Business executives are more likely to measure success in terms of return on investment (ROI). There is nothing wrong with that. But when it comes to digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), straight ROI doesn’t always work. For example, it is not always an accurate measurement of SEO performance. There are other ways to measure the impacts of an organization’s SEO strategy.
As a digital marketing agency in Salt Lake City, Webtek Digital Marketing includes SEO in our menu of services. It is hard to separate digital marketing and SEO in the current digital environment. Given that the two disciplines are now so intrinsically linked, companies like ours need to be more circumspect about our KPIs. We must be careful to choose the right metrics in order to correctly measure success and failure. That brings us back to SEO.
Why SEO Still Matters
You may be of the mindset that SEO no longer matters on an internet that now boasts billions of pages. We strongly disagree. Survey data suggests that 61% of today’s marketers count lead generation and traffic as their two biggest challenges. By and large, digital marketers understand that they cannot increase conversions if they do not also boost traffic and generate more leads.
What does this have to do with SEO? Everything! The number one goal of SEO is to drive traffic by ensuring that a company’s website appears on that very first page of search results. And that matters because only 25% of organic Google searches result in users going to the second page.
If an organization’s website is not showing up on that first page, its chances of generating new leads go down. The likelihood of driving new traffic is also reduced. And without sufficient traffic and leads, there are fewer conversions to be had.
Measure progress by Traffic and Leads
Ultimately, driving traffic and generating new leads should increase sales. Therefore, the ultimate goal is conversion. But conversion takes place after visitors land on the organization’s website. So rather than measuring SEO progress by sales volume, it is more appropriate to take a look at traffic and lead generation.
If you are getting traffic and leads, your SEO is doing what it’s supposed to do. But if traffic and leads don’t convert, the next step is to make changes to the website itself. Making changes to content, presentation, navigation, and other site aspects should lead to better conversion rates.
Some Impact on Conversion
This is not to say that SEO has no impact on conversion rates. It can and should. A well-developed SEO strategy can prime a customer for conversion on the way toward directing them to the website. A case in point is the practice of guest posting. Publishing guest posts offers SEO benefits on multiple fronts, including:
- Increasing online authority.
- Creating valuable backlinks.
- Strengthening relationships with customers.
- Introducing a company to new customers.
A well written and authoritative article posted on an external site can go a long way toward establishing an individual or company as a trusted entity. And with that trust comes a greater willingness to convert. So yes, solid SEO practices can impact conversions. In fact, leads generated by SEO boast a conversion rate of nearly 15%.
ROI is a valid metric for measuring many aspects of modern business. But it is not the be-all and end-all, especially where SEO is concerned. As a digital marketing agency offering SEO services in Salt Lake City and throughout all of Utah, we think a better way to measure SEO progress is through traffic and lead generation.
