How Industries Increase ROI By Using Fiber Laser Marking For The Imaging Process

Most laser marking techniques involve either engraving the mark into metal or plastic components, or ablating a surface layer to reveal a contrasting material underneath. Both processes usually require high energy pulsed laser systems and of course involve process debris.

Fiber lasers are now a robust industrial tool with a unique series of capabilities that enable a wide range of precision materials processing manufacturing methods. Fiber lasers offer low running costs, a fast ROI, a small footprint and exceptional reliability, and are thus enjoy a growing acceptance within the laser-assisted manufacturing industry as a cost-effective alternative to conventional laser design.

Laser marking is able to generate high contrast, easily readable and durable identification on a wide variety of components for industrial use or consumer products. Computer generated vector or bitmap patterns (logos, barcodes or text) can be engraved or etched using a non-contact process onto metallic and nonmetallic materials, including metals, plastics, glass, electronics, PCBs, wafers, medical devices, sporting goods and packaging.

A combination of a reliable industrial laser, fast and accurate galvanometric imaging systems and convenient computer control provides manufacturers with a unique combination of speed, permanence and versatility that cannot be matched by any other marking technique.

Laser marking processes

Traditionally, laser marking involves either engraving a physical mark onto a surface just as for traditional engraving methods, generating a simple color change in surface, or etching of a surface layer of material to reveal another, highly contrasting layer underneath. Either technique can be used on a broad spectrum of materials, and in addition to generating identifying marks can also form part of an industrial process, for example in electronics manufacture.

The advantages of laser marking include speed, flexibility and the non-contact marking process, meaning that components parts are not stressed by the marking process. The non-contact nature of the process also contributes to low maintenance schedules, as tools do not need to be replaced. Additionally laser marking is also highly repeatable and easily readable (even machine readable).

Stringent Quality Control

A laser engraving process is often used for marking metal surfaces as it is swift, non contact and extremely durable, but is however also responsible for the production of debris - fine metallic particles removed from the surface as part of the engraving process.

Naturally for bearing manufacture there are stringent requirements for process debris. The marking of bearing housings using a laser has thus traditionally combined a "minimal" engraving process with an induced change in surface color. CMS had until recently accomplished this using Nd:YAG lasers, but customer demand was looking for a way around the cost, maintenance, lifetime and reliability issues associated with the Nd:YAG design.

For this application CMS engineers have pioneered the use of a fiber laser from SPI Lasers plc of Southampton, UK - more specifically a 100 W cw/modulated fiber laser usually used for welding and cutting tasks. SPI has been developing fiber lasers for the industrial market for several years, primarily for materials processing applications such as microwelding and microcutting, but also for marking applications.

Switching to the new fiber laser means generating the same thermally induced high contrast mark on the bearing housing, but doing so with less production of debris, at reduced raised recast, and at much greater convenience to the end-user - meaning almost no maintenance, increased lifetime and exceptional reliability.

The 100W fiber laser used in this application typifies the flexibility of fiber lasers as a tool for a wide variety of applications - marking applications are traditionally an application for high energy pulsed lasers, but the performance envelope provided by fiber laser technology allows systems integrators like CMS to redefine these domains.

Advantages of fiber lasers

Many different laser designs have found their way into materials processing applications. Fiber lasers are however revolutionizing many of these applications through a combination of improved optical performance, better system flexibility, high component yield, long up-time and exceptional reliability.

Critical to many marking applications, they do not exhibit the shortcomings in spot size performance found in other laser designs - at all power levels, across all pulse sequences and during the entire lifetime of the laser, the spot size remains small, predictable and consistent.

The small spot size and high beam quality also mean high irradiance at the focus, so manufacturing tools equipped with fiber lasers can produce better results faster and at lower power levels. The focused beam consistently treats only a very small area of material, with the benefit that very little heat is generated in the surrounding area. High quality precision marking, welding and cutting can be performed close (0.1 mm) to the most complicated and intricate component parts.

Factoring in the reliable operation and power modulation flexibility, fiber laser technology is now frequently chosen as an upgrade over conventional flash-lamp pumped solid state, or even DPSS laser technology in many other laser-assisted industrial manufacture segments. The consistent and improved marking performance means reduced maintenance costs, longer up-times and improved production quality with less scrap. Fiber lasers are also exceptionally physically robust and thus suitable for the most challenging of industrial environments.

