by Kent Davidson

Created on: February 13, 2009   Last Updated: March 02, 2009

Tracking conversions from an organic search ultimately will depend on one factor: some form of web analytics which can track visitors from their original landing to what is considered a conversion.

Understanding the basics of tracking on-line visitors will facilitate further understanding how analytics can then track conversions of your web site visitors.

"Basics of Conversion Tracking"

A LANDING is the first page in which a visitor arrives at a web site. An ORGANIC search is when an individual types a search phrase into their web browser search bar, or into a specific search engine's search page.

Examples of search engines are: Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, FindWhat, Dogpile, and Mamma. The most popular search engine today is Google, which receives approximately 72% of on-line searches, as of January 2009.

After a person enters their search, the results page (called the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP) appears based on a web site's actual relevance to the term entered. The "relevance" is determined based on the search engine's algorithms for determining a page's rank amongst others, a closely guarded trade secret among search engines. The factors that contribute to a site to appearing first or "high" in the search results for a particular term are considered Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is beyond the scope of our discussion.

Upon seeing the target site in the SERP, our visitor clicks on the site link, and arrives at the LANDING page.

The LANDING page is the initial time a user visits a site from an organic search. The page previous to the landing page (the complete URL) is called the "referrer", and every modern web browser supports sending referrer to pages.

It is the referrer which will aid in determining how a visitor arrived at a site, from which search engine, and in most cases, which keyword they used to find the site.

At this point, a "conversion action" is considered an action taken by our visitor (after their initial LANDING) which is considered advantageous for the on-line business. A "conversion action" can be one of many things:

- The visitor signs up for a newsletter
- The visitor signs up for a email / snail-mail catalog
- The visitor downloads an instructive PDF about the product or service, or
- The visitor purchases a product or service from the site

Conversion Actions, of course, can be almost anything such as visiting a particular page on a site, clicking links, or including an "offline" transaction such as calling a sales center and purchasing an item, or faxing in an order to a fulfillment department.

Given the basic understanding of LANDING and CONVERSION ACTIONS, how do we track these from an organic search?

"Tracking conversions"

To track conversions, the analytics package will be implemented to record (for instance) web site sales for a specific site, typically recording the order number and the order amount. Implementation of conversion actions is package specific, but it typically involves embedding cost information in a script or image bug which then sends the order amount to a server.

So, given our REFERRER page, our LANDING page, and the tracked CONVERSION ACTION, the analytics packages can generate a report which shows:

- Each organic keyword
- The sales for each organic keyword (or number of other conversion actions)
- Specific details about individual visits to the site

Most analytics packages offer additional reports to get a much bigger picture of site and visitor activity as well.

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