SMX Advanced is underway here in Seattle and the updates via Twitter are sending a flurry of helpful tips and information on topics from personalized search to examples of landing pages built for conversion with a clear call to action.
Personalized Search
The social search experience brings author profiles into Google’s search results, the outcome is higher click through rates and domain authority.
Webmasters can brand search results with author profiles using the rel=author tag. The profile picture validates a search result by showing the author’s identity which leads to greater confidence the page will contain quality information.
Here’s a presentation by Rhea Drysdale of Outspoken Media – Surviving Personalization with Bing and Google – SMX Advanced 2012.
Landing Page Conversion
Next is Jason Nazar, CEO of DocStoc, who shares some great examples of how to build exceptional landing pages that will convert.
Landing pages have one purpose, to get the user to do one specific thing, whether it’s submit a form, subscribe to a newsletter, buy a product, etc.
The call to action is what the landing page is directing all of it’s efforts into getting the visitor to click, or enter info, etc. So, a call to action may be a button or a form, which is then tracked by the number of times a visitor clicks or submits.
The percentage of people who do what the page wants them to do is the conversion rate. In the presentation linked below, you’ll see some examples of sites that have well designed landing pages with likely a high conversion rate.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/119424116/Landing-Page-Conversion-6-Golden-Rules
SMX Seattle Updates
If you’re interested in following the SMX updates, here is a link that takes you to Twitter with the #SMX hashtag. You’ll find lots of great info being shared from the event, and possibly some things you hadn’t thought of yet in regards to your own search marketing strategies.