February 2019

One of the things the most successful entrepreneurs on the web have mastered is funnel optimization. This refers to the process of obtaining prospects (visitors to a website) and funneling them down to those willing and ready to make a purchase.

It’s called a funnel because it works pretty much the same way as a real funnel. You put a whole lot of stuff in the top, and it comes out in a concentrated stream at the bottom. In this case, though, you’re putting a whole lot of people in your sales funnel and getting cash out of the bottom. If only there were magical funnels that worked this way in real life!

Choosing Keywords That Optimize the Funnel

When you first develop your web property you will have some idea of what key phrases will bring in decent traffic. You might not fully understand which will result in the best profits at this point. You will use your web analytics tools to review the journey of each visitor from the time they perform a search until they actually buy clickfunnels pricing discount.

Your analytics software will show you two things:

The series of clicks a typical buyer goes through before purchasing your product
The search terms that actually result in a sale

With this information you can find inspiration for your next set of content. If you have found that one search term consistently converts better than another you want to aim for similar keywords the next time.

What if I’m Not Selling a Product?

This technique applies to any action you want a visitor to complete. It doesn’t matter if you want them to sign up for a mailing list, submit contact information, click an affiliate link, sign up for your service, or purchase a physical product. Your goal is to identify the steps taken by a visitor that purchases and figure out what makes them different from the rest.

The reason you should optimize this step of your funnel is simple. The majority of visitors with online commercial intent start their search with the search engines. That should be no big surprise. Since the majority of your potential customers will be coming to you from the search engines you need to do everything you can to eliminate bad search phrases and improve the best.

With your analytics software you can also see if you have content that is ranking for terms that result in no sales. Don’t hesitate to eliminate this content completely from your website. If it is bringing visitors and costing bandwidth it’s also costing you money. If you aren’t getting any return on investment (or at least breaking even) it is good business sense to eliminate it completely. This seems like a strange recommendation to many newbies, but the experts fully understand it.

Hidden Gems

As you look through the data generated by your analytics software you might find some strange search phrases. Consider each one very carefully. Is there any online commercial intent? If so, you may want to consider building content focusing on that phrase. There are plenty of valuable phrases with search volumes so low that traffic estimating tools don’t even register them.

For instance, one website owned by the author provides leads to car dealerships in Pennsylvania. The traffic estimators only register search terms for the nearest major city. Key phrases mentioning surrounding suburbs and towns have a search volume that is too low to register. With just five additional pieces of content, though, the site was able to double the number of visitors. The additional content focused on key phrases identified by the analytics software that didn’t register on the traffic estimating software.

Think Outside the Box

You really need to dig through all of the data you can obtain on your site. Spend plenty of time researching your own data. Don’t overlook any opportunities, no matter how small. If you put in the effort at this part of your business development you can find ways to make money online that others are overlooking. That’s the big secret that none of the guru’s really mention. It’s just not sexy and they can’t make money telling you to do boring things. But if you can find the discipline to optimize your funnel with good key word research it’s going to pay off in multiples.