post by Stephanie Nelson
I’ve been in marketing and advertising for a long time. I understand that it’s sometimes hard to know what’s working and what’s not. So how can you tell if your SEO efforts are working?
The job of SEO is to get your website and its individual pages indexed by the search engines. But you don’t just want the pages indexed. You want them to show for RELEVANT queries. It does you no good if you’re a photographer and you’re showing in results for folks looking for a hamburger restaurant.
What should you be looking for (or what should your SEO provider be showing you)? It’s very important that you get a list of queries for which your site shows. SBN Marketing clients get a monthly report that, among other things, show the top 10 queries by impressions and the top 25 queries by average position in the organic search results. This shows our clients not just what terms they’re showing for, but where they’re ranking and how targeted the traffic is that we’re driving to the site. Studies show that the more targeted the traffic is, the more likely the visit is to turn into a conversion, whether that’s a sale or a lead.
When your reports show that your traffic is good but you’re not getting those conversions, what should you do? Take a look at your website. (Full disclosure: I’m not a website designer, but I know the basics of best practices for layouts that convert.) Is your contact information easy to find? If you have a contact form or booking engine on your site, how complicated is it? Is your site easy to navigate? Is the information on your site too vague…or too detailed? If your website is your problem, there’s no amount of SEO that’s going to help you get that lead or sale!
If your website is your problem, there’s no amount of SEO that’s going to help you get that lead or sale! Lots of business owners are tied to their website designs, either because they had a hand in the design or because they paid a good deal of money for it. But don’t get so caught up in your own ego or pocketbook that you neglect to fix a problem. Get others’ opinions on how easy it is to use your site. Include your SEO provider in that conversation, too. And really listen to all of the folks you ask. It could really help keep you from throwing good money after bad. Even if you spend a bit for the fix in the near term, it will probably save you lots more in the long run AND will help you gain more income, too.
If you’re interested in SBN Marketing being your SEO provider and sending targeted traffic to your site, give me a shout!
