In many ways SEO is the mystery of online marketing. By that I mean most people don’t really know what goes into an SEO campaign, and what the success metrics look like.
If you ask the average business owner, he or she will likely tell you that they’ve heard of SEO, and many know that it’s a form of online advertising through the world’s major search engines (such as Google, and to a lesser extent Bing). But most can’t tell you what a successful SEO campaign should yield. Most don’t know what it really means to succeed in the SEO channel.
The goal of any SEO campaign should be to have your ad appear as close to the # 1 position on page 1 of Google (and Bing, ideally) as possible, when someone searches for the keyword phrases that are most important and relevant to the products and services that you offer. That’s really all there is to it. By doing so, the amount and relevancy of the traffic coming to your website and phone lines will increase, and it’s highly likely that you will receive more phone calls and leads as a result. And more phone calls and leads SHOULD turn into new business.
Often a business owner will want any and all possible keyword phrases to rank on page 1 of Google. That’s a laudable goal, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever have all of your relevant keyword phrases ranking on page 1. Especially if you find yourself in a highly-competitive industry like legal services, roofing, plumbers, electricians, etc. What is a far more realistic goal is to obtain page 1 rankings for at least some of these important keyword terms. For example, a personal injury attorney might realistically expect to obtain page 1 rankings for terms like “motorcycle injury lawyer” or “medical malpractice attorney”, but may not not be able to obtain page 1 rankings for terms like “personal injury lawyer”. The reason for that is that page 1 rankings for incredibly competitive terms like “personal injury lawyer” are very hard to come by. Out of perhaps hundreds of personal injury law firms in a given metro area, there are only 10 spots on page 1 to be had, and that’s a tall order. The key though is to obtain page 1 rankings for some of these important terms, so that your organic SEO ads are being displayed to prospective clients.
In a similar fashion, may business owners want and expect all of the pages on their website to rank on page 1 of Google. Again, this is unnecessary and unrealistic. What is really important is to have your main service pages appear on page 1 of Google. Using the example above, a personal injury attorney would want his or her dedicated medical malpractice page (you do have dedicated website pages for each major service you offer, don’t you?) to appear in the ad on page 1 of Google when someone searches for a term like “medical malpractice attorney”. Having their blog page or their contact us page appear on page 1 won’t help. You want to connect your ad and your corresponding website page with prospective customers at the moment they are searching for the service in question.
If all of this still sounds like a mystery, give us a call or send us a website inquiry form. We can help you sort through the confusion and obtain real success via SEO.