So you want to know how SEO works and what the fuss is all about? Well, we’ll lay out a few of the fundamentals and let you make your own mind up.
When putting together any strategy, there are always three things that we start with:
1) Goals; 2) Objectives; 3) Metrics
Goals – What do I want to achieve or accomplish?
Let’s say for example that our goal was “I want my website to be ranked on the first page of Google for [free electricity]”. The reason we’re saying this as an exclamation rather than a declarative statement is that it should never be just one thing you’re trying to achieve. When people think about their website strategy, they’re often just thinking about rankings. Ranking your website higher on Google is like the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more going on underneath and there is a tonne of different variables you could be controlling which oftentimes have very little to do with SEO itself.
These include:
- User engagement (are people staying on your site?) – Content types (are we providing value?) – Click through rates (are we catching their attention?) – Bounce rate (do users find what they’re looking for right away?) – Social presence
There are all kinds of things that go into ranking your website that â , if worked upon â, will greatly increase your chances of succeeding in whatever it is you to achieve… whether it be capturing more leads, increasing sales, or providing the best customer experience.
Objectives – What are my specific goals for this project?
Before we can start setting up rankings metrics and all of that fun stuff, there need to be some objectives set out so you can define what success looks like for your website. Objectives should be SMART:
- Specific; – Measurable; – Actionable; – Realistic; – Timed
Specific â How will I know if I am successful? “I want to increase my organic traffic by 20%” is not a very good objective whereas “I want to increase my organic traffic by 10% over the next 4 months”. Woah! Now that’s an objective. ‘Increase’ is much better than ‘improve’.
- Measurable â How will I know if I am successful? “I want to drive more traffic” is not measurable whereas “I want to drive 10,000 visitors per month.” Now that’s measurable. Your objectives should be able to provide some insight into what success looks like for your site.
- Actionable â Will this goal really make a difference? Make sure it is something within your control and make sure you have the resources available to be successful! If it can’t happen, then simply change the objective or use another tactic altogether.
- Realistic â Is the goal achievable? This depends entirely on where you are starting from of course but if you’re barely getting 100 organic visits per month then the target of 10,000 might be a bit unrealistic.
- Time Bound â When do you want to achieve this goal by? This is an easy one but often missed! Give yourself a time frame to work with! It’s pretty hard to track success if you’re not sure when it should be achieved by.
If your objective remains the same over time then you are on the right track! For example, if your objective was “I want my website to rank #1 for [free electricity]”, and your traffic increased steadily over the next 12 months, chances are that ranking #1 will continue to drive more traffic as well.
Metrics – How can I measure my progress?
The best way to define metrics is through relevancy and timing.
Relevancy – How is this metric influencing the success of my business? If we were truly trying to rank #1 for [free electricity], it would be pretty hard (and most likely impossible) to measure the direct impact on our bottom line. Relevancy is a big word in search engine optimization so when setting up your metrics, always ensure you’re tracking something that’s actually going to help move the needle. For example, if your website was selling American-made sneakers and you were ranking #1 for [sneakers] then chances are good that ‘sneakers’ will have a great deal of relevancy. Timing – What stage in my customer’s buying cycle is I targeting? This goes hand in hand with relevancy. If you are ranking #1 for [sneakers] but your customer is looking for information before they buy, then the relevance of that keyword to your business becomes pretty useless because it’s not targeting the right stage in their buying cycle!
If you’re selling American made sneakers and you’re trying to rank for both [cheap sneakers], which targets people who are just beginning their purchasing research, and also [free electricity] which targets people who are probably already ready to pull out their credit card â You will be wasting valuable time & resources attempting to rank for both keywords.
It would make much more sense to focus on one target keyword at a time according to what stage in your customer’s buying cycle you’re targeting.
In some circumstances, it’s almost impossible to pick a single keyword to rank for due to the nature of your business. For example, a big-box retailer will have hundreds of thousands of keywords you could target â But if your product is universally accessible through various keywords then how do you choose which one matters most? That choice should come from an understanding of what stage in your customer’s buying cycle you are targeting and then finding the best metric that proves that this particular keyword is actually driving sales!
Here’s where Google Adwords comes into play⦠Adwords provides a very simple way to track exactly how much money each individual keyword is making per click. This allows us to see which keywords are converting into actual revenue at the end of the day and should be given priority over keywords that are not bringing in the green.
When you’re first starting out it can seem like a daunting task to try and rank for multiple keywords without knowing which one is most relevant or even should take priority! But if you keep these 3 things in mind (Goals, Metrics & Timing) I can pretty much guarantee you will find your stride quickly enough.