All of these factors equate to a plug-&-play, maintenance-free architecture for systems integrators looking to cut development, production and servicing costs, with the added benefit of being able to provide the end user with a better, more flexible product. Last but not least, the end user will be able to focus on their business demands rather than having to become laser maintenance experts.

Advantages for industrial manufacturers

In general, the choice of tooling for any application comes down to determining the required performance followed by a trade-off between initial outlay, component yield, uptime and maintenance.

Not only are component assemblies becoming increasingly more complex but, at the same time, more and more demands are being placed on their quality and functionality. The deployment of manufacturing tools equipped with fiber lasers to enhance process control can thus bring important financial advantages for any manufacturer. Coupled with the small footprint, such tools can also open up processes that were previously out of reach for some manufacturers.

Richard Stevenson is the Sales Director for Control Micro Systems, Inc. a manufacturer of beam-steered laser marking systems. He has published and presented numerous technical papers and articles on laser marking in trade publications. For information on Laser Drilling, Engraving, Cutting, Etching or Marking call 407-679-9716.

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Hire Expert SEO Company to Increase Traffic That Converts

Is it just enough to have traffic to your website? Does your website generate enough business for you to have high return on investments? Well, in case your answer is 'no', you should probably hire the services of dedicated SEO experts of an Indian SEO company. This is because success of an online website promotion depends mostly on the number of conversions.

A higher conversion rate indicates higher traffic which in turn indicates higher rank in search engines. However, any traffic does not generate quantified leads. To generate and maintain relevant traffic it is very essential to optimize your website following ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. All of this is only possible when you opt for the services of Indian SEO experts.

SEO process followed by dedicated SEO professionals of India aim to make a website's content, design and keywords fit according to a search engine's HTML coding and indexing requirements. SEO companies of India first of all try to identify the people who will be interested in your business product. For this a dedicated SEO expert will do a niche market research before making any website promotion strategy for you.

Once the SEO experts know your business domain, they try to increase your website's online traffic by framing relevant keywords and then positioning them correctly within the different web-pages of the site. While structuring keywords, SEO experts keep in mind that each keyword should reflect your core business domain. For this they put themselves in the place of potential customers and try to imagine how they will type the keywords while they are looking out for you, online. Next, a SEO professional will then place these keywords in the web-pages in such an optimum level, so that too much of keyword density does not become harmful for the website.

Along with the above practices, SEO companies of India also build prestigious back links to your website, remove useless HTML codes that prevents spiders to index it and encourages content based websites rather than simple image website. All these and more is carefully designed into various SEO packages by SEO companies of India keeping in mind the different SEO budgets of business companies.

Therefore, you should always remember that since conversions are the only good measure of online website promotion campaign, it is better to hire the services of dedicated professionals. By trusting the efforts and practices of Indian SEO experts you can easily achieve the targeted hits on your website.

Get higher rankings for your site on keywords with higher conversion ratio. Hire SEO Experts India at SEOPackages.net, one of the leading SEO companies in India. Choose affordable and most suited SEO Package for your website promotion and improve your ROI.

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SEO Tools to Increase Your SEO Optimization Efforts

Are you completely clueless when it comes to SEO Optimization?

No matter if you are an experienced webmaster or a complete novice, you have probably noticed the great struggle that comes with increasing your search engine ranking position or SERPS, if your cool. The problem is that there are SO many different SEO Optimization strategies being outlined all over the web that it is hard to know which ones to choose. I am here to solve this problem for you. I am going to walk you through the proven step by step process of vastly improving your SERPS.

Step 1: Figure out what keywords you want to optimize for.

It is important to figure out which keywords to optimize for before you begin your SEO optimization efforts. You will want to pick out two or three keyword phrases that you want your website to rank high for. You can find great keywords by using Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. Just search Google for google keyword tool and enter in the keywords that you are thinking about optimizing for and this program will show you the previous months search volume for those specific keywords. This SEO tool will even provide you with alternative synonymous keywords that you can choose from. I recommend choosing a keyword phrase that has had at least 10,000 searches in the last month. I know you may be thinking why not optimize for the keyword that has the most searches during the month? Well, the problem with this strategy is that the more searches that keyword phrase gets, the more competitors there are who will be optimizing for them. The more competitors, the harder it will be to rank for those specific keywords. This is why I suggest choosing to optimize for a less competitive keyword phrase at first. Once you have succeeded with this less competitive keyword phrase, your traffic will increase, thus increasing your Google merit, and in turn making it easier for you to rank well for more competitive keywords later.

