How well does your site preserve the scent trails visitors follow?

Creating and preserving intentional scent trails on your site translates to improved ROI (define) for your paid and organic search terms.

Hot on a Scent

Every scent trail starts with a search.

A prospect types into the search box the search term she believes will give her the desired result. Then, she willfully follows the scent trail of that specific term from the starting point, usually the search results page, seeking a specific answer. She frequently returns to the starting point for orientation. If she doesn’t find the answer after several clicks, she starts a new scent trail. She repeats this process until she finds her answer.

People hunting for online data behave remarkably like animals sniffing out prey. It’s the most effective means of finding a teensy-weensy squirrel in awfully big forest.

Understanding this process allows you to measure and optimize the scent trails people follow, both on your site and in marketing campaigns. Losing the trail is one reason 80 percent of visitors leave a site after three pages.

Most SEM (define) is about getting found. Problem is, most SEM does little more than put signs on every tree that read, “Squirrels in the forest.” Though true, the signs don’t help the hunter a lot in the quest to actually find the squirrels in the forest.

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…