Okay well a lot of business owners feel more than a bit sceptical about SEO and with all the spam emails they get promising miraculous overnight success it’s understandable why they do but they shouldn’t.
SEO is not only a legitimate marketing strategy but it can be the most cost effective marketing strategy around when done right. So how can you judge the success of a SEO campaign? Here are some results of good SEO to look out for so that you’ll know that your money is going towards something worthwhile.
It’s Not All About Rankings
You may come across a lot of SEO’s who will tell you that the success of their SEO strategy can be seen in the rankings of the keywords that they are working on but that’s only part of the story. Firstly the you and the SEO need to work together to ensure that you select the right keywords for the campaign.Often website owners have keywords in mind that they want to rank on page 1 of Google for but that doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone is searching for it online. It’s the SEO’s job to make sure that you have a choice of keywords that are both relevant to your business and that are getting a high volume of monthly searches.
It’s easy for an unscrupulous SEO to get you to the top of Google for keywords that are getting no searches and therefore have little competition but does that equate to a successful campaign? Of course not.
It’s Not All About Traffic Either
Another factor that plays a part in the success of rankings is the nature of the keyword. For example you may have a hair salon and one of your keywords is “How To Cut My Own Hair” which is relevant to your site as you have a blog that answers that very question. |
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However being number 1 on Google for it may bring in a lot of traffic to the site but it is unlikely to lead to bookings as the people who visit the site want to cut their own hair. Good SEO is all about generated relevant and proactive traffic i.e. people who are most likely to buy your product or use your service therefore the campaign keywords need to reflect this goal.
So if a SEO tells you that your campaign is a success because your traffic has doubled, be sure to analyze the bounce rate and rate of conversions from visitors to customers before you crack open the champagne.
It’s A Lot To Do With Sales
Without doubt the most sure fire way to judge the success of a SEO campaign is to look at the sales figures before and after. As stated above, good SEO will attract the right type of visitors to your site and the right type of visitors are those who convert into customers.So would you rather be ranking at number 1 on Google for 5 keywords or ranking at 2 for 3 and at 7 and 8 for the others but have had your sales doubled from the increase in traffic? It’s a no brainer and that’s how you gage whether your SEO campaign has been a success or not.
There are exceptions to this of course, for example, perhaps you run a charitable organization and you simply want to gain more exposure for your cause and so you would deem a high increase in traffic as a success. That is a valid argument but I would still suggest that with the right type of visitor you’re more likely to get sign ups and donations and that stems from choosing the right keywords.
So before you embark on a SEO campaign be sure to set out some goals that you want it to achieve whether it’s increased revenue, more sign ups to a newsletter or 1000 more Twitter followers, that way you’ll know if it’s been a success.
Stuart CookeAbout the Guest Author:
Stuart Cooke is a SEO Consultant based in Northern Ireland. He offers his clients a bespoke SEO service and always ensures that they know what goals they want to achieve from their campaign.