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Can you determine the percentage of leads that turn into paying customers? In addition, can you determine the overall worth of each customer? Ie. we have 200 current customers in the month of May and they have brought in a total of 20,000 pounds in revenue, that means that each client is worth 1000 pounds.

I know this is a rudimentary example, but if you can determine:
1- what a client is worth to you
2- How many leads become actual customers

Figure that out and you'll know if you are overspending for a lead.

Let's say you convert 20% of your leads to paying customers, then in the example given in your initial question, you will have paid 704 pounds for 4 paying customers. That is 176 pounds per customer acquired. Of course these numbers all hinge on you making sure credit is given to the appropriate marketing channel.

This is a common problem and one that is integral in figuring out how much a conversion is worth to your company. So I have some questions.

Is a conversion an actual sale or just a lead? If it is a sale, you must figure out how many conversions came from ALL channels. So you say that you believe Organic accounts for 90% of your conversions. Do you have Analytic goals set up to prove that or are you assuming? Also, you mention that the ads generated calls to the office. Do you have phone tracking set up? If not, I would do that too, because if ads are generating calls, the campaigns should get credit and the answer to your question will become more clear.

You will also want to tag URL:s properly so you can analyze the traffic in Analytics. Knowledge is power and if you can understand where conversions are coming from, you can maximize your PPC efforts so you're bringing in the traffic that is most likely to convert.

In a nutshell, get your tracking in place and don't make assumptions on where conversions come from. Also, you need to find out how much the company makes per sale and use that as a base to decide if your marketing spend is worth the investment.

What you are describing sounds like a mess to maintain. Three potential sites? If you're interested in usability, create one site and build it so it speaks to the personas you're targeting. Like bstone said, build one and put all your effort behind that site. By splitting up the sites, you will be doubling the effort and neither will reach their full potential. In some cases you will even be competing against yourself.

I'm with you Jane. It's not that much effort and it avoids any confusion or 404s.

what if someone bookmarked a page that you changed the URL for? That page might not have any links but it can still receive traffic.

It is my recommendation that if one is doing a massive redirect that all pages should have a rule written for it. Why risk a 404?

I have found recently that age of domain seems to be a huge factor in rank. A competitor does basically nothing right when it comes to SEO. Slow site, no title tags or meta descriptions. Content is lacking and never changes. This site also has very few links pointing to it. I even had a chance to speak with a representative of the company who was very candid with me and she told me they do nothing SEO wise.

The only thing I can point to that gives them the strength to rank high is that they have a lot of pages on their site, the main domain has a good keyword in it and it has been live for 10 years. That is all they are doing.

So, to me, in this particular case, the age of the domain is having a serious affect on its ability to rank high.

Alan, there is no value in redirecting pages without external links?

I am in the process of implementing a massive 301 redirect project as we are changing the URL structure of our site. Our site has been indexed fully by Google for quite some time but most pages do not have external links pointing to them. So if someone searches a KW that triggers a deep linked page, why would I not redirect that page to its new URL?

This is all great information! Mozzers rule!

So I am in the process of recommending 301 redirects from a stronger domain (old but still getting a lot of traffic) to a weaker one (new, refreshed design, same product). No one is maintaing the old site and we want to pass the link juice. I am concerned that what happened to Cindy will happen to us. I want that traffic and I want to make sure that the 301 redirect will work. And of course, don't block old domain with robot.txt

One question though: What happens over time with the 301 redirect? I am assuming that the newer domain will eventually show in search results for the KWs that triggered the old domain to show. Is that a safe assumption?

Thanks Josh for your response. We decided to implement Adwords conversion tracking and not rely on Analytics goal tracking. I was not confident in Analytics ability to track Adwords conversions so I kept it all separated. If anyone has experience with differing statistics between the two, I'd love to hear it.

My company is in the process of updating how we track conversions in Adwords and Analytics. One prgrammer suggested importing Analytic goals into the Adwords account. I am extremely hesitant to do that because I know that Analytics and Adwords don't always play nicely together.

Does anyone have any experience (positive or negative) around this. Pros and cons? Should I keep the tracking separate?

Also, FYI, our flow does not employ the traditional "thank you page" conversion model. We have java scripts and onload events that fire when goals are triggered. I am not a programmer so I am a little out of the loop on how it all works. All I know is that I want conversions/goals to be attributed to the correct channel.

Help me mozzers!

I know this thread has been answered but do you have a preference on this.

What are the pros and cons of importing Analytic goals into Adwords? I prefer to keep it all separate as adwords conversions will show up in Analytics. Any thoughts on this?