As an SEO, determining what constitutes a bottleneck for your client’s website is a high priority. After identifying SEO problems, you can define strategies and tactics to overcome them. These days, we see the most common SEO bottlenecks occur in the accessibility-useful-intuitive portion of a visitor’s conversion path. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this concept was first introduced for website prioritization by Bryan Eisenberg. While Eisenberg mostly sticks with a modified sales funnel metaphor, I think a bottleneck model is currently more relevant, as really any part of the SEO process can have a dramatic effect on ROI.

SEO Conversion Path Bottleneck

One of an SEO’s many jobs is to reduce the number of people who “bounce” from the webpage at a bottleneck, by specifically addressing the five high priority optimization levels seen above.

The 5 Levels of SEO Explained

1. Functional

— The website has a goal or goals which all visitors can complete. (Exists for a purpose and “works” in the most basic sense.)

2. Accessible

— The website can be found by search engines and other entry points. (Has “SEO 1.0″ in place, i.e. title and meta description tags, as well as “alt” attributes for images)

3. Useful

— The website fulfills its intended purpose and is easy to use and navigate. (Relevant, info rich, “gets the job done”)

4. Intuitive

— Visitor personae goal paths are established and easy to achieve. (Aesthetically pleasing, attention-drawing, multiple navigation scenarios, “happens by itself”)

5. Persuasive

— The website converts visitors to sales or leads with good content, products, and copy, images, and videos. (Call to action.)

I find these levels helpful when thinking about how to prioritize a website’s opportunities, as it provides convenient categories into which you can sort your many options.

Turning Your Conversion Trickle Into a Flood

Conversion Path without SEO Bottlenecks

After you determine where the bottlenecks for a website are, attack them! It doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get a flood of conversions, but the odds are much higher. Additionally, by dealing with the first 3 levels (functional, accessible, useful), your site’s “rating” for the intuitive and persuasive levels will naturally rise. With the right content and the right product, there’s nothing to stop conversions pouring in.

Occasionally I hear someone talk about copying relevant content from other sites to bulk up their website. While it’s great to add syndicated feeds of new article excerpts, photos, or tweets from others online, when you do so you typically link back to their website. Simply copying someone else’s writing is not only unethical — it will not give you an SEO boost, and may in fact hamper your long term efforts.

Unscheduled Creighton Interruption!

Unoriginal content on your website will actually negatively affect your search engine rankings, unless you use the “rel=nofollow” modifier when linking to these pages (in which case it won’t hurt you, but won’t help you expand your site’s reach). The “nofollow” tells Google “hey, we know this page isn’t original. But, we think our visitors will find it useful. Don’t penalize us for copying content and don’t add this page to your index, please.”

As though Google trolls through and simply counts the number of pages you have, cataloging them mindlessly to show to anyone who might possibly want to find a BIG site. It might work for about a minute, but Google has a brain or two on the case for just this purpose. They quickly push the earliest-published version to the top of their rankings.

NOTE: If you have hired help to build content, be sure it is completely original. A good writer will charge around $30 for a quality, unique 750-word article. Always check your content against what is already available online.

To check your content, go to www.copyscape.com. Make sure that your content is relevant to your field, and that it matches your site theme. The search engines know when you are using copied content, and they can tell where it came from and when!

The best way to increase your content with useful information is to hire freelance writers who are knowledgeable in your online market, and find a great editor to help your articles and copy stand out from the crowd. Only a library of original content and webpages (published and found FIRST on your website) will bring you a boost for SEO.

Happy SEOing!
Tanya