I had another good ask Kirsty question from Karl the other day. Basically, he’s spent a bit of time putting together a decent content site. Although it gets a reasonable stream of traffic, nobody’s buying and he wants to know what the problem might be! Karl very kindly let me see his site statistics, so I’ll be referring to those as I go without giving too much away.
Hey Kirsty,
I’m wondering if I could have some advice, I started a mp3 player comparison website about a month or 2 ago now and I seem to be getting hits (around 40 visitors per day) and people are actually clicking my affiliate links but never seem to be buying anything. I have no idea why L, my site is http://www.top10mp3players.org.uk Can you see anything that is wrong with it? Or is there something is that so obvious that I’m just missing it?
Kind Regards
Karl.
Hey Karl,
Well, you’ve clearly gone to a fair amount of trouble to create your MP3 player site and have put in a fair bit of time with your content. This has been rewarded with a reasonable bit of traffic. However, I can immediately see some issues with your site. I’ll try to break down the reasons into logical action areas.
The Subject Matter is Very Broad
Although you have gone for a niche, you have picked a very broad one. You have also tried to cover that niche with a two page offering. One for the MP3 players and one for discount codes and offers. As a consequence the traffic you are getting to the site is quite general in nature. In my own affiliate endeavours what I am aiming to do is get hold of a customer and get a cookie onto their machine when they’re about to buy something. This gives me the best chance of getting the eventual commission and not having my cookie overwritten by another affiliate.
When people buy online, they participate in a research cycle. In the case of this type of product they’ll begin with general terms such as “best mp3 players”, “yellow mp3 players” “cheap mp3 players” etc. Then as their research progresses and they have decided what they want, they’ll be searcing for things like “blue ipod nano 8gb” and visiting online stores to look for competitive prices. If you try to target and capture traffic like this at the end of the buying cycle, you will see your conversion rates increase.
I think the reason you’re not getting sales is down to you having buyers coming onto your site at the start of their purchasing process. They are still thinking about what they want to get!
Points of Action
- Have a sit down and put yourself in the position of the buyer. Brainstorm some keywords. Think about how you’d behave online when you’re ready to make that purchase. What type of search terms would you be Googling upon to find the MP3 player for you? I’d suggest creating a list of search terms around each of the ten products you are featuring, checking which have good search volumes, then creating a highly targeted page for each of them with oodles of keyword-rich content. This type of landing page will be far more effective than the “catch all” solution you are currently using. I can see you have tried to create some nice terms with your “white MP3 player” targeting, but I think that is still quite broad. Don’t get me wrong it is worth doing, but I think if you combine it with some more targeted search terms things could improve for you.
- The other thing you can do is create good resources around really targeted search strings. A lot of traffic you get was about MP3 players that are suitable for a certain purpose. Build a page that explores the key features that would appeal to those searchers. You could even take it a step further and do some term research around very targeted search terms like “mp3 player 8GB with large screen” etc.
Your Site Navigation is Quite Confusing
Although your content is quite good, I found your site navigation quite confusing. Your use of named anchors had me shooting all over the place when I really wanted to find out more features of the MP3 players you were featuring.
I’d say that this is reducing the number of people who are actually ending up clicking through to a merchant page. A bit of a shame when you go to all that trouble to get them to the site in the first place.
Points Of Action
- Get rid of those named anchors!
- Create a more “traditional” site navigation that is clearly accessible and visible.
- When you create additional pages, make sure people can get back to the home page easily from any page of the site.
- Make sure you have decent calls to action on your page. Big, bold links or buttons with statements like “Get latest prices” or “Shop Now” in prominent positions will improve the amount of traffic you get through to the merchant. If you need any inspiration, just take a trawl through the search results and see what other sites are doing to get traffic flowing to key sales areas of their sites.
- If you decide to add more pages, make sure the home page gives an idea of the content of each of them. Use your space to convince people its worth digging more deeply into your site.
I Think Your Optimisation May Be A Little Heavy
Speaking from painful personal experience , I think your pages are a little over optimised at the moment. You have loads of link text etc with keyword repetitions that look forced. Now, often when I say this people respond with “But I can see site X, Y, or Z doing it”. My response is “Well, they might be getting away with it, but that might not stop Google slapping a massive penalty on you”. I have a site I well-meaning over-optimised that was slapped in July. It only started to recover from the Google penalty 3 days ago. You have been warned!
Points Of Action
- Review your copy. Read it out loud. If it sounds repetitive consider cutting down on the mentions of your key search terms!
I reckon that’s probably enough to be getting along with. You’re on the right track with this project, I just think it needs a wee tweak here and there, and you’ll be set.
Good Luck 
December 11th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Great advice Kirsty. I’m just wondering how far down the buying process you are thinking with regards your PPC setup? What I mean is, do you have hundreds of Ad Groups and ad variations in order to catch fairly specific long tail phrases and send them to highly targeted landing pages as described in your advice above?
December 11th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Hi Neil, My PPC setup is generally very similar, yes. I send highly targeted traffic to very specific pages. I have very, very few offerings targeting more general search terms. Some affiliates do well at this, but I prefer to do largely what is described above.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Hey Kirsty, Thanks alot for the advice :D, Was great thanks for putting the time in to write it :), once again thanks alot. Have taken everything onboard what you put.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Hi Kirsty,
I think a lot of your advice may apply to one of my aff sites too (http://www.ipcompare.com - Not trying to get a free link so if it is inappropriate to post it, do delete!)
I am having a similar problem as Karl, in that even when I send 40-60 visitors to my site with PPC, my conversions are extremely sporadic. One offer converted 1:4 on the first 24 hours I posted it, but for a week after, I got nothing, which is very frustrating. I may not have put enough content into the site yet, however I do have landing pages that are fairly specific for each provider, and I try to use plenty of calls to action, etc.
In general, I know from research and experience that relevancy rules in aff marketing, so the more specific and long-tail one can be, the more likely they will succeed in driving conversions…Yet I still am not getting the results I am looking for! Maybe I am still just not being relevant enough…
I am guessing your idea of a fun pastime would not be tutoring us lesser mortals in how to finally make some decent money at this, but if you feel so inspired to post or shoot me any pointers or suggestions, I would be grateful…You have a great blog here, and thank you!