How important is tracking conversions on your landing pages?
We definitely should be tracking conversions. Like we’ve already talked about, conversions are so important. It’s such low hanging fruit that really if we can’t optimize for conversions, we’re probably losing out on a lot of customers.
So not only should we be optimizing for it, but we should also be tracking it just like anything else. How we talk about having CallRail in place or some kind of tracking, maybe that’s Go High Level, is so important.
I run Pest Control SEO, a marketing agency for pest control companies. And I can tell you, we need to know not only where the leads are coming in, but also how well we’re doing specifically at converting those leads.
We should be tracking and seeing, okay, is the conversion rate super low? How come people on this one page, there’s 1,000 people that land on this page every month and none of them become a customer?
Those are the things that we should be inspecting and tracking.
Start With Average Time on Page
What’s the first thing that pest control companies should track to measure conversions?
The first thing they should track when measuring conversions, I mean, you could track the conversion rate. That’s the most obvious one there. But I still like to think about it from a logical sequence and kind of just work in chronological order.
First off, how many impressions does the page get? Okay, then how many clicks does the page get? Okay, then how many people, and what are some of these other stats? What is the average time on the page?
That’s actually a pretty good indicator, which really is a top metric. We can just go through several. You can see on different pages what the average time on the page is.
I would say that I don’t actually know the exact metric for this, but from what I’ve seen, you want people to spend at least 30 seconds on the page.
So if you see the average time on the page is like 5, 10 seconds, that is really low. That means they’re basically bouncing.
And bouncing means that they land on your page and instead of converting or looking at other pages on the site, they go on, they go on your page and then they bounce and go to another page on another person’s site. They click off yours and go on someone else’s site.
And that is one of the worst things you can do.
Bad Conversions Kill Your SEO Rankings
And something that most people don’t know actually is that conversions tie into SEO.
Let’s say, I don’t know if I’ve given this example, but this is actually really powerful. Let’s say you totally optimize a page and you are ranking really well. You’re ranking number one for one of your top keywords. And you’re like, “Dude, let’s go. We’re ranking so well.”
And you start generating some traffic from that. But then, let’s say one of the top things like page speed, let’s say your page speed totally sucks. It’s like, I mean, let’s say it’s unbearable. 30 seconds to load. No one is waiting for that.
And let’s say everyone does what I just said, bounces. If everyone bounces off the page, Google, despite all the SEO you did, despite all the backlinks, whatever you did, Google is going to move down your page.
You’re no longer going to be number one because they don’t want to show a site that no one likes.
Google sees that behavior that everyone is clicking off right away. That is a really bad signal. That is actually part of SEO.
So you really can’t separate these two. Separating those two, they are inseparable. When you are trying to rank a page, that’s also part of it. We need to make sure that we have really quality content and be checking, like we’re talking about in this post, what the metrics on that page are.
Are people clicking off right away or are people really enjoying it and finding it valuable?
Set Up Google Analytics Key Events
How do you make sure that you’re actually attributing leads to the right source, especially when people are coming through all these different channels throughout the internet?
We want to make sure that Google Analytics is fully and properly set up. This is the core one. This is one that we have to make sure is really dialed. And we can set up key conversion events on our website.
You can set up as many key events as you want through Google Analytics. And by the way, first you just have to set up Google Analytics. A lot of companies I know don’t even have that set up.
So you go to Google Analytics, you just search that up on Google, and then you set that up. You connect it to your website, which you’ll have to embed some code on your website or other things that may be different.
You can install Google’s tool, Google’s plugin on your WordPress site and then you can install that code on your site or however you want to do it.
So then Google Analytics is regularly tracking the data across your site of what is going on. And that it can also connect to any of the pages that you would like.
So any key conversion event that you would like to measure, you could measure people clicking the first call to action, people clicking the second call to action, people filling in the first form, people filling in the second form.
You can get as dialed in as you’d like with this. But that’s ultimately what it comes down to. What key events do you have within Google Analytics?
Traffic Is a Vanity Metric
Why do so many pest control owners focus on traffic instead of the actual conversions?
That’s a good question. I think it’s what they hear from SEO people. This is a big SEO thing. They will regularly get on calls with SEO people, or maybe they’ll watch some videos or go through courses.
