Q: “My customers bookmark or remember my URL after they buy from me one time right?”

Not necessarily. Your customer does not bookmark or remember your URL until they have visited your site many times. You can drive them back to your site through email if the left behind their email address. You can also use your keyword marketing campaign to retain customers too. Chances are they will return to you using search engines.

One key piece of information customers give you when they enter your site the first time is the keyword they came in on. I have a customer who sells running shoes and 50% of their traffic comes from the word “running shoes” however only 20% of sales originate from this term. Over 70% of their sales come from 3 and 4 keywords grouped together in a keyword phrases like “Nike distance running shoes.”

So if you want to retain customers you must retain the keywords that encompass the original buying cycle. For example, in the case of the running shoe site, they utilize search terms “running shoes” and more specific keywords like “Nike distance running shoes”. It is likely searchers will return to your site each time using similar search criteria; “running shoes” to check inventory or pricing, and more specific terms such as “Adidas marathon trainer” for price comparison, or to purchase…

So as you pursue more highly searched keywords, do not simply focus on the generic description terms (“running shoes” “furniture” “jewelry”) but remember to include those specific keywords already creating sales.

Keyword optimization and conversion tracking:

A good SEO firm should help you determine the relationship between keywords and sales conversions using tracking software. They should also run both your keyword lead generation campaign and your retention campaign simultaneously. Get ready to extend your focus and review your sales data. After reviewing their sales data our running shoe client found that their customers who bought distance running shoes where likely to return to buy shoe inserts. This customer expanded their keyword retention campaign to include 25 keywords related to shoe inserts.

Optimize for Your BEST Returning Customers

Colleen is a real estate agent who sells vacation rentals in Hawaii. Her clients range from one time renters to repeat vacationers. Some rent lavish homes and others rent inexpensive condos. Colleen offers a different level of service to a repeat customer who rents luxury home than she does to a new customer who is looking for something inexpensive.

With the help of her SEO company Colleen put a different call to action on her rental pages. She offers only an online reservation tool for inexpensive rentals and live chat with a 1-800 numbers that goes directly to her cell phone for more lavish homes.

Her SEO firm developed a strategy to optimize the luxury rental pages with “luxury” keywords and her cheap vacation rentals with keywords that reflect “cheap,” “discount,” or “bargain” rentals.

After collecting a year of data, Colleen’s SEO firm noticed that repeat customers usually returned to her site not by typing the URL into the address bar or book marking but by searching on the name of her website. Colleen optimized the name of her website for a select set of pages on her site that she would most want her returning customers to see. By using this strategy Colleen created “membership” without having to develop private log in/password driven components to her site.

(This is part 1 of a 4 part series on customer retention through keyword optimization.)

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About the Authors:

Tansy OBryant and Mark Schurtman are Marketing Managers for WebSourced’s KeywordRanking, the global leader in professional search engine marketing.