One of our latest HookTour deployments is for the search engine marketing experts at SEO.com. These fine folks are pros at getting companies to the top of search engines and driving traffic to websites. Of course, converting more of that traffic never hurts either! SEO.com’s HookTour was designed to help with just that by highlighting the strategic advantages that SEO.com has over many of its competitors. Want to know more? Click the link below to see it in action.

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200 million households in the U.S. have Internet access. Every day, there are 400 million online searches. The competition to reach those customers gets tougher every second. The question for marketers is: How will you reach those people?

To capture that traffic and make money online, you have to rank high in the search engines. If you fail to get high rankings, those customers will find your competition and spend money with them instead.

To rank high in the search engines takes knowledge, expertise, skill and a dogged determination.

Introducing SEO.com, a search marketing firm with a proven track record for getting companies to the top of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Plus, SEO.com consistently gets top rankings for its own, extremely competitive keywords.

Utilized by some of the best brands on the planet, SEO.com is recognized as one of the top search engine optimization companies in the world by PromotionWorld and TOPSEOs.

SEO.com gets top rankings for brands you already know – for some of the most competitive keywords in the world. We do it for them, we do it for us, and we can do it for you.

Our latest HookTour is up for a product called SiteAudit-the leading web analytics auditing solution. You can watch the tour by clicking the image above or by visiting www.observepoint.com.

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As a web analyst, you know there’s nothing worse than having missing or incomplete website data. You need to trust the analytics data you collect so you can make strategic recommendations to executives and other key decision makers with confidence.

Thanks to ObservePoint’s SiteAudit, you can. Websites are tracked through invisible pixels on every page. These pixels send visitor data to your analytics solution, where reports are created and critical data is stored.

SiteAudit is the leading web analytics auditing solution. It automatically crawls your website and validates the analytics pixels on each page — even in the secure areas of your site. Then it gives you a detailed, filterable report so you know which pages are sending critical data about your website–and which pages aren’t.  SiteAudit  stores your past audits, making it the perfect tool for ongoing website governance. And any SiteAudit data can be exported to Excel.

With SiteAudit, you can always trust the data. Fill out the form below for a free 15-day trial and see for yourself how it works.

SiteAudit’s sophisticated server infrastructure is distributed across seven datacenters around the globe so you can audit millions of pages across unlimited domains without burdening your own resources. It’s the perfect solution for organizations that rely on analytics to optimize their business.

Be confident in your web analytics data. Fill out the form below and try SiteAudit free for 15 days. There’s no cost or obligation.  You’ll also unlock our library of case studies and a third-party review of SiteAudit for free. Start your free trial now and start trusting your analytics data.

Whenever I talk about good website design, I inevitably bring up sites like Craigslist and the Drudge Report. This is generally followed with gasps, a roll of the eyes, and complaints that the designs of those sites haven’t been updated in years. How can I use them as a good example of design?

Despite their “outdated” looks, both websites are one of the most popular online destinations in the world. The reason? Both websites make information easy to find. Enticed by well-written headlines, visitors are only a click away from reading a news story at the Drudge Report. With Craigslist, visitors are just a click or two away from finding and apartment to rent, a job, or selling something for free.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggested you mimic the look and feel of those sites. For the services those websites offer, the look and feel works for them. Your website design needs to speak to your target audience too. What I am suggesting is that you go over your website and see how easy it is for visitors find information about your products or services, enter your sales pipeline, and contact your company. Can they find what their looking for in one or two clicks or is it a hassle for them to find what they’re looking for?

The easier it is for people to find what they’re looking for, the higher your conversion rates will be.

When someone types in a product or service you offer in to a search engine, you want to appear the #1 position-or at the very least the first page. In a way, having high search engine placement is like a receiving a free but qualified endorsement. If Google or Yahoo! ranks your webpage high, people tend to assume it’s because it’s what they’re really looking for. That’s why companies spend thousands of dollars optimizing their websites, creating back links, and writing SEO friendly copy in hopes of capturing and retaining a high search engine ranking.

The problem is that sometimes companies become too focused on their SEO efforts and not their online conversion efforts.

The result? Decreased conversion rates.

When optimizing your site for search engines meta tags and backlinks that help improve your SEO rankings and website description. Because they’re invisible to your visitor (unless they search for them), they don’t affect website conversion rates. However, SEO wrong copy can dramatically decrease conversion rates if not done right.

Marketing and copywriters often make the mistake of writing content for search engines instead of people. When writing copy for your website it’s important to remember that search engines don’t read websites. People do. You can write all the great SEO copy in the world, but in the end if the copy isn’t selling your product or service, your high search engine ranking is worthless.

The solution is to write great copy that sells. Yes, it needs contains the key SEO phrases but it must also be very conversion centric. If visitors can’t understand your company, what it offers, and see a call to action in about 15 seconds, they’ll leave. And odds are they won’t be back.

When focusing on SEO and SEM strategies, don’t let your efforts get in the way of converting visitors in to sales and leads. Without customers, your business won’t last long-not matter how high it’s ranked in Google.

For marketers, sales people and, web analytics pros in the Provo/Orem area, we invite you to become part of Web Analytics Wednesday.

Sponsored by ObservePoint, this is a great way to share ideas and strategies for measurement in 2010. We’ll also be showing off ObservePoint’s HookTour.

You can register or learn more about Web Analytics Wednesday here.

At Sapha, we work hard to increase your website’s conversion rates. So when it comes to evaluating ad campaigns, our main (but not sole) criteria is how well they get people talking about a product or service, deliver a clear call to actions, and turn eyeballs into customers.

