- by Enam Noor
In the search engine optimization world, a lot of us concentrate on bringing in more traffic to websites, which is a noble idea - if that would return $$ to the bottom line. But how many times is this true? Do we ever measure the success?
I’ve seen many instances when a potential client would measure success by where they rank on search engines, or how much traffic they get per day. However when asked “what is your conversion rate” - most of the time the answer is “I don’t know”. How can anyone measure success of an online marketing campaign without understanding their web traffic? Yes- their web traffic! It’s almost like you want to invite guest to your house but you don’t want to know who they are, you don’t want to learn if they like wine and cheese or if they like chips and soda. When we are developing a website—what’s more important: the search engine or the users?
When it comes to search engine optimization (or as I like to call it “online marketing”) I think the most important element are the site users. It’s the users who become a sale or lead. It’s the users who read the content of the website and decide whether or not to buy. It’s the users who become loyal to a site and keep coming back. So, if we want to develop a website, solely thinking about how it would react to a Google “algorithm” how much success can we really expect? Or a better question: How do we really measure success for any online marketing campaign?
If a website brings in 1000 visitors a day and converts 10 of them, then the conversion rate would be 1%, however if a website converts at 10% and brings in 100 visitors they are also converting total 10 customers. So, which campaign would be more successful? In both cases the bottom line is 10 customers. Interesting—right? In my opinion the approach with 10% conversion is much more desirable, because when a website is converting at a double digit, it is quite clear that the site owner really understands their visitors. When someone can master this art of learning their site visitors it is very easy to bring in more visitors and continue to convert at a high level. The mastery of understanding your website traffic trend is far more important than trying to bring in more and more so called “qualified” traffic. No amount of web traffic is good if they cannot be converted. And this is why our concentration should be to develop a website that is geared towards the site audience not the search engines.
Build a site for YOUR USERS not Search Engines!!!
posted @ Tuesday, January 06, 2009 5:15 PM