by Mohsin Khawaja

Created on: March 05, 2009   Last Updated: April 09, 2009

Tracking conversion is among the key steps of any SEO strategy and probably the most desired one. However for every SEO analyst there is always a challenge when it comes to tracking, and the tools and methodologies applied are of key importance. There are many professional tools available in market which allow you to set goals and track the visitor conversion ratio, I will limit myself to Google Analytics however for two reasons. First, it is a professional tool and second it is free, so everyone will be able to implement the methods discussed here.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

>
Visitors coming from organic search results can have various needs and expectations towards your landing page, depending upon the title and description they see in SERPs. Every person using search engines is not willing to purchase something every time and similarly every site is not an e-commerce site. So before tracking organic conversions it is very important to define it. Although the basic definition of conversion is easy to follow but to set conversion goals vary from site to site and it depends on your project plan and website scope.
Sales are not always the only conversion factor to consider, there's a consensus that email ,rss, newsletter etc., subscriptions are also the conversion goals. In addition to this you may consider the contact us page or discount offer page or guarantee page as your conversion goal too, for the visitor coming to your landing pages. It is important to understand that a typical sales cycle has some stages, which are always undertaken by every visitor before it completely converts in to a customer or loyal visitor.
Whatever approach you take it is important to first clearly write down the conversion or goal pages of your site. Whenever a visitor is stimulated to subscribe to your rss/email, or write to you through your contact page, I think you have achieved one of the basic goals of e-presence i.e. visitor loyalty. And for most people visitor loyalty or returning visitors are much more important than one time sales.
Conversion goals once defined, tracking them is a relatively easy part. For your RSS and Email subscribers the number of new visitors coming from organic search and subscribing to your RSS or Email is very easy to note. You should prepare a daily, weekly or monthly report of the number of new subscribers, depending upon the amount of traffic you get. And as a second step use analytics program to monitor your traffic, if you see an increasing trend in traffic from referring sources such as RSS and Email, then both of these channels are pretty much working for you.
In Google Analytics it is easy to set goals. Once goals are defined, then keep on monitor the top entry and exit pages. For an ideal situation, your top entry pages should be the landing pages optimized with keywords found by users in organic search and the top exit pages should be the goals pages i.e. once you get organic traffic the visitor must be convinced and motivated with landing page optimization to reach the goal page. The top entry and exit pages are a good way to measure your organic conversions.

Learn more about this author, Mohsin Khawaja.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.