And since the Super Bowl is the time most companies launch expensive advertising campaigns, there’s no better time to see how well their ads were focused on increasing the number of leads or customers in their sales pipeline.

This year’s winners.

Denny’s–The FREE Grand Slam is back-as long as the chickens produce the eggs. If Denny’s is packed on Tuesday their ad and promotion qualify as a smashing success. Let’s just hope all Denny’s franchises agree to uphold their end of the agreement this time. (Watch the ad here.)

Dockers–Can’t say it was fun to watch a group of guys walk around without pants, but they did encourage viewers to go win a free pair of Dockers on their website. Let’s see how many people give up their name and email address to become part of Dockers’ marketing machine for a chance to win free pants. (Watch the ad here.)

Tim Tebow/Focus on the Family–The controversial anti-abortion ad turned out to be nothing of the sort. In the end Tebow’s family and Focus on the Family got weeks of free press and millions in free advertising leading up to the game. And for those who want to know more, there was a clear call to action at the end. (Watch the ad here.)

Honorable Mention

Brett Farve/Hyundai–Using Farve was good as it fit in nicely with the Super Bowl audeince and made fun of something they’d understand. Also a nice way to tie in their 10-year warranty. The problem? No clear call to action where they could learn more. (Watch the ad here.)

Maybe the New York Times should rethink its strategy to charge readers for access to its website starting in 2011.

Newsday, put up a pay wall on its website back in October.

The result?

Only 35 subscribers have paid $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to its website newsday.com.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but in order to charge people for access, you have to  have  exclusive content that people find valuable enough to pay for.

That means editors and publishers need to do their homework and find out what parts of your site (if any) visitors are willing to pay for.

If they’re not willing to pay for it then you need to 1) get as many eyeballs to their site as possible (this means having good content) 2) sell online ads, and 3) make sure those ads are placed right creative enough that people will notice them and 4) use online conversion tools to convert as many of those visitors into leads for your customers.

If you can supply advertisers with a steady stream of leads and customers to their website, you can become very profitable.

Once newspapers figure this out, they’ll stop hemorrhaging red ink.

Are Super Bowl ads worth the price? After two decades of advertising during the big game, Pepsi no longer things so.

Pepsi, which has spent an estimated $254.2 million in Super Bowl ads over the past 20 years, startled the industry a few weeks ago by announcing the cola for the next generation won’t participate in America’s national football marketing extravaganza. Instead, the soft drink company will pour millions of dollars into an online project meant to build connections over time by reaching consumers through blogging, Facebook and Twitter. It plans to distribute more than $20 million in community grants, voted on by Web users.

Pepsi’s doing the right thing. 

While Super Bowl ads can be a great way to launch a new product, service, or get your company’s name out there, they’re also very risky. Unless you have the commercial that everyone’s talking about after the game and can clearly explain your product combined with a great call to action in 30 seconds or less, there’s no guarantee you’ll see a positive ROI from your ad spend. Conversions, after all, are the name of the game.

Pepsi already has name and product recognition-something Super Bowl ads can help promote. What they need is more people drinking their products and telling their friends and neighbors how good those products are.

By funneling their money into online marketing efforts, not only will Pepsi be able to connect with its customers and better determine the ROI from their ad spend.

It remains to be seen how successful Pepsi finds its online marketing efforts. But given how online adverting is becoming more targeted and companies are finding ways to funnel people into their sales pipeline, Pepsi made the right decision.

There’s a great article in the January 18 issue of The New Yorker on how entrepreneurs like Ted Turner, John Paulson, and others made their fortunes. Instead of being the risk takers, successful entrepreneurs are risk adverse. Instead of throwing stuff to the wall to see what sticks, they see a problem, do their homework, solve the problem, and make a boatload of money in the process. (Note: A free, online version of the article is unavailable. You can read a summary of it here.)

Paulson, for example, made a fortune in the housing bubble collapse by buying credit-default swaps. But he didn’t just run out there and blindly buy credit-default swaps. Instead, he had someone do research that showed that a bubble was about to burst and made his investments accordingly. The result? His company made $15 billion in profits.

So what does this have to do with filling your sales pipeline with high quality leads?

To get the most from your marketing efforts, you need the right information about your visitors and an easy way on your website for them to enter your sales pipeline. The more you know about their behavior and the more ways you have of turning them into leads, you can better target your online marketing efforts.

Instead of wasting your marketing dollars throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, learn everything you can about your current marketing efforts and what kind of people their bringing to your website. A good conversion analytics program can give you this insight.

You may not earn $15 billion in profits, but you will see more results from your marketing efforts and a fatter bottom line.

In the latest issue of Website magazine, Peter Prestipino has a great article on the role of analytics and increasing your bottom line-something Sapha’s preached for years. Prestipino writes:

It might be the least sex of all Web Responsibilities, but analysis is arguable the most important to an online business’ success. Unfortunately, it is an area where most enterprises fail to focus their attention.

Let’s face it. If you can’t measure it, you have no way to improve what you’re doing or see if your wasting your time and money. There’s a reason Sapha packages our site-wide Fusion analytics with each HookTour we sell. Yes, we want to show you how they turn visitor into leads at an average rate of 15%, but we also want you to learn more about visitors’ behavior on your entire website. We want your sales team to have the prospect’s behavioral information (How did they arrive at your site? What did they do once there? How did they enter your sales pipeline?) before they even contact a client.

But don’t take my word for it. If you want to understand the importance of web analytics along with video analytics, social analytics, and CRM analytics read Prestipino’s article here and see for yourself how having the right information can increase your online conversion rates.