Step 2: Analyze Your Competitors On-page Optimization.

You will want to go to Google and do a search for your keyword terms. Make sure you are not logged into Google when you do this search, as it may change the results. On the search results page you will want to analyze your main competitors sites (i.e. the top 5 results). The following is a step by step guide of how to perform this analysis:
Check the page rank of the webpage that you are trying to outrank. You can find several different page rank checker tools by going to Google and searching for page rank checker. If the page rank of the top 5 websites is below a page rank 5, you may have a good chance of out optimizing them. If the page rank is 6 or above you might want to try optimizing for a different set of keywords, as a page rank of 6 and up is VERY good and will be hard to beat.
Go to the website that is ranking high for your keywords, start from site 1 and work your way down through site 5. Once on the page, click the view button at the top of your browser and then click Page Source. When this new screen pops up click the edit button and then click find.
Search for the page's title tags. Once you find them, see if the keywords you are analyzing are included in the competitor's title. If they are, that's ok; you can add them to your page title as well.
Search for h1. You are looking to see if the site has your targeted keywords in their h1 tags. You may want to try to search for h2 and h3 tags as well. If they don't have the keywords in the h1 tag this is an advantage to you because you can add them to your header tag.
Now search the page for your keywords. You will want to see how many times the webpage has the keywords listed on it. Make sure to analyze how many times the keywords are listed on the page in regular font, as well as, bold, italics and underlined. Make sure your write all this information down so you can one up your competitor with your on page SEO optimization.
Check to see if the keywords are listed in the first 25 words of the page and the last 25 words of the page.

Your on page SEO optimization strategy:

You will want to make sure that your targeted keywords are listed in your title in a way that reads naturally.
You will want to use your main keyword phrase in your website description 2 times also in a way that sounds natural.
You will want to include your targeted keywords in your Meta tags.
You will want to add your main targeted keywords in h1 tags at the top of your web page.
Make sure to list your keywords once in each paragraph on your site. Also, try and use the keywords once in italics, once in bold, and once underlined throughout the page. - At most, only use your keywords once each paragraph. You don't want to use the keywords too many times as this can result in a negative effect on your SERPS. Google will see this ploy as keyword stuffing.
Try to make it so your main keywords are listed in the first 25 words of your webpage and the last 25 words of your site. A trick I use to make sure my keywords are in the last 25 words of my site is by adding them to the copyright portion at the bottom of my pages.

Now, I want to make it clear that on page optimization is only a VERY small factor in your SEO optimization campaign. On page optimization will only help your SERPS if you correctly conquer your off page optimization efforts, just on page optimizing will not dramatically increase your search position.

Step 3: Analyze Your Competitors Off page Optimization.

Now you will want to check the off page optimization tactics that your competitors are using.

To do this you will want to analyze the number and quality of backlinks that are linking to the your competitor's site. You can search for the number of backlinks a website has by using Yahoo as an SEO tool. Go to yahoo.com and search using this format: Link:http:// www. yourcompetitorswebsite.com. This search will show you how many of the websites pages are indexed by Google, giving you a better idea of how often Google visits the site, as well as, the number of in links or backlinks that the site has pointing to it.

Now for the time consuming part; you will want to determine the quality of the links that are linking back to this site. Here is a list of some things you will want to look at when determining the quality of the sites backlinks:

The Page rank of the page linking to the site (i.e.www. website.com/pagelinkingtowebsite).
The page rank of the main URL of the page linking to the site.
How many times the page uses the targeted keywords in:
The title of the page (i.e. in between the title tags)
In any h1, h2, or h3 tags - In the main body of the page
How many times the keyword shows up on the page in regular font, as well as, in bold, italics, and underlined.

After analyzing the backlinks of the top five competitors using the mentioned SEO Tools, you will want to choose some of the same high quality backlinks that are linking to your competitor's site that have the correct characteristics (i.e. correct category, onpage keywords, etc.) that will make an impact on your SERPS.

Once you have chosen your targeted link partners you will want get there whois information i.e. who owns the website. You can find this information by going to whois.com and doing a search using the site address.

Once you have the webmasters email, you will want to write them a letter asking them if they might consider exchanging links with you. Make sure that you already have their site link on your website. Provide them the address where they can see their link. Give them some kind of incentive for linking back to you. Be creative, and try to make sure the letter sounds somewhat personalized. There is nothing a webmaster hates more than receiving a letter that is painfully generic.

