Don’t Just Focus on Where You Rank

Writing by Brick Marketing in SEO

I’ve seen it happen before. A client’s SEO campaign has been running for a few months and is really gaining momentum. They’ve moved up from page 7 to page 3 of the search results list, visitor traffic is up, bounce rate is down and sales are seeing a steady increase. All in all things seem to be going the right way. Then the client drops a bomb and wants to know why they’re aren’t ranking in the top five for all of their keywords. Never mind that the conversion rate has increased by 25% or that previously un-optimized pages are starting to show up in the search results. They only see where they are (or aren’t) ranking in the search engines.

No one can deny that where a website falls in the search engine results in important. The general goal of SEO is to bump up that ranking spot so a website sees an increase in traffic. But website owners often get so focused on pushing their website to the top of the list for every keyword, both general and long tail, that they don’t take into account the other ways to measure an SEO campaign’s success rate.

Sure, it would be great if your local pet store ranked above PetsMart in the search engines when people searched for “dog food.” But you have to be realistic with yourself and realize that probably isn’t going to happen. Don’t worry about pushing the industry leaders off their pedestals. Focus on what you are doing and how your site is performing in other ways outside of ranking spot.

Let’s say that pet store is ranking really well for “dog food.” They have the number eight spot on the first page. But they aren’t seeing an increase in in-store foot traffic. Chances are the majority of traffic coming to their site doesn’t live in the area. A dog owner in California isn’t going to be visiting a pet store in Vermont to buy food. Is the high rank worth it? How much time and effort went in to capturing that position that could have been better used elsewhere.

The main thing to remember is that there are other ways to measure success than just by where you fall in the search engine. It’s important, but not the end-all-be-all.