Ranking number one is the primary focus of every business owner when it comes time to discuss search engine optimization. It is the wrong approach for several reasons, as top rankings alone will not always result in record breaking profits and ROI. There are many other SEO metrics that should be considered along with the rankings that work together to create a profitable SEO campaign.
1. Keyword Rankings
As mentioned above, this is what the majority of business owners usually concentrate on when it comes to their SEO objective. Everyone wants top rankings, but just getting a website to the top spot for specific keywords does not automatically lead to revenue. Ranking number one for keywords that do not result in conversions and sales is completely useless.
This is why the key is a very well thought out SEO strategy. Without this, just attempting to rank for keywords is a very expensive mistake. It needs to be developed and executed with predetermined conversion and revenue goals that make it profitable and worth every time and effort that is invested into the campaign.
2. Link Building
Often misinformed and misguided, business owners think that it is all about the quantity of links. This is why so many websites end up penalized and severely damaged. These website owners become impatient and fall for these offers of thousands of links for a low cost. They always end up to be very low quality, spammy links that are blasted throughout the internet using automated software.
One link from a high quality website has much more value than thousands of low-quality spammy links. Proper SEO is all about quality and should never revolve around quantity. Doing it correctly and effectively the first time can prevent unnecessary costs, since a complete link cleanup can cost several thousands of dollars when a website is penalized for low quality links.
3. Website Traffic
This is a metric that does not necessarily translate to higher being better, like keyword rankings. Consider that there were two websites that sold the same exact products for the exact same prices. Website number one receives 6,500 visitors and converts those into 12 sales. Website number two receives 750 visitors, but converts them into 25 sales. Sheer traffic numbers are irrelevant without breaking them down and analyzing every point of data possible. Google Analytics provides in-depth details about every visitor that lands on the website, such as: where they came from, how they got there, and what they did when they arrived all the way until they leave the site. This can also help identify additional keywords and search phrases to target.
4. Conversions
A conversion is an action that occurs on the website, which is a predetermined goal set by the business. It varies greatly depending on the type of business and what the goal of the website is. An online retailer may want to convert website visitors into purchases directly on the site, or a local landscaping company may want to convert visitors into phone calls to their office, or a local law firm may want to convert visitors into leads by having them submit their information through a form located on the site. Each conversion can easily be tracked and compared with the campaign in order to determine the cost of each conversion. Then the business owner can optimize and change the campaign in order to achieve a lower conversion cost.
SEO campaigns can deliver high rankings and an insane amount of website traffic, but if the conversion numbers are low then it will not be a successful marketing campaign. This is correlated with the website content, layout and call-to-action location. It requires a lot of split testing and diving into the numbers in order to fine-tune a campaign to deliver the highest conversion rate. It does not end there! Even after achieving a high conversion rate, the campaign must constantly be evaluated, and changes need to be made accordingly.
5. Revenue
Sure, the conversions are great, but unfortunately, website form submits, phone calls, and location visits do not always turn into revenue for the business. This is the ultimate metric of a SEO campaign. It needs to make sense, dollar-wise and if it is not a returning a profit, then changes definitely need to be made as soon as possible.
There is no set formula to follow when planning a SEO campaign and measuring the success. Every business is going to have different conversion goals, different profit margins and require a different online marketing campaign. No two businesses are identical, and thus no two SEO strategies should be the same.
It is important to take all of these SEO metrics into consideration when planning a campaign and measuring the overall success. They all work together to provide the data needed to make it successful and most importantly – profitable.
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