As names for search engine optimization ideas go, it’s hard to beat “The Ciplex Theory of Addition by Subtraction.” It sounds like something that might split the universe in half, or at least harness the power of dark matter and unseen gravity. In reality, however, all it does is attract better traffic to your site – a great goal, but one we probably won’t win the Nobel Prize for.
Still, it’s the way we go about it that makes things interesting…
Basically, our addition by subtraction principle works like this: by bringing fewer visitors to your site, or at least concentrating less on your traffic statistics, you can often dramatically increase your sales. Of course, this runs counter to a lot of accepted wisdom, but that’s probably why it works.
You see, searchers and buyers don’t go looking for optimized pages; what they want are answers to their problems. And increasingly, if they can’t find the exact answer in a matter of seconds, they are likely to move on to a different page. The “long tail” isn’t just for searches anymore – it also applies to landing pages, where buyers are becoming more and more demanding in their search for the right products and information.
What this means to you is that you can’t simply optimize your pages and hope that some of your visitors are going to decide to sign up for more information or buy from you right away. Instead, you need to think long and hard about who you are very best potential customers are, and then write and design pages that speak directly to their needs and concerns.
Isn’t this going to cost you some of the other customers you would have gotten? It will, but you’ll more than make up for it in the new business you gain from more tightly-focused traffic – that’s addition by subtraction.
