Monday, April 5, 2010

SEO = AUTOMATIC SALES (NOT!)


If you own or manage a website, you already understand that optimizing the site for the search engines is an extremely important task (especially if your business relies on getting sales from the website). If you plan on optimizing your site for the search engines, you should understand that search engine optimization does not automatically mean you will get sales and conversions. What?

That is correct, the primary goal of search engine optimization is to increase your ranking in search engines. Although, it’s true that it normally will also get you more targeted traffic, you should not automatically expect a huge jump in your sales just because you began to optimize your site. In order to ensure sales conversions, you need to take many other marketing factors into consideration, such as web design, usability, landing pages, navigation and of course-- does your product offer visitors exactly what they are looking for and at a great value? The benefits of SEO are numerous, but they are longer-reaching and should be combined with proven marketing techniques in order to increase your sales. Don’t confuse search engine optimization tactics with sales tactics.

Understanding your sites statistics is another vital part of search engine optimization. For example, do you know how many people are visiting your site? What are they looking at? How long are they staying on each page? These questions will give you a good picture into what needs to be changed on your site and what is working well. If you don’t understand the analytics of your site, how will you know if the techniques or content you are posting is successful? “When things are going well, even if best practices aren't being followed, it can be wise to match up data and trends to see what's made a real difference.” Don’t neglect the statistics of your website; they can be a great resource to help you with your web marketing objectives.

While organic SEO strategies can be a great way to improve your website, don’t forget about the other media and tactics you can take advantage of. SEO isn’t a replacement for traditional marketing, social media networking, printed advertisements, etc. Remember, marketing a business website is a lot like driving a car. If you get too focused on the road in front of you, you may ignore the pedestrian stepping into the road at the corner and likely cause an accident. Likewise, if you get too focused on SEO tactics, you will miss the other strategies such as social media marketing that could really help your business. So, the moral of the story is don’t focus on SEO to the exclusion of other business tactics and SEO does not necessarily mean that you will get sales conversions without taking any other marketing tactics into account.

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Glen Andrade
I started Digital Synergy in 1997 as a web design and development company. As the industry changed, we kept right on pace with the latest developments especially with search engine marketing. I am actually a pretty laid back kind of guy... usually like to keep to my self for the most part, but with the advent of social media taking over web marketing, I had no choice but to thrust myself into this awesome medium as it offers so many great opportunities that were not available in terms of marketing just a few short years ago.
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