SEO Is Not For Rankings, Traffic Or Conversions

By Brian Carter on September 29, 2008 1:45 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
 
I have a simple point to make to my SEO industry peers...

Should SEO Success Be Measured By Rankings?  Traffic?  Conversions?

There's been a lot of discussion in the SEO community over the last few months about how important rankings are or are not, and whether the main goal of SEO is rankings, traffic, or conversions.  What annoys me is that articles are written as if there's one best answer for all cases.  There isn't just one way to do it.  Every client has different needs.  And every client has different key metrics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... without rankings, you can't get traffic or conversions.  Some keywords yield more traffic.  Analytics help optimize for keywords that result in the most leads and highest revenues.

The Most Important Thing In SEO Is...

What are your client's goals?  What is their business strategy?  How does SEO fit into that strategy and those goals?

  • If their main goal is leads, then optimize their SEO for the keywords that get the most leads.
  • If their main goal is revenue, optimize for the keywords that get the most revenue.
  • BUT if you have a client (and we have several like this) that need top 5 or even #1 rankings for particular keywords to fulfill other parts of their business strategy, then FOCUS ON RANKINGS.
For example:

We have a client that sells advertising on their site, and part of their salespeople's process is to point out the #1 ranking we have for that niche.  That may not be the best sales technique, but that's what works for them, and if we can keep that #1 ranking, we're doing the SEO job they want.

It took me years in SEO to realize that no matter how right you are about the best way to do it, that doesn't mean it's the best way for your client.

Stop trying to fit every client into your style, and see how your skills and talents can help that company achieve their unique goals. 

Optimal SEO Does Not Always Come First

SEO can be strategic, but it needs to fit with your client's overarching business strategy and goals.

It's understandable that optimizers would want to do SEO optimally, every time. 

But take the bigger view: your real goal is to help your client do business optimally.  So, fit SEO into their overall business objectives optimization.

Here's another example- this one from Pay Per Click:

A client came to us with this problem: they are state-funded, and they had not spent their entire advertising budget.  To ensure they retained funding next year, they had to quickly spend the rest. We spent nearly $8,000 for them within five days.  This required focused, short term work to ensure we spent as much as possible.  The KPI was the spend. 
This is not, in my opinion, the optimal way to do PPC.  I'd much rather do conversion-optimized PPC.  But we met our client's goals, and that's our job.

We in the search industry do a lot of things, including

  • Staying on top of industry changes and trends
  • Honing our skills
  • Educating clients how to do it optimally ;-)
  • Improving processes and efficiencies
But ultimately, the job is to serve the client's needs and goals.

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