The document discusses the untapped potential of organic search traffic conversion. It notes that 94% of search engine users click on organic results rather than paid ads. While companies invest in usability and paid campaigns, they often ignore optimizing their organic search traffic. Properly optimizing title tags and description meta tags, which appear in search results, can significantly improve a site's search ranking and traffic from organic searches. An analysis of optimizing these tags for Blackberry pages across different countries found a strong increase in search ranking for the optimized pages compared to non-optimized ones.

1. Visitor
Traffic
Conversion
March,
2014
Online
people
are
already
looking
into
your
shop
window

2. Introduction
Companies
invest
a
fair
amount
of
time
and
money
in
Usability
and
UX
design
for
their
digital
assets.
Companies
that
are
undertaking
paid
campaigns,
such
as
display
or
PPC,
are
either
directly
or
indirectly
involved
(via
their
agency)
in
A/B
split,
or
multivariate
testing.
However,
the
vast
majority
of
these
companies
are
unwittingly
ignoring
their
greatest
natural
source
of
customers,
namely,
organic
search
traffic.
This
paper
looks
at
the
untapped
potential
of
organic
search
conversion.
The
potential
of
Organic
Search
Traffic
According
to
recently
published
data,
based
on
a
sample
of
1.4
billion
searches
conducted
by
28
million
UK
citizens,
search
engine
users
overwhelmingly
click
on
organic
results
on
Google
and
Bing
by
a
margin
of
94
percent
to
6
percent.
Source
GroupM/Nielson
Traffic
Share
Paid
Traffic
6%
Organic
Traffic
94%
These
are
people
who
have
already
taken
the
step
to
try
to
find
a
related
product
or
service.
These
are
people
looking
into
your
shop
window.
Web
Traffic
Conversion
–
Marcos
Richardson

3. What
is
a
Title
Tag?
The
Title
Tag
is
an
individual
component
within
the
HTML
of
a
web
page.
The
Title
element
represents
the
title
of
the
document
and
is
visible
within
the
search
results
prior
to
entering
the
web
page
and
looks
like
this:
…and
is
visible
at
the
very
top
of
the
page
within
your
browser
bar
and
looks
like
this:
The
ranking
value
of
the
Title
Tag
Title
Tags
are
widely
known
to
have
search
engine
ranking
value
and
given
due
consideration
by
Search
experts.
To
substantiate
this,
the
following
is
an
independent
test
I
performed
on
a
past
account,
Blackberry
(RIM),
the
mobile
phone
company.
Web
Traffic
Conversion
–
Marcos
Richardson

4. The
ranking
value
of
the
Title
Tag
Methodology
Five
countries
(Germany,
Italy,
France,
Netherlands
and
Saudi
Arabia)
were
chosen
for
optimisation.
A
further
5
countries
(Canada,
Spain,
Belgium,
Switzerland
and
Algeria)
were
chosen
not
to
be
optimised,
to
act
as
the
‘control’
to
measure
against.
A
competitive
and
targeted
non-­‐Branded
keyword
was
chosen
and
a
product-­‐specific
branded
term
was
chosen
(bear
in
mind
that
Blackberry
suffers
from
its
fair
share
of
negative
publicity
and
sometimes
struggles
to
rank
for
even
its
branded
terms
amongst
the
bloggers,
press
and
competition.)
The
test
ran
for
six
months
and
no
other
element
or
content
was
changed,
either
on
the
optimised
or
non-­‐optimised
country
pages.
DZ
Blackberry
Bold
DZ
‫الشاشات
التي
تعمل
باللمس
الهاتف
الذكي‬
BE
Blackberry
Bold
BE
Slimme
telefoon
touch
screen
CH
Blackberry
Bold
CH
IT
IT
ES
Blackberry
Bold
Smart
phone
touch
screen
FR
Smart
phone
touch
screen
Blackberry
Bold
FR
DE
DE
NL
NL
KSA
KSA
Title
Tag
Optimised
V
Not
Optimised
Smart
téléphone
à
écran
tactile
ES
CA
CA
0
5
Not
Optimised
10
15
20
25
30
35
Optimised
Title
Tag
Optimisation
directly
influences
search
engine
ranking
-­‐
the
above
evidence
strongly
supports
this.
Analysis
shows
that
the
optimised
pages
outrank
the
non-­‐optimised
pages.
Again,
note
that
no
other
changes
were
made
to
the
optimised
pages
other
than
the
Title
Tag.
Web
Traffic
Conversion
–
Marcos
Richardson

