What’s more important than search engine rankings?
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If you follow web marketing for even a day, you’re going to run into search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).
Both of these focus on driving traffic to your website. And both get a ton of press. Just search SEO and you’ll find millions upon millions of articles, blog posts, courses and books all about how to get some little advantage out of the search engines.
But while SEO is certainly important, getting search engine rankings can sometimes cloud the issues of marketing a business and selling products or services. Often, we put our time, effort and resources into SEO and forget that it’s not the most important part of the online business equation.
So I’m sure I’ve got ya wondering - what’s more important than SEO? Why would I need to focus on something other getting higher search rankings?
Well, what’s more important is what your traffic actually does on your website. What’s ultimately important is conversion - the rate of purchase among all your visitors. Normal conversion rates on highly targeted traffic usually range between .05% and 6.0%. Six percent is pretty high, but it’s reachable. It’s even possible to get above 6%, it’s just tougher for most small businesses.
The thing that’s important to know when considering SEO and conversion is that most of the time, the more traffic you draw from search, the lower your conversion rate. Now ads click throughs are different than product purchases or service signups, but the variables remain the same - how do you motivate qualified visitors to convert?
And that’s the key point to consider on your site. What if you put as much effort into writing top-notch sales copy with great headlines and copy that highlights benefits and solves problems for your audience? Could you imagine your conversion rates going up? They will.
So focus not only on getting to the front page of Google. Also consider how qualified your search traffic is and what they’re doing once they arrive on your page. Then make adjustments and test to increase your converstion rate.
Remember, the goal of having a business isn’t getting to the front page of Google - it’s to generate revenue and make a profit.
Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Dawud Miracle has one focus: to help you get it. The it? How your website, and blog, can change the way you do business. You can find out more at 
Teresa Morrow manages online book publicity and event promotion for authors, speakers and writers with her company 
Great article with excellent information. Thank you for the reminder. Sometimes we get so caught up with rankings and other things fall to the wayside.
Renee aka MekhisMoms last blog post..Who’s A Winner?
Thanks for another great article! I definitely try to focus on getting my blog readers to actually want my services. Getting them to the page is useless if I don’t sell them on ME, not just my site!
Lauries last blog post..Branding and Blogging
Excellent article Dawud. Most people we talk to are initially very focused on driving traffic to their website. They slowly discover that traffic does not always translate into orders.
The average ecommerce site reports about 2.2% conversion rate. Lead gen sites are between 10 to 12%. With some optimization work, you can hit a double digit conversion rate. The top 10 ecommerce sites are averaging around 12%.
Too many get so caught up on worrying about page rankings and the other numbers they miss or forget about what is the real measure of ROI. Building relationships and a community is the value they miss. If they would be concerned about that, the “numbers” will happen. Great post Dawud!!!