I will say it again, as it is VERY important. Give the webmaster a reason to link back to you. Emphasize What's in it for them if they link to you (i.e. you believe your site will be a great resource for their users or something of that nature). At first you will get more no's than yes's but don't get discouraged, this is the case for many new web owners and it will get easier as your website ages.

Now, I know this sounds like A LOT to analyze manually, so for anyone that is interested, I would like to introduce an amazing SEO tool that can completely automate this process for you.

This program will provide you with everything you need to analyze your competitors backlinks and facilitate your link building campaign.

Here is a list of some of the options this SEO Tool has to offer:

You can analyze the backlinks of any site. This analysis will show you:

You can choose to search for prospective backlink partners using different criteria including: using a competitors website to find links, using a keyword to find links, finding link directories with a specific category, and more.

All of the links pointing to the site, with the exact address of where you can find the link.
The PR of the page the link is on - The anchor text used - If the link is do follow or no follow
If the site still has the backlink, sometimes links will show up (especially in the yahoo search) on pages that no longer house the website you are analyzing. This happens because the site may have had the backlink when it was last crawled by Google, but as of right now the link is no longer on the page.
It will analyze the density of the main keywords used throughout the pages that house the backlinks.
It gives you the ability to add your own keywords that you want to analyze the backlinks for, the keywords you choose will be analyzed for:

* Prominence of the word on the webpage housing the link

* Link density

* Link prominence

* Keywords in h1 & h2 tags

* Keywords in the Meta tags

You can do a search that will tell you how many of your pages or a competitors pages are I indexed in the different search engines, indicating how often the Google bot visits the site.
You can do a search to see where you are ranking for your specific keywords. This feature is especially helpful because a lot of SEO position checkers only check the first 100 results and you may not be listed in the first 100 results during your beginning efforts. This tool will show you exactly what position you are be it number 1 or number 800, which is extremely helpful in monitoring your SEO optimization progress.
It allows you to search for possible authority websites (meaning high value websites that are specific to your websites category) that you may be able to get a link from.
They even provide you with an article submission tool that will submit your articles to different article directories automatically.

This is just scratching the surface of everything that this incredible SEO Tool has to offer. This program has GREATLY reduced the time it takes for me to analyze a website and figure out my plan to outrank them in the SERPS.

So, I have covered on page and off page optimization SEO Tools that, if used properly, will help you outrank your competitors. I hope that you have found this page helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your SEO optimization efforts!

I have been researching SEO Optimization strategies online for several years now and have found thousands of strategies and SEO Tools online during this time. However, 99% of these strategies don't work and may actually hurt your SERPS position. I finally found a method that works and it is the only one I use. That is why I have outlined it here, in the hopes of saving at least a few of the new webmasters out there some of the many headaches that these false SEO tactics have caused me and thousands of other webmasters on the web.

So, if you want an easy way to analyze your competitors, you should definitely check this program out by CLICKING HERE.

(c) Copyright 2009 SEO Tools Katy Anderson

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The True Cost of an In-House SEO Campaign- Why an SEO Firm Can Increase Your ROI

When a company is considering embarking upon a search engine optimization campaign, the first discussion that normally is had is whether to take care of the campaign in house or to hire an outside SEO firm. Handling an SEO campaign in house is an attractive and popular option for many companies - after all, the staff is already being paid to perform other functions, so the company might as well use its resources. In addition, a company may in fact have technically savvy people on staff that know at least a little bit about SEO, making the choice to take the campaign in house appear to be a no-brainer. But the real issue is how to compare the actual cost of an in-house campaign if you are expecting the same type of results that you would get with an outside SEO firm.

In House or Outsourced - Consider Your Resources

There are several basic assumptions that can be made about any company that is interested in SEO in general. First, the company likely wants to see immediate results from the campaign - or, at the very least, results as soon as possible in the organic search engine rankings. Quick results, by necessity, mean that the company has to have immediate skill available on hand.

And immediate skill, it is important to recognize, means something different than having a staff member who has a technical background but who will take several months to learn about SEO and the best way to go about it before starting a campaign from scratch. In this case, there is no way the company will get results for several months - or longer. Meanwhile, an SEO firm that has experience and expertise and that specializes in this very specific discipline can begin the project on day one and bring results far more quickly.