5. What
is
a
Description
Tag
The
Description
Tag
is
an
individual
component
within
the
HTML
of
a
web
page
called
a
Meta
element,
the
Description
element
is
used
to
provide
structured
metadata
about
a
Web
page
and
represents
the
description
of
the
document.
It
is
visible
within
the
search
results
(prior
to
entering
the
web
page)
and
looks
like
this:
The
value
of
the
Description
Tag
The
description
tag
is
the
mechanism
for
endorsing
the
web
page
prior
to
entering
the
website.
Whilst
the
Title
tag
is
a
staple
SEO
target
for
optimisation,
the
description
tag
has
not
and
is
not
being
given
the
due
attention
it
deserves.
The
reason
for
this
oversight
is
partially
due
to
the
description
tag
holding
little
ranking
strength
according
to
search
engine
algorithms,
therefore
optimisation
companies
give
it
a
cursory
brush.
SEOs
do
understand
that
this
is
a
major
conversion
element
and
thus
put
more
time
and
effort
into
it.
That
said,
it
is
still
rarely
given
the
time
it
actually
deserves.
In
comparison,
PPC
is
given
a
lot
more
attention:
keywords
are
carefully
selected;
a
landing
page
carefully
created
to
match
the
keyword;
the
advertisement
carefully
crafted
with
a
limited
character
space
to
promote
the
conversion
from
view
to
click;
and
it
doesn’t
stop
there…
the
advertisement
is
then
manually
or
programmatically
tweaked
on
an
ongoing
basis
during
the
campaign
to
increase
click-­‐through
rates.
PPC
Advertisements
continually
go
through
a
multitude
of
enhancements
such
as
content
optimisation
via
multivariate
testing,
targeted
by
Region,
Demographic,
Time
of
day,
Frequency,
Ranking
etc.
Web
Traffic
Conversion
–
Marcos
Richardson

6. Social
Media
Conversion
Titles
and
Descriptions
can
also
be
influenced
in
your
external
‘earned’
digital
media
assets.
For
example,
the
following
sections
within
Social
media
are
used
as
search
descriptions.
In
Facebook,
the
first
85
characters
within
the
About
>
Description
section;
within
YouTube,
the
first
130
characters
within
the
About
section;
within
Twitter,
the
first
125
characters
within
the
About
section.
Example
of
YouTube
effect
of
‘About
section’
to
the
visible
description
within
search
engines…
What
is
Markup
One
further
area
you
have
influence
over
for
search
conversions
is
within
the
markup
element
of
your
website.
Markup
is
a
modern
system
for
annotating
a
webpage
aimed
at
instructing
machines
(bots,
algorithms,
spiders,
crawlers
and
readers)
to
help
better
classify
vocabulary
and
add
meaning
to
content.
Rich
Snippets
are
a
good
example
to
highlight
the
visible
output
A
rich
text
snippet
is
a
segment
of
HTML
code
that
is
placed
on
web
pages
that
‘marks
up’
the
page
and
tells
search
engines
explicit
pieces
of
information
about
that
page.
(AKA
Microdata,
Micro
reformats,
RDFa)
The
value
of
rich
text
snippets
is
that
they
show
up
as
visually
appealing
additions
to
the
Google
search
result
listing,
such
as
pictures,
highlighted
text
and
star
ratings.
The
result
is
a
‘snippet’
of
information…
Web
Traffic
Conversion
–
Marcos
Richardson

7. The
value
of
Reviews
73%
of
consumers
say
positive
customer
reviews
make
them
trust
the
business
more.
Source:
Kenshoo
2014
Research
Consumer
Reviews
Increased
Trust
73%
Takeaways
1
View
the
description
Tag
as
a
conversion
mechanism
and
invest
more
time
into
perfecting
the
promotional
content
of
the
description
tag.
2
Consider
hiring
an
external
consultancy
to
review
descriptions
with
the
same
dedication
as
Usability
and
UX.
3
Review
your
Title
Tags
on
an
ongoing
basis
4
Take
control
of
Search
descriptions
of
your
Social
Assets.
5
Apply
rich
snippets
to
pages
that
would
benefit
from
user
reviews
Web
Traffic
Conversion
–
Marcos
Richardson