Being at the top of Google and still loosing

Recently we consulted with a large resort chain who is in the top 4 for most of their keywords in Google. I was a little surprised pulling their statistics before our meeting, wondering why in the world they wanted to talk until......I pulled up their website. Then I knew exactly what sort of meeting we were going to have.
Turns out, the site is generating dismal bookings and they don't know why. I told them immediately I thought their bounce ratio had to be very high.
A bounce ratio is the number of people who logon to the home page and then hit the back browser or another way out, exiting the home page in less than 10 seconds. Quickly identifying the urgency of this, the client frantically ran and grabbed the login information for Google Analytics which has fortunately been set up. They just didn't know how to read it. Turns out the bounce ratio was near 60%! I need not explain that a resort can't afford to have that much of their traffic bouncing off the home page and never digging to an interior page.
This is the perfect example of how you can be at the top of Google and still loose. SEO is important, and we do our fair share of it with good success. But we never, ever do that until we have something that is worth putting the SEO efforts behind.
The first look at their home page gave me a headache, the page was far too busy and offered far too many options for the user. By changing the home page with a more clean design and allowing focus on specials or promo's, we are confident the bounce ratio will drop.
There could have been many reasons for the high bounce ratio, not the least of which could be attracting the wrong traffic. Without a thorough analysis of the traffic, numbers and history we would have been taking a shot in the dark. But knowing that most of their traffic was coming from the Google keywords they were after, we had our smoking gun.
We love solving problems for people on the web, and web analytics in Hawaii is no easy task. We have a very diverse market from around the world, and other variables. If you'd like a free consultation, follow the link at Web Analytics Hawaii.