The Goal of SEO Is Not to Drive Traffic

What is the goal of your SEO campaign?

When you take a look at your SEO campaign, how do you measure success? Is it by traffic to your site? Is it a victory to simply have a ranking at the top of page one? Many people use these criteria as goals, but unless your website makes money from ads by generating pageviews they only bring a false sense of security. If you own a business, you need conversions. This could be a purchase through your website, a lead through contact form submission, or an email address given by a visitor for future contacts. Of course, you can't do these without bringing traffic to your website, but the important thing to remember is that you need the right kind of traffic. One hundred interested visitors are far better than two thousand visitors who aren't interested in what you have to offer.

How do you drive the right kind of traffic to your site? Here are four essential components if you're going to drive leads, not simply rank high and generate traffic.

1. Choose the Right Keywords. It is amazing how often this step is rushed through or entirely neglected. If you don't pick the terms that someone interested in your business would use to search for you, you may generate traffic, but attract the wrong people. Or, you may pick keywords that generate no traffic at all. For example, if you have a local business without the ability to sell nationally but rank for a nationally used product, you will generate a lot of disinterested traffic. It would be better to focus on the traffic that would be likely to purchase than to be too broad and risk getting less of the interested traffic.
2. Take Time to Craft Your Meta Description. Even though the description is no longer used as an element in search engine rankings, it is still a critical (and probably most overlooked) factor for click through rate (CTR). The meta description is the 160 character text that appears under the link on a Google search result. This is the one chance that you get to tell the user why they should click on your listing. It is a critical component in showing the user whether or not you are a relevant site to their search. Make sure it describes your site well, gives the user a reason to click, and properly utilizes keywords. Even though the keywords used in the description will not help determine ranking, they will be made bold in the search result page. This makes your page appear more relevant to the exact search and helps increase CTR.
3. Use Your Titles Properly. Titles are one of the most significant individual ranking factors on your web page. They are also the text that is used for the link on the search engine results page. This means that a title has two very important functions - help your site rankand entice users to click to your site. Use one to two keywords in your title to help them rank, and include text to help communicate useful content to the user. Trying to jam in as many keywords as possible may help your page rank but it has the side effect of making your tag look sloppy and less appealing to the user.
4. Utilize Landing Pages Well. Do your best to try to drive users to pages where they are likely to have the highest engagement. Create landing pages for different keywords you would like to rank for. Don't overlap keyword targeting across multiple pages on the site. Instead create unique pages for keywords that you are targeting. Then, develop the page to give a user the best experience possible based on the keyword they were searching for. Make the content relevant. Show what you have to offer based on what they're looking for. If someone gets to that page you have a very good idea what they were looking for in the search engine, so use that to your advantage. You have at least a "somewhat interested" visitor. Make them a "very interested" visitor.

Remember, the goal of SEO is not to drive traffic, it is to drive the right kind of traffic. Make sure you're setting up your campaign to generate leads!

*Adam Wormann is an Online Marketing Specialist for Delia Associates in Whitehouse, NJ, specializing in SEO/SEM. You can see how Delia Associates can increase your company's profitability through Branding, Web Design and Online Marketing (SEO) at http://www.delianet.com, and find more specific information on SEO at http://www.delianet.com/nj-seo-sem

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