In an article intended for the SEO proficient (beginners be warned), Jesper Astrom (jesperastrom.com) cracks the mystery of in-line sharing optimization (in layman’s terms, the mystery of optimizing the entire purchasing process by making the act of “network sharing” a seamless part of the process itself). As Astrom puts it, “you give them a reason to share whilst making their decision,” thus naturalizing the online process of making purchases and enabling customers to feel further supported in their commercial choices – from getting the opinions of Facebook friends on a selection of dresses to boasting about the newest shoes they just bought.

“In terms of Google Penguin [and other search engine algorithms for that matter], your rankings and thus also traffic for relevant keywords is increasingly needed to be natural and contextual. It needs to be the result of natural sharing.” How do you do this? Astrom suggests that you put the call to action for sharing in-line with the user journey to the primary conversion goal, meaning, for example, “embedded” in the actual checkout process itself. As you might have already been focusing on using landing pages to promote  online conversion rates, in-line sharing exists to amplify conversion rates at well.

For most consumers, the anxiety of making purchases comes with the uncertainty of whether or not such a purchase is “necessary” (i.e. when you tell yourself, you need those pair of shoes). By allowing customers to engage in an action that lessens such purchasing-anxiety (for example, sharing amongst friends), you optimize rates of conversion.

With thorough examples, Astrom runs through the actual protocol of optimizing in-line conversion rates in his article, In-Line Sharing Optimization, SEO and Conversion Rate.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com