What To Do? Monetize Versus SEO

[Planet13]

Hi everyone:

If you have a popular page on your site that doesn't convert, what would you do with it?

An information page is the SECOND most popular page on my ecommerce site, but only has a $ conversion index of $0.03 (three cents per view), according to google analytics.

On the other hand, the MOST popular page on my site is a Category level commerce page, and has a $ conversion rate of $0.62 (sixty-two cents per view).

The subject matter is quite similar, but apparently the visitor makeup is quite different, as obviously the people going to the information page are looking almost exclusively for information, while a somewhat higher percentage of people going to the commerce page are looking to purchase an item.

So what would you do?

Copy the information to the bottom of the category-level commerce page (which is the most popular) and redirect the article page to the category-level commerce page?

The main drawback is that the information page is something of a link magnet - it is easier to get people to link to that information page than to get them to link to my commerce pages.

I am worried I will lose a lot of google love if I merge the pages.

Would you put adsense on it? since my site is ecommerce, I don't have any adsense on it at all. However, on that information page, I do have photos and links of some of the most popular related products presented in the content.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

[Robert Charlton]

I'd assume that the information page has something to do with the commerce page's popularity, and I'd leave them both alone and work on other pages.

[Planet13]

@ Robert Charlton

I'd assume that the information page has something to do with the commerce page's popularity...

great observation that I didn't even think about.

For the COMMERCE page (most popular on site)

Only 30% of visits were as a an entrance / LANDING page to the site (from either SERPs, Adwords, Affiliate links, etc.,)

70% of visits to that commerce page came from previous pages on the site.

The information page contributed 17% of the traffic to the commerce page.

Now for the INFORMATION page (the second most popular page on the site), the Navigation Summary is nearly opposite.

76% of visitors to the information page entered the site directly (overwhelmingly through organic google SERPs).

The commerce page contributed to only 13% of the visits to the Information page.

So I guess the challenge is to improve the rankings of the commerce page since it has a lot of room to grow in terms of getting traffic from the Search Engines.

[dazzlindonna]

I'd test some calls to action on the info page. Instead of just putting links and images to related products, I'd test some specific calls to action. Tell them what to do next. If it's a long info page, with various sections that might each relate to a different product, then I'd try several calls to action - one in each section. If a related product can solve a problem discussed in the info page, then tell them specifically to click here to "blah blah", wherein blah blah represents whatever words will let them know that their problem will be solved, if only they'd go do this.

[scooterdude]

Thanks guys, this thread has being a fascinating reminder of how sites can work. I think that even where the informational pages do not sell anything , they add value to the site user

[underglass]

I'd test some specific calls to action. Tell them what to do next.

+1

[Planet13]

@ dazzlindonna:

I'd test some calls to action on the info page.

Thanks for the spark! Will definitely look into doing that.

The challenge is the information page is sort of a "history of widget photos" type page. So it is a page that kind of satisfies a curiosity "I wonder what this means?" type of page (as opposed to a "How do I do this?" type of page).

But I will definitely see about putting some calls to action in it.

Thanks again.