How many of you have spend lots of money on SEO services and didn’t saw any noticeable results ? I’ve seen this a lot. And we are not talking about small money : we are talking about thousands of dollars. I think this can be avoided in a simple way : you have to know what are you after : traffic, rankings, general optimization of your website, or increase of your revenue. If you will know what the result should be then you’ll be able to measure the it. Another side effect : you’ll be presented with a strategy to achieve the goal you are after – the entire SEO process will have a clear direction.
What kind of SEO results you can ask
As in any type of service there is a variation in terms of what you can get for your money. SEO is a kind of service that can “take you money and see nothing in return” if you are not careful to whom you pay for it. The first step you should do, when you decide to pay for SEO services is to set a goal in your mind. You may want to improve your rankings, or your traffic, or you want a general analysis of your website, or maybe just to learn about SEO so you could do it yourself.
Talking with an SEO company could help you have a better view of your goal. The information you could get could help you see if your goal is a realistic one, or if it can be achieved – or maybe you are on a totally wrong track. Be open to suggestions as long as you receive a logical explanation for it.
Why rankings are not that important
This is the thing that most of the web site’s owners want : I want to be number one for that, I want to be top 3 for this keyword. As the subheading pointed out this is not something that I consider to be that important. I think that it’s enough to be on the first page to receive traffic. If you are in the top 5 then it’s better but you can also be number 1 and don’t get traffic (even if you are number 1 you could receive less traffic then number 3 or number 5 – it’s not a guarantee that number 1 will get the most traffic from that Google page ).
Rankings are inconsistent : it depends on the location, timezone, your account settings. There are also moments when your rankings vary big time : now you are on the first page, tomorrow you are on the third page. This is not a good evaluation method of the success of an SEO campaign because rankings doesn’t means traffic ( which leads to more potential clients which leads to real clients and money ). I don’t say here that being number 1 is not good but the main purpose is to get relevant traffic to your website.
Why traffic is a much better measurement indicator
SEO is about attracting relevant traffic to your website : this means that your site should receive traffic from keywords that are relevant to your content. And if you want to be able to get traffic from relevant keywords you need 2 conditions :
- the most important thing is that the keywords you target to be searched – you have to target keywords that can deliver a decent monthly traffic volume
- the second thing is to be on the first page for those keywords
If when you started the SEO campaign your website traffic was 10 people per day and after a month you have 50 people per day then this means that things are starting to move. Don’t expect miracles. SEO doesn’t means magical dust. It will take a while but a good SEO campaign will get your website on the right path.
Now, I was talking about relevant traffic. I forgot to mention that this is all about traffic that comes from organic searches – this means traffic from search engines. How do you measure relevancy for the traffic you receive ? The answer is bounce rate – a factor in website analysis that will point out how quickly people leaved your site (a high value means that people didn’t found what they were looking for on your website – the best results are under 30%). You’ll have to be careful though : check your bounce rate only for traffic that comes from searches. The reason is because direct traffic can bounce very quickly : people can be attracted by a nice title and once they’re on your site they realize it’s not what they hoped and bounce.
Your real concern should be the people that search for your keywords on Google. If you receive traffic from them and the bounce rate is low (under 40%) then it’s fine.
In conclusion : if your relevant traffic increases then the number of potential clients increases : and this is a good thing. Traffic is a much more important indicator for you to measure if you want to evaluate an SEO service.
What is your opinion on this ? How would you rate Traffic VS Rankings ?
I can sell traffic and I can convert traffic, I am not supposed to sell links.
I’ll take traffic over rankings any day! 
Ranking is great, but traffic is the desired outcome from high rankings. Therefore I would have to say that traffic is what is most important.
congrats on the new format for the blog. Great post on the importance of traffic vs. ranking. Traffic is what will drive the desired outcome.
In my experience neither traffic nor rankings mean a thing unless you are trying to build a brand name. What needs to be explored deeper is the conversation is Keyword selection as it has everything to do with the magic 3. Rankings, traffic and conversion.
If the keywords selected are not the correct ones, top rankings may deliver a lot of traffic that will never convert. I have seen clients get sucked into paying for words that they will get good traffic that will never convert even if they do get ranked because it is so broad. (“travel”) On the other hand SEOs like to sell clients on long tail words that they know they can get them ranked for – words that have no meaningful traffic but convert well if there is a proper landing/squeeze page created.(over 55 south pacific cruise travel). Rarely is this executed properly and even if it is, the traffic may be too low to justify the cost of creating specific pages, building links etc.
I believe the proper balance is absolutely knowing what the best, top converting, must have keywords are and then getting top 5 rankings for those words. I say top 5 knowing that a #1 position will bounce around. If the structure of link building is done correctly, this strategy will also help to elevate the site in rankings for other words that are related. This funds long tail PPC campaigns landing page creation for other words.
Search traffic comes from top rankings and you have to have traffic to have conversion. The bottom line is ROI.
We have gotten pure web based companies #1 positions in Google using white hat techniques for their best word and it has allowed them to have record sales months starting the first month of achieving the position.
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All business have final goal of conversion. If he sell something they need sale. If they provide some sort of services then they need inquiry.
So the flow is
1. Website Analyis (Usability Testing)
2. Compititors Analysis & Keyword Analysis(Pre SEO)
3. Rank Well for your targeted keywords in Search Engine (SEO – Onpage Optimization)
3. Generate Traffic (SEO – Off Page Optimization)
4. Measure Traffic and Bounce Rate (Bounce rate is less then 30% then your SEO have done great Job) If Bounce Rate is Higher than 60% your SEO have done Poor Job.
Actully the SEO expert can make your website compititble with Search Engine and generate traffic towards your website. If visitors are landing on your page but not converted to Client, then you need to work on your website not on SEO.
To me, this sounds like a which came first question, “traffic or ranking”? Traffic is most important to me since I can’t sell anything unless I get people to come to my webpage.
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I think that traffic comes with an increased rank. Isn’t it? So if you have huge traffic, your ranking will also increased.
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I know that personally, I don’t click the #1 result more than, say, the 3-5 results. I’m not sure if this is just a weird, personal habit or if more people do this as well. I rarely ever click on featured links either because I feel like if you have to pay money to be at the top, you’re either lazy or not good enough to make it there yourself. Just my 2 cents.