Google recently announced that it will now use the encryption protocol called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt all the searches that people do using the Google Search Engine if they are signed-in using their Google Account login.

This means that these logged-in Google users will be redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra’s’) from http://www.google.com (non SSL) once they are signed-in with their Google account. This switch to SSL encrypts your search query which means that the sites the user visits after clicking on the results from Google will no longer contain the “Referrer data” (data which tells the destination site how it was found, whether from a search term entered into a search engine or from an external link) except in the case of ads.

Only Google and your web browser will see your searches and a third party (not even Google Analytics) will not know what is being searched. The new encryption will block referrer data, which means site owners will know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information on what the exact search was.

How does this affect SEO?

With the new system in place, Organic Traffic can still be tracked, but it will not be possible to drill down to the keywords from which the website visit was derived. Even Google Analytics isn’t spared, one will no longer be able to isolate the search term associated with the visit in GA.

However the keywords or terms Google search engine users use to find their websites will still be offered on Google Webmaster Central. Presently, Google Webmaster Central shows the top 1,000 queries that a site appeared for at Google – as well as was selected for – over a 30 day period.

Referrer Data for Ads:

However referrer data will be passed into the advertiser’s site, which means they (ad sites), will still receive information that they currently get with unencrypted search. The main reason stated by Google being that advertisers need the referrer data to evaluate their ad campaigns, to know which keywords or search terms are driving traffic in order to improve the ads which we believe is to keep the advertisers happy.

However, when the user is signed-in and clicks on an ad with the advertiser’s website being HTTP rather than HTTPS, Google will send the search term for that specific search to the advertiser over HTTP.

The encryption change as per Google will impact only the single digit percentage of search users, anyone who hasn’t signed-in will still send referrer data to the websites he/she visits which means lots of data for SEOs to do a conversion analysis to the keyword level.

With the move to SSL, Google has taken web search security to the next level; the trick is to balance data security for the web users and to keep advertisers happy.

Until recently, the sitelinks that you have most commonly seen have probably looked something like this:

The purpose of sitelinks is to help searchers navigate a specific page they are in need of as quickly as possible. However, earlier this week, Google announced its improved and expanded version of sitelinks. The newer version is arranged as a column of links and appears more prominently on the search engine results page.

The new sitelinks is certainly helping brands dominate the search results page. According to Google, displaying more sitelinks is designed to help users quickly navigate to the most relevant section of a site. But, let’s try and understand how the changes will affect websites, and how they can adapt and take advantage of them.

For starters, the new sitelinks takes up a large chunk of the first page results thus ruling out potential competitors and other less relevant sites sneaking above the fold. Online user behavior will change as more users will want to click on the pages listed in sitelinks than look for websites listed below in search results, thus helping brand conversions significantly. Also certain is the tangible increase in organic visits and sales from keywords containing brand permutations.

Adapting to this change is critical and website architecture is really important (directory structure, URL naming conventions etc…); also, make full use of Google’s webmaster console to manage sitelinks and take Google’s humanized results page and ranking factors into consideration.

Both 2010 and 2011 have been called Year of Conversion Rate Optimization. And there certainly isn’t any mistake in that, given the burst of both knowledge and tools out there on the topic. And the best part of it is that most online businesses now have access to all they need to increase their sales, newsletter subscribers, followers etc. (and no more excuses if they don’t).

When it comes to selling software online, conversion rate is probably the metric with the highest impact on sales. So, to get you started I want to share with you  a list of 5 tools that I have tested both with the Avangate team, as well as during my recent period as software vendor.

Landing Page Platform: Unbounce

Unbounce is a landing page platform that makes creating, publishing and optimizing of landing pages really easy. It’s a great tool for marketing departments as they can roll out landing page after landing page without help from the IT department.

Landing pages often prove decisive when it comes to optimize conversion rates and sales. Different segments of your traffic have different expectations or needs from your website. Greeting each segment of traffic with a specific landing page for their needs can only help that segment of traffic reach the goal faster and in greater numbers. In other words: give a user what he is looking for and he will take it.

Besides the product, the Unbounce blog is a great resource for starting with landing page optimization.

Remote User Testing: Verify

Verify is a great set of remote user testing tools to help you determine how well a design will perform, before publishing it on your website. The tools will make it easy for you to decide what to keep in a design and what to take out or what to change in order to make sure the design will actually increase conversions on your website.