In addition, a company will want to ensure minimal risk to its website. However, in order to make sure that the site is not placed in jeopardy of being penalized by one of the major engines, the person running the campaign must have experience with SEO and must be well versed in the terms of service of those engines. Again, handing off the project to someone with no or little experience in SEO can backfire because he or she may risk introducing dangerous changes onto your site based on outdated information or simply on a lack of understanding.

Analyzing Your Company's Situation - What's Your True ROI?

At this stage, a company that wants to take its SEO campaign in house needs to analyze its situation. Does the company have someone on staff right now with extensive SEO experience, preferably with an SEO firm? Moreover, does that person, assuming he or she exists, have the time to devote in his or her schedule to begin undertaking the SEO campaign immediately? Bear in mind that an SEO campaign is not something that can be worked on as a side project or in someone's spare time, particularly when that person has a primary job function with which to be concerned. SEO takes a great deal of time and management in order to not only achieve results but also to maintain and improve those results over time. You also need to determine whether this person has the clout - or access to those who have the clout - to get the necessary changes to the website made and to get buy in for the entire SEO initiative.

If your company cannot answer a solid yes to all of the above questions, then you need to compare the relative costs. It is likely that your company has a finite budget for this initiative - everyone does. Therefore, the company must determine if it can afford to bring a full-time expert in SEO onto the staff - someone who generally commands a salary of near or above six figures - or to pay an existing staff person to handle the project. On the other hand, an SEO firm with an excellent reputation can cost around $30,000 per year for full optimization of your website.

But this issue goes beyond cost and also encompasses your total return on investment. Even if you have a person on staff with extensive SEO experience and a great deal of time to devote to an SEO project, and even if they have the clout to get changes implemented on the site, they still will only be working on one site (along with any other job functions with which they need to be concerned). On the other hand, an SEO firm will have many sites - possibly hundreds - to work on, which means that it will constantly be staying current with all of the best methodologies and will be able to immediately apply new tactics to these sites to get the best possible results. Plus, the SEO firm will not have other functions to take care of, because SEO is its entire focus.

Conclusion

There are, of course, companies that successfully handle SEO campaigns in house. But when an SEO campaign falls to somebody that already has a separate job function and that is new to SEO, it can take much longer to get things started than it would when working with an SEO firm hired for this specific purpose. In addition, an internal person cannot necessarily guarantee that a site will not get penalized - the terms of service for the major engines are constantly changing, and it's the job of the SEO firm to stay on top of this. What's legal today may be illegal the next day, and an internal staff member may not have the resources to know what has changed.

Finally, it is important, when comparing the cost of outsourcing to an SEO firm vs. handling the campaign in house, to make a real comparison of the actual cost involved in terms of your company's annual spend based on hours, ROI, and the opportunity cost due to the length of the campaign - whether it's handed off to a new, inexperienced person or to someone with an SEO background who has other duties to attend to. And in the end, let's face it - if you're not getting the results you want, it's always much easier to end a contract with an outside SEO firm than it is to fire someone internally.

© Medium Blue 2007

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters. To sign up for a free month of Medium Blue's SEO program, visit MediumBlue.com.

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How To Increase Organic Keyword Conversions – Part II

Previously in How To Increase Organic Keyword Conversions, we covered how to use Google Analytics to determine the entrance pages people are landing on after clicking through from organic keyword listings in search engines.

We showed you how to look for typical issues with entrance pages that hurt conversions such as files with no navigation, old webpages still live with broken images and links, pages that have been moved or deleted resulting in Page Not Found errors, and entrance pages that are not the best place for people to enter a site after searching on a specific keyword.

Here, we’ll outline how to improve conversions once people enter your website from any traffic source, including organic search results.

We often see bookmarks, links, and ads near the top of webpages that may take people away from a page before they’ve even had a chance to read or scan what is on the page. I can’t think of a legitimate reason you’d want to do this on a lead generation or e-commerce site.

Bookmarks at the top of a page should take people to other sections on the same page only. Don’t put bookmarks, links or ads near the top of webpages that may take people’s attention away from the important messages on the page. Put those links further down the page after they’ve had a change to read or scan the important information on the page.

Unless the entrance page is the homepage, these visitors may be entering your website without seeing important messages you thought they would see. Don’t assume people will navigate around your site and see these messages. They probably won’t.

This is why for e-commerce sites, it’s important to put messages about guarantees, free shipping etc on all product and category pages. The same is true for lead generation sites.

