I couldn’t resist the analogy.

Traffic, analytics, and conversions; the three proverbial wise men of internet marketing are making their presence known in a big way. Learn how to implement them properly, and your website will be ahead of the pack. Neglect one, and you could be wasting your time chasing the other two.

SEO, SEO, SEO! That’s all I’ve been hearing for the last few years. Everyone is starting to “get it”, and everyone is jumping on this SEO bandwagon. I see new search marketing blogs and consulting services popping up by the hundreds, if not thousands, on a monthly basis. Businesses that had no idea what “title tags” and “linkbait” meant just a couple years ago are now throwing those phrases around without problem. Ladies and gentlemen, our first wise man has arrived.

For someone who is in the business of making sites “better”, this is a great thing. I’m finally seeing an aspect of online marketing becoming popular. The general public has seen a proven method that they can use to bring more traffic to their site, which in turn results in more exposure. But, here’s my question to you: “Now that you have all that traffic, what are you gonna do with it?”

Enter the second wise man, website analytics. Up until now, SEO has gotten so much of the attention, that most businesses haven’t even had the chance to look at all of that traffic data to see if and how it’s working. Is all of that traffic that you paid so much for, actually helping your site? It’s a question that’s going to be asked more frequently, as we see our industry grow. I recently read a blog post over at Search Engine Watch about why web analytics is such a neglected practice. I just don’t think that anybody is thinking that far ahead yet, which opens up a big opportunity for all you forward thinkers. Web analytics will tell you if your search marketing efforts are paying off, and where you should allocate more of your budget. It may be complicated, but that’s what outside firms are for. Get some professionals to implement a nice analytics program into your site, and see the payoffs in cash.

Speaking of cash, let’s look at our third wise man; conversion optimization. Another under-utilized and under-appreciated segment of online marketing. Conversion analysis and landing page optimization are essentially a way for you to turn that hard earned traffic directly into money. The higher your conversion rate, the more sign-ups, transactions, or members your site will have. Just by focusing on increasing your conversions by a small percentage, you can increase your profit margin dramatically. Yet, I still see so many companies neglecting or downright refusing to invest in this strategy. It’s a shame, but I’m certain that most will eventually catch on. Just make sure that you’re not part of the “late majority or laggards” to pick this up.

I think that majority adoption of the three wise men are going to come in waves. The first wave we’re beginning to see with SEO, and the others will follow. It’s always good to be ahead of the curve though.

In a future post, I’ll break all three segments down and show you how you can include them in your overall web strategy.