Member request pages, indexed or no indexed?

[sssrpm]

We run a service website and basically users of the site post their request to get certain items fixed/serviced.

Through Google Analytics we have found that we got lots of traffic to these request pages from people searching for those particular items.

E.g. A member's request page: "Cost to fix large Victorian oven" has got many visits from searchers searching for "large Victorian oven".

The traffic to these pages is about 40% of our Google organic traffic but didn't covert to more users/requests well and has roughly 67% bounce rate.

So my question is: should we keep these pages indexed and if yes what can we do to improve the conversion rate/reduce bounce rate?

Many thanks guys.

David

[DougRoberts]

Hi David, Just some thoughts...

What are the visitors that do arrive this way, and convert worth to you? Are you happy to throw these away?

If you don't offer such things for sale (you can't satisfy the visitors needs) can you refer them to a partner site that does? Perhaps you can use this traffic as a way of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with a supplier?

If these visitors are looking to buy stuff that others are requesting to be serviced on/by your site can you use this as an opportunity to build a service relationship with that prospect later. (Can you get any propositions/benefits in front of them so that they bookmark your site as they know it'll be useful if they buy one of these things?)

[sssrpm]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your reply.

In terms of traffic, it's about 40% but in terms of overall conversions, it's about 5% (compared to overall Google organic traffic). Hence we said it's not converting very well.

We did adjust the page so that when visitors arrived from Google there's a form to list a similar request but probably since they were actually looking for prices/specs of those items they were not really interested in the services we provided.

But I do think you made a really good point there of trying to establish a relationship with prospective users. Probably that's a better way of using this traffic.

Thanks for the suggestions they're much appreciated.

David

[DougRoberts]

Some of your traffic is converting though. Be a shame to lose that.

I'm thinking content along the lines of "making smart buying choices today, can save you $$$ in the future" or "Understanding the hidden costs of..."

Any buying guides you can offer that they can take-away (with your branding/link on?)

It's easy to overlook the long game. Good luck!