Think about important selling messages you should include on this page such as guarantees, testimonials, “time in business”, a video overview etc. Link to additional information to more fully describe important message details such as a guaranty as needed.

Many web designers assume people will read or scan content on a page then find their way around a site to some next step. Don’t assume. Help move them along. Think about what you want them to do as they scan or read a page and try to move them along at the right time using one or more prominent “Calls to Action”.

For example, we worked on a client site that develops a very comprehensive software product. They had a text link to view an online video demonstration of the product in a list of bookmark links at the top of the page, but very few people clicked this link.

We had them remove that link (it shouldn’t have been at the top of the page anyway) and add a very prominent “View Narrated Video Demonstration” link in the body of the page after a couple of paragraphs of content. This leads to a significant number of readers of this page clicking through to watch the video demonstration.

As you make changes on specific webpages, you can use an analytics system such as Google Analytics to measure the results. In Google Analytics, find the page in the Content section:

Choose Content / Top Content (see the screen shot below)If needed to help find a page select “containing” in the Filter option selector you’ll see at the bottom of the list of pages. Then copy all or part of the page’s address into the Filter field.Click on the page you want to examine.Then choose Navigation Summary

You’ll be presented with a listing of Previous Pages and Next Pages as well as Exits.

Next Pages Listing in Google Analytics

Compare the numbers for a period of time before and after you make a change. If you’re successfully making improvements, you should see the percentage of clicks to the page in the next step increasing (in most cases).

In the example mentioned above, the percentage of Clicks to the page that contained the product demonstration video increased significantly after they added the “View Narrated Video Demonstration” Call to Action.

Watch the Exits too. As you improve the experience on a webpage and do a better job moving people along to next steps, the Exit rate should also go down. Just make sure it doesn’t go up significantly.

If either the Exit rate increases, which should be extremely rare, or the percentage of Clicks to the next step you are working on goes down, roll back the change and to see if the numbers return to about what they were previously.

As you read through the page, think about what you want people to do next at various points. If it makes sense to offer additional information at certain points, such as the product demonstration video in the above example, include a prominent Call to Action.

At one or more points on the page include a “Call to Action” for the most important next step such as a way to contact you, sign up, etc.

It usually pays to test various Calls to Action and measure the results with analytics to maximize the numbers of people moving to a next step or converting. For the client in the previous example, we added a very prominent image link that said “For a Free Demonstration.. Click Here” which linked to a contact form.

However, the results were very poor. Not many people took the client up on the offer for a free demo. So we changed it to “For More Info or a free demonstration… Click Here”.

A Call to Action

A week later, we checked the results in their analytics system and over 10% of the visitors to this page were clicking on this call to action.

We are sometimes amazed at the improvements simple changes that make a Call to Action stand out better can make. On that client page in the above example, they added a link for the video product demonstrations on the page as a block paragraph (See the screen shot below).

Call to Action – Version 1

We had them center the text and make the Narrated Demonstrations phrase a bold headline above the paragraph as you see below:

Call to Action – Revised Version

This simple change had dramatic results. The number of visitors who clicked on the narrated demonstrations link rose from a little less than 5% to almost 10%. That’s an almost a 200% improvement just from highlighting the link better.

We’ve had great success increasing conversions by including inquiry forms on the information page itself rather than including an image link to a separate lead submission page.

Including an inquiry form on the page removes one step in the process and, more importantly, a form with a few fields really stands out on page.

Try testing this on your site and measure the results. If your form has a fair number of data fields to fill out (that are truly important to capture) try testing a multiple step form process if you can. Ask for only a few pieces of information on the first step.

On Page Forms Can Increase Conversion Rates

Those verification steps required when people submit inquiry forms can be real conversion killers, especially low quality ones, like this one on a client site

Low Quality Form Verification Steps are Conversion Killers!

If people have to struggle to complete a verification step, you’ll likely loose a large percentage of leads.

If your form data does not go directly into a database without some automated or manual process to remove malicious submissions, try getting along without a verification process and measure the results after you remove it. Our customers who have done this find that it usually pays off.

Typically there is a low volume of attacks and spam submissions on a daily basis. Occasionally there are sustained attacks, but these are usually short lived, lasting a week to a few weeks. If the increase in the percentage of completed form submissions is significant, it may be worth putting up with the extra work of deleting the bogus ones.

If you must use a verification process, work with a developer who can make it as friendly as possible and test different variations to see which one gives you the best completion rate.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Conversion Science | How To | How To: SEO | Intermediate

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