blog like (associated content)
7 – non blog (blog like)
8 – non blog (social media site)
9 – blog like (hubpages)
10 – blog

—-
Search results page 2

11 – video
12 – blog
13 – blog
14 – non blog
15 – blog
16 – non blog
17 – non blog (amazon)
18 – non blog (warrior forum)
19 – non blog (blog like)
20 – blog

Result: 50% non blogs, 50% blogs – This is being generous and counting web 2.0 sites like squidoo and hubpages as “blogs”

I repeated this test going back to problogger.net and using a post about blogging. I expected to find just about all blogs in the search results as it was a blog post about improving a blog.

Test 7

7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog

Search results page 1
1 – blog (problogger.net)
2 – blog (problogger.net)
3 – non blog (social media site)
4 – blog (not a good search)
5 – non blog (social media site)
6 – non blog (trackback)
7 – blog (link to the original article)
8 – blog
9 – blog (non targeted)
10 – blog (non targeted)

Result: 30% non blogs, 70% blogs – Although a good number of the “blog” results were very untargeted and about 7 “Other Things” besides the 7 things I was searching for.

Overall Results:

These search terms were chosen in order. I did not try to pick results that skewed the results one way or the other.

The results show that Google favors non blog websites over blogs for it’s search results. The market didn’t matter. Even a more detailed search term with less competition didn’t seem to matter much.

Yes, the more general term, with the largest number of searches produced the least number of blogs in the search results.

The searches that produced the greatest number of blogs in the search results was clearly blog posts that either are about blogging. Also, the searches that I used to find the search results with the greatest number of blogs in the results are not well searched terms at all.

The conclusion has to be reached that Google favors static websites over blogs for it’s search results.

Therefore using blogging software like wordpress to gain a benefit of ranking high in the search engine may just be a myth, unless you are writing about blogging itself.

This is not to say that there aren’t other benefits to using software such as wordpress ( ease of use, a good way to manage content, can start a site quickly, etc ) – but search engine optimization is not one of these benefits.