Common sense tells us that where a visitor lands on a Web site should have some relationship to that visitor’s propensity to buy. Marketers have come to identify a category of shopper, often described as the goal-oriented or search-oriented shopper, who has a clear objective and wants to complete a transaction as quickly as possible. Not surprisingly, it is assumed that search engine traffic has a high percentage of goal-oriented shoppers. If this is true, the implication for search listings is that more specific landing pages should result in higher buy rates. We decided to test out this relationship, by classifying search listing URLs and analyzing the resulting conversion rates.

In this study, we classified 1,000 reasonably well-trafficked search listings representing a broad cross section of industries and approximately 250 distinct Web sites. 4,880,209 clicks/visits were analyzed as the basis for this research.

How Does Landing Page URL Affect Conversion Rate?

The table below illustrates the results by classification. We grouped the results by lead-generation vs. product/service sites, as the respective conversion rates are markedly different. The categories of landing page range from the least precise, “Doesn’t Match Keyword,” to the most precise, “Specific Match to Keyword.”

For example, looking at the keyphrase “Nike basketball shoe,” pages would be classified as follows:

• Doesn’t Match Keyword – the listing URL links to a landing page dedicated to hiking boots.
• Home Page of Site – the listing URL links to the home page of the site.
• Matches Theme of Keyword – the listing URL links to a department page with links to specific brands.
• Specific Match to Keyword – the listing URL links to a page showing the top-10 selling Nike basketball shoes.

The progression in conversion rates is striking. With both lead-generation sites and product/service sites, the difference between listing URLs that land on the home page vs. specifically matching pages is almost double!

Type of Site	Landing Page i	Conversion % ii
Lead Generation Sites	Doesn’t Match Keyword	0.79%
	Home Page of Site	6.31%
	Matches Theme of Keyword	9.28%
	Specific Match to Keyword	11.81%
Product/Service Sites	Doesn’t Match Keyword	0.85%
	Home Page of Site	1.26%
	Matches Theme of Keyword	1.33%
	Specific Match to Keyword	2.26%

Does It Make a Difference If the Visitor Has the Capability to Convert on the Landing Page?

Given that the most goal-oriented visitor would also presumably want to be able to buy or convert directly from the landing page, we also looked at the difference in conversion rate between landing pages with an order button or lead-generation form and pages without. The resultant data is presented in the table below. Here we see an interesting distinction between lead-generation sites and product/service sites. With lead-generation sites, there was virtually no difference in conversion rates. With product/service sites, there was a 44% increase in conversion rate on pages with an order button. We can possibly attribute the difference to the fact that lead-generation sites, as a whole, tend to be more focused. It may also be the case that a buyer is more prepared to provide payment information on impulse, while a visitor is no more or less inclined to fill out a form as they click around.

Type of Site	Landing Page	Conversion % ii
Lead Generation Sites	No Form	8.75%
	With Form	8.73%
Product/Service Sites	No Order Button	1.44%
	With Order Button	2.08%

It should also be noted that these results may be skewed by the fact that merchants whose search-listing URLs link directly to product pages may be more mindful, in general, of user experience. While this does not decrease the relevance of these findings, it does imply that you may need to take other factors into consideration as you work to increase your conversion rate.

Key Learnings

Organic Listings

• This is very strong evidence that there is significant upside to getting an entire site indexed, and spreading out the SE traffic load to themed and product-specific pages. If you need to show the increased revenue potential of such an effort, this study provides hard numbers to back you up.
• Focus your optimization efforts on product-specific pages. If the home page of a site ends up indexing higher than a product-specific page, you could lose almost half of your potential sales.

Paid Inclusion

• The very nature of paid-inclusion programs is to help search engines index deep content and associated keywords. This data provides strong justification for a paid-inclusion campaign.
• For the benefit of your paid-inclusion and paid-placement advertising, look at building a database that relates sets of keywords to specific products. Use the keywords to build descriptions for your paid-inclusion listings, and use the product data to build URLs for your paid-placement listings.

Paid Placement

• While your high-traffic keywords may be general, much of your sales potential lies in lower-traffic, more specific terms. You may even want to drive high-traffic listings to pages with specific content. For example, the keyphrase “basketball shoe” might link to a page with your top-10 selling basketball shoes.
• QA your listings. In doing this research we came across a listing that linked to a completely unrelated page. The keyphrase was so high-volume that the mistake was probably costing the merchant thousands of dollars per day. To check the closeness of match between landing page and keyphrase, you will need a human to review.
• If you can, conduct an experiment and tailor a few pages very specifically to some targeted terms that drive a bit of traffic. Based on the research here, you could dramatically increase your conversion rate.

Closing Thoughts
There are many conversion-tracking products and services on the market. The more data you can collect and analyze, the better you will be able to optimize the return on your online marketing investment. Before you buy or subscribe to conversion-tracking products, ask your short-list vendors for at least one or two customers you can contact for an endorsement. Many providers offer a free trial period, a perfect opportunity to try the product before you make a final decision. If you are inexperienced at Web marketing, your best investment is a provider who offers a combination of software and services to provide the analytics capabilities you need as well as the management expertise to optimize your return on your online marketing investment.

Nico Brooks is the Director of Research and Development for Atlas OnePoint. He has been involved in the development of automated tools for campaign management at Atlas OnePoint since 2001 and the management and tracking of online advertising campaigns since 1997. He can be reached at

i) The classification was chosen that best described the URL. For example, in many cases, a URL linked to the home page of a site but also strongly matched the theme of the keyword. In those cases, “Matches Theme of Keyword” was chosen as the classification.

ii) The conversion rate number represents the mean of conversion rates for each distinct URL, i.e., each URL in the study was given equal weight and not weighted by traffic volume.