It’ll be like, “I improved my traffic from 500 a month to 10,000 a month. And that’s so awesome. Why can’t I do that?”
But SEO at the end of the day is a lead generation strategy. So why are we so worried about the clicks or the traffic?
We should actually work backwards. If we’re not getting any leads, which that’s really the end of it, because then if we’re talking about actual customers, then we’re getting into the call center and other aspects there.
So it does come down to the leads, which would be a call or form fill, someone filling out a form.
If we’re not tracking those and really if we’re not prioritizing those, then what are we doing? Honestly, no one can give me a good answer for why traffic is more important than leads. You just can’t.
You are reading this because you’re looking to grow your pest control business. You’re looking to get more leads.
I mean traffic is cool. I mean it’s a vanity metric. So I mean that could be something like, “Yeah, my website gets 10,000 a month, yours only gets 2,000 a month.”
It’s like, okay, I mean sure, but who makes more money? All right, the conversions is what matters.
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
What are the must have tools for tracking conversions?
We’re going to want to have Google Analytics. Like I said, Google Analytics is really going to be the core of tracking and you’re going to have all those key events and such.
Another one that we’re going to want to have, which is more optional and more complex, is Google Tag Manager. So this is where you can have all of the different tags that you may have firing.
And really, you can get actually into more advanced key event tracking with Google Tag Manager. But I think it’s kind of too advanced for most people. And to manage that and Google Analytics might be a little much. So it’s a little overboard.
If you do have some kind of SEO expert or some SEO agency, whatever, then I would recommend having that set up as well.
Outside of that, there’s really not much else. I mean, we have Google Search Console, but that doesn’t really go into the tracking of conversions and such. That’s just another core platform that we have.
How to Audit Conversion Tracking From Scratch
Can I walk you through how I would audit a site’s conversion tracking?
There’s a lot of things that we want to do when we’re taking on a client, when we’re looking at what kinds of different analytics that they have.
And usually we do look from really a bottom up approach. We’ll look at their CallRail of how many calls are we bringing in? And first off, are we even tracking the sources properly?
So do we have a phone number for each of the different Google Ads campaigns? Do we have a different phone number for each of the Google Business Profiles?
So that’s almost step one. Let’s make sure that we have a different phone number for each distinct lead generation source.
And then beyond that, like I said, we can go into the Google Analytics account and just do a deep dive. Honestly, even if you’re a pest control owner, you can still kind of search around within Google Analytics. And I just like this term of spend an afternoon in it.
Give yourself a few hours to just sit there and look around. See what’s going on with your site. We randomly tanked this month and we got a ton of leads that month for some reason. Or we got a ton of clicks this month, whatever.
Something I invite here and something that we actually like to do is just be curious of just do a lot of searching around and see what’s going on inside the account.
And in terms of actual metrics, I mean, I’ve pretty much already mentioned them. How are the pages converting? Do we even have key events set up?
And really this is actually the main problem. I would like to see the conversion rate and how many phone calls we’re getting. But usually that’s not in place or it’s not in place properly.
So usually we can’t even audit it before it’s actually set up properly to begin with.
Stop Chasing Traffic, Start Tracking Conversions
The bottom line is this: traffic is a vanity metric. What matters is leads. What matters is customers.
You can have 10,000 visitors a month and make zero dollars. Or you can have 2,000 visitors a month and make six figures. The difference is conversion rate.
Set up Google Analytics. Create key events for every call to action and form fill. Track average time on page. Make sure it’s at least 30 seconds. If people are bouncing in 5-10 seconds, your page sucks and Google will tank your rankings.
Have a unique phone number for every lead source. Google Ads gets its own number. Each Google Business Profile gets its own number. Your website gets its own number. Track everything.
And spend an afternoon just poking around Google Analytics. Be curious. See what’s working and what’s not. You can’t optimize what you don’t measure.
Keep Learning and Growing
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And if you want the complete guide to tracking and improving conversions for pest control websites, check out Zip Code Kings. We break down the exact analytics setup, key events to track, and optimization strategies that are working right now.
Now go set up your tracking and start optimizing for what actually matters: leads and customers.