When developing consumer driven products, feedback is crucial. Getting feedback before launching a new page or feature can prove to be a gold mine by not wasting developing resources on things you don’t know if will work or not.

Email Marketing: PadiAct

(Disclaimer: I am co-founder of the company)

PadiAct is a neat tool that helps you optimize your email subscription rate. When it comes to increase the number of your email subscribers, there aren’t many methods out there. One method is to ask users to give their email address when they download your software. Jason Cohen shared some tips on how to ask for user information before the trial starts in his 5-part series: How to convert more software trials to purchases. But this method can also be seen as blackmailing: you give me your email address, I give you a trial – definitely not permission marketing.

This tool allows you to define a segment of traffic whom to ask, in a friendly manner, to subscribe to your newsletter.  Here is an example you could start with: all new visitors that have already downloaded your product. You accomplish 2 things by using targeting to increase subscription lists:

• you don’t interrupt users already within a conversion funnel (downloads, sales);
• you collect good quality email addresses from users that didn’t convert so you get a second chance with them.

A/B Testing: Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer is an easy to use A/B testing tool. These days you can’t really talk about increasing conversion rates and sales without talking about A/B and multivariate testing. There are many tools out there to help put in place a testing strategy, but Visual Website Optimizer makes it so much easier. No IT departments or programming skills needed to get started.

Another cool thing about Visual Website Optimizer is their blog with tons of great info and case studies on A/B testing. Now there’s no excuse for not testing.

For shopping cart testing, you can of course use the A/B testing module from Avangate platform. If you never made a test – share with us your ideas about increasing your shopping cart conversion rates and the most creative ones may be tested in your Avangate account.

User Feedback: KISSinsights

KISSinsights gives your customers a way to tell you what they need. It’s an user feedback platform, really easy to integrate on any website. The best thing about it is that it’s contextual. You can ask your users on your pricing page if there is anything they don’t understand about the pricing or you can ask them on your blog if there is anything else they would like you to write about.

What we love most about KISSinsights it’s that it is not intrusive. After starting collecting feedback with it, most users get the “Aha” moment which usually leads to ideas of better optimizing the website, therefore increasing conversion rate and in the end, sales.

See it in action on this blog and on our website. While you are at it, let us know what topics you would like us to cover more. :)

How will you increase conversion rate in 2011?

In the end it all comes up to provide better experiences to your online visitors in directing them towards the conversion point. What are you plans for improving your conversion rate in 2011?

Is your software-selling website really optimized for search engines? Because -from our experience- sometimes even skilled webmasters fail to notice certain SEO issues that can severely impact their rankings.

So let’s take a closer look and find out what mistakes you should avoid at all costs – and some quick tips on how to repair the damage, if it’s already been done!

SEO Strategy

Mistake #1: You do not include SEO into site development specs

Outcome: Search engines may not be able to crawl your site, index its content and rank it accordingly. This can happen because of content included in images or Flash files, JavaScript links, too many variables in URLs and poor architecture (lack of topic categories, sub-categories and product pages).

• First and foremost, make sure your content is visible to search engines: use HTML to display important content and links throughout the site. For Flash sites it’s best to create a HTML version with a robots.txt which disallows the Flash pages, so that you don’t have duplicates.

This is part 2 of a 5-part series: How to convert more software trials to purchases.

There are three camps about asking for contact info before a trial starts:

A.  Ask for nothing – Maximize number of downloads; minimize barriers.
B.  Show 1 – 4 fields - Make them optional. Get what you can, then get out of the way.
C.  Show 14 fields – Get their street address. Only serious people will download so you don’t waste your time with crap trials.

Allow me to convince you that B is the way to go.

Let’s first dispense with C.

If the world of free social media has taught us anything, it’s that “invasion without permission” is dead. You haven’t earned people’s contact information so they won’t give it.

Our aim is to sell software and not to socialize with family or friends, you probably think, so what good could a bunch of pretty pictures bring to business? Well, we think there is potential in images, especially in photos when it comes to better promoting your website.

So we’ve started by posting to Flickr photographs taken during our participation to different events. Then, we’ve used the Flickr widget on Avangate website.