I Don’t Like SEO.
I don’t like SEO, I LOVE IT! Not nearly as much as I love my wife, but I honestly love it. In fact, it’s probably similar to the love my wife has for chocolate. She loves me waaayy more, of course…but mention chocolate and her mind will wonder off to another chocolaty, worldly dimension. Anyhow, moving along.
What SEO Can Do For You?
Yes, search engine optimization increases your search rankings, but more importantly SEO increases brand awareness, legitimacy in the minds of your audience, authority, site visitation, and another little thing known as your BOTTOM LINE! Yes, SEO can have a huge impact on revenue. Let me explain two things:
1. Is your site targeting the right keywords? [Side Note: I'm already distracted...A properly managed campaign should never leave the ground until appropriate, relevant keywords have been thoroughly researched and selected]. Say for example, you’re site currently receives on average, 50 visitors per month. Well, what if I told you you’re not currently ranking for a relevant keyword that receives 150,000 local monthly searches. I’m not saying SEO will direct each of those 150,000 searches to your site and suddenly you’re receiving 150,050 clicks per month, but what if your total monthly impressions increase by a realistic 10-15% by targeting one new, relevent keyword. Now listen, it gets better. What if a realistic 30% of those new impressions turn into clicks! Just wait, I’m saving the best for last. What if a realistic 50-75% of those clicks turn into conversions! Whether they’re leads, email newsletter signups, or customers purchasing your product, they’ve converted and you’re better off now than you were before. The numbers are arbitrary, but I encourage you to do the math for yourself on your site. Estimate the value of one conversion, find a good SEO who is willing to work with you to reach your conversion goals and go for it. Allow the campaign to run for a few months, but at that point if CONVERSIONS – COST OF SEO ≤ 0, it’s time to find a new SEO.
2. Dial in your conversion funnel. Have you ever made a purchase on your website? Signed up for your own email newsletter? If you haven’t, stop reading this post, go directly to your site and test each of your conversion funnels. Is there room for improvement? Could the messaging be clearer? Are you making suggestions to your customers along the way, encouraging them to purchase similar items, or write reviews? You should be.
These are just two golden nuggets that will help increase the size of your pie (aka, your bottom line). Take a healthy unbiased look at your own site this week and look for new keyword and conversion optimization opportunities. You and your business will be better for it.
Happy New Year!
“…find a good SEO who is willing…”
Shouldn’t this read:
“…find a good SEO (expert/professional/advisor) who is willing…”?
SEO is not a person (i.e. I can’t take “an SEO” with me on a road trip or out to lunch); it is a concept made actionable by people who understand the analytics and algorithms of the various search engines and how they can use them to their advantage.
Just wanted to clarify that for other readers who may not understand.
Hey Derek,
Thanks for reading the post and for your feedback hombre!
I’ve written up a new post that may help clarify – http://andrewnealjenkins.com/2012/01/07/seo-ppc-lingo/. Although SEO does mean search engine optimization, the SEO community has begun to refer to themselves as search engine optimizers. So, while it probably makes MORE sense to say that we are SEO professionals, we are also beginning to refer to ourselves as simply, SEOs.
I hope that helps.
Much respect to one of the greatest drummers alive,
Andrew Neal Jenkins
Thanks for the compliment, my friend!
I read through your follow-up post; it’s very well written and covers many of the confusing acronyms that people who are new to SEO and SEM don’t understand. I liked the screenshot you did for the last item; you might consider doing that for some of the terms above, too, so it’s even more well illustrated for people who are more “visual” learners (like myself).
I know you didn’t coin it, but using SEO for “Search Engine Optimizers” seems grammatically incorrect to me. It makes it sound like you guys somehow *control* the behavior of search engines, rather than being experts in Search Engine Optimization. Just a semantics thing.