I see many web ministries purchasing pay-per-click (PPC) keywords with the *hope* that some of the visitors generated by those keywords will travel through to the key destination (conversion) pages on their site. What I don't see, however, is those same web ministries taking the time to analyze the effectiveness of their chosen keywords and tracking users once they arrive at the ministry website.

If a ministry wants to increase website conversions, simply purchasing and optimizing keywords and keyword bids is not enough. The key to maximizing website visitor conversions is to optimize the conversion potential of the ministry website itself.

If a ministsry website had a more culturally appropriate approach, if it spoke to more segments of the audience in their "language" and led them through the conversion process effectively, the site's overall conversion rate would increase.

To increase website conversions with PPC keyword marketing, you need to

• give serious consideration to outsourcing your pay-per-click keyword marketing as it's very time consuming and requires a number of pieces of software to do it correctly
• research what keywords will best match your site audience and content. If you don't know who your site's target audience is,  figure that out first. (to research popular keywords and keyword phrases, start by looking at search inventory and at www.wordtracker.com)
• optimize your keyword and bids, determining which keywords are working and which are not. Sometimes rewriting the description or changing a word or two will make significant differences in click rates.
• analyze what keyword-based visitors are doing on your site once they get to your keyword landing page (the page the keyword takes users to on your site). ClickTracks.com and other like companies offer higher end software solutions for PPC campaign tracking, user path tracking and ROI (return on investment) statistics -- all essential pieces of an effective PPC campaign.
• work and rework your keyword landing pages to maximize click throughs. Don't just send all of your keyword visitors to your front page. Send them to specifically made landing pages that are designed to get the user to click further into your site and ultimately travel to a conversion page.
• work and rework your site's architecture, presentation, strategy and language to maximize conversions (don't be afraid to change your site's content instead of thinking its the keyword's fault that website visitors aren't converting.)

It's also helpful to remember that you and  your ministry webmaster are not in your website's target demographic, so don't base your website architecture, design and content decisions entirely on what you think is best, even if your content or strategy is "something that has worked for years" in your ministry. Online ministry is unavoidably different than face-to-face ministry, resulting in the need for new strategies and new ways of presenting Christ.

Excerpt from a clickz.com article on this subject:

"Online marketers are so busy fiddling with PPC search advertising campaigns, they've lost sight of their bigger problem: Web sites with low conversion rates. Pursue a strategy for conversion enhancement first. Then you can double--or triple--your PPC search advertising campaign with great effectiveness. Anything else is inefficient and sloppy."

Read the full article (excusing the title).