How to boost Conversions for Your top Performing Keywords

This post will sketch a six-step procedure to help you figure out which keywords are driving conversions, and actionable steps to develop the performance of your best and worst performing terms, so you can create even more conversions.

Step 1: Find Keywords that Convert

This tread assumes you have Google Analytics installed on your site and you have goal tracking set up.

There are a few ways to expose keywords that convert on your site. You can either make a custom report to isolate unique visits and goal completions by keyword. Or you can yourself drill down into your traffic sources and isolate goals as they correspond to keywords.

Step 2: Find equivalent URLs

You also want to determine which pages on your site are powerful these keyword conversions. So the next step is to click on "secondary dimension," and select Traffic Sources>Landing Page from the drop down menu.

Step 3: Find Out Where Those Keywords Rank

Now that you have your list of the top converting keywords for your site, you want to determine where they rank.

Again, the aim here is to get these keywords to work even harder for you, which means getting those terms to rank higher improve their visibility. So you need to determine current SERP position.

As for rank tracking, my preferred tools are:

• Link Assistant

• Microsite Masters

Step 4: Create Your Keyword Conversion Report

Once you have keyword rankings, you can explode that info to your spreadsheet along with your list of keywords, corresponding URLs, and conversion rates. Keep visits in the mix as well, since it's another helpful data point, and keyword demand can help you prioritize.

What we naturally find during this process are keywords that exchange, but aren't ranking as high as they could be. This presents some really great opportunities because if you can develop SERP visibility for some or all of your top converting keywords, you can exponentially grow conversions.

You can prioritize your hard work in a number of ways as well and determine whether to focus on:

• The highest ranking terms.

• The highest converting terms.

• The highest traffic terms.

Step 5: Focus on Improving Rankings for Those Keywords

Next steps are to improve the rankings for your top converting keywords. This means working on both on-site and off-site SEO tactics, which include:

• On-page SEO: 

• Beefing up content

• Internal linking

• Inbound linking 

• Social signals

Step 6: Iterate Across Your Site

OK, so you've unearthed your top converting keywords. You've mapped those keywords to corresponding URLs. You know where they rank. And you're working to develop those rankings to grow conversions  even more.

The next step, it's time to influence that proprietary intelligence that you acquired during this process and apply it to keywords that are underperforming on your site.