Search Engine Land

Your Website's Ranking Is Not Important

Last Updated: April 28, 2017

We repeat: Your website’s ranking is not important.
That probably goes against everything you previously thought about SEO. However, as Ryan Shelley points out in a recent article on Search Engine Land, there are much more accurate measures of success:

The problem with putting too much emphasis on [ranking] is that the search results aren’t always consistent. Google’s results will vary based on a number of different criteria.

More specifically, ranking only tells you how your site performs when an exact keyword is typed into the search bar. Plus, only 2.8% of all search terms are one-word keywords. This means individual keyword rankings are hardly representative of what people are searching for at large. Additionally, personalized algorithms and geographic location greatly influence ranking, too. In other words, ranking is only relevant to a very narrow, specific set of conditions.
Meanwhile, Shelley says, there are much more pressing metrics you should consider—especially because these other metrics have a greater impact on your bottom line. After all, what’s your end goal? Is it simply to display at the top of the search results for a particular keyword, or is it to attract more customers and increase revenue? Usually, it’s the latter.
Therefore, according to Shelley, you should spend more time and energy focusing on your traffic trends and conversion funnels. This is the kind of data that actually affects your ROI. Ranking is more or less irrelevant.
For a more detailed explanation of this issue, please click over to Search Engine Land and read Shelley’s full article, “The Problem With Obsessive Rank Tracking.”

Beef Up Your Local SEO With an Offline Boost

Last Updated: March 24, 2016

We’re always harping on you about what you should be doing online to help your business’s search engine optimization efforts. But we sometimes forget to mention what you and your fellow business owners should be doing offline. You know—in the real world.
Thankfully, seasoned SEO consultant Marcus Miller is on it. He wrote a wonderful article recently discussing how you can supplement your local SEO with offline advertising.
Titled “Local SEO Beyond the Browser,” Miller’s article dives into the importance of keeping your company present in the minds of your desired customers. This can be done through flyers and ads, storefront signage, company vehicle decals, business cards, and even social media. For consumers, seeing your ad will stimulate a want or need, which ultimately drives them to seek you out online.
Often, seeking you out online equates to a Google search. And, as we all know, the local search space tends to be over-saturated with businesses in the same category. So, instead of depending on the statistically small chance your business will pop up in a search for “plumbers in Phoenix,” promoting yourself offline will keep you steps ahead of the competition. That’s because, when people go to research local plumbers in their area, they’ll recall seeing your flyer last week and google your company specifically.
However, Miller points out that this doesn’t mean you can skate by without any local online advertising or search engine optimization. Rather, offline and online promotions should support each other. When that prospective customer googles your company name, you want them to see a lot of valuable, favorable information about you right away. Thus, you’ll need to do a good deal of SEO work to shine the most flattering light on your company. This is where business listing optimization, reputation management, and remarketing all come into play.
After all, once someone has googled you, it’s your job to convince them to hire you.
Miller’s bottom line?

The local businesses that will win the marketing battle in 2016 and beyond will connect the dots between the physical business premises and their digital profiles. Invest and commit in this approach, and your competitors will not know what has hit them.

For more specific offline and online advertising tips, check out the full article over on Search Engine Land. It’s a great read!

Why Organic Search Will Always Be Vital

Last Updated: September 10, 2015

As you’re well aware, your website can get traffic from countless channels. Social media, paid advertising, and e-mail campaigns all contribute to your site traffic. But did you know that organic results (mainly from Google) remain the most significant source of traffic? This is according to a recent Search Engine Land article by Kristine Schachinger. Titled, “4 Reasons Organic Search Is Better,” the article explains why there’s no match for the long-term effectiveness of organic, SEO-based advertising.
Schachinger supports all of the article’s claims with data from a 2014 report by BrightEdge, which declares organic search “the clear champion” of website traffic. Accounting for 51% of total site traffic, “organic is simply better for delivering relevant traffic.” However, in addition to being the highest-performing traffic generator in terms of raw numbers, there are a few other reasons organic search is still the most viable resource for site visits:

You have more control over your organic presence. When you rely on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to drive your traffic, your success is based on the whims of their platforms—which are completely unpredictable. For instance, Facebook is notorious for limiting the organic reach of business pages, thus forcing businesses to pay for their posts to be seen by their followers.
With organic traffic, you have more long-term security. With sources like social media, e-mail referrals, and paid ads, your traffic will go away as soon as you stop investing in them. (This is especially true for paid ads.) But once you’ve created a secure, organic presence, it takes a significant period of negligence to create a major deficit in traffic.
Visitors who arrive to your site via organic search are more likely to become long-term customers because they sought you out. As Schachinger explains,

“Matching keywords to user intent means you may be present in many searches. The user may find you consistently, and once they get to your site, they are more likely to stay. Organic users are still your best long-term customers. In my experience, they have lower bounce rates and more pages visited, and they are more likely to return.”

This isn’t to say that the other traffic sources aren’t valuable. While organic search results will drive the majority of your traffic, the best way to approach advertising is to capitalize on all possible sources. The synergistic effect of multiple traffic generators is the key to long-lasting performance.
Be sure to read Kristine Schachinger’s full article over on Search Engine Land.

With PPC Ads, Users Prefer a No-Brainer

Last Updated: August 13, 2015

Are your PPC ads making users think too much?

In a recent article for Search Engine Land titled, “PPC Ads Not Performing? Reduce Cognitive Load,” Andrew Goodman describes what user-experience experts say is an often overlooked performance factor for PPC. In a nutshell, cognitive load refers to the “amount of mental processing power” required to use a website. Applying this principle to PPC ads, Goodman explains that reducing the cognitive load of your ads will make it easier for users to process your ads and, thus, click on them.
What does “reducing cognitive load” mean in practical terms? Basically, you want to make clicking on your ad a no-brainer. Don’t make the user think. Draw a straight line from their search query to your landing page. Use an explicit and specific call to action. Most importantly, make your ad as simple to read as possible. That means minimizing the number of characters and using white space strategically. Overcrowding an ad with too many words and ideas will increase the ad’s cognitive load, which will distract the user and push them away.
For specific examples of effective vs. ineffective ads, read Goodman’s full article.

READ THIS: "4 Things Most Leaders Don't Know About SEO"

Last Updated: June 11, 2015

By now, you’ve heard of the term “search engine optimization” (SEO for short), and at least recognize that there’s a lot of significance behind it. However, according to a recent article on Search Engine Land, there’s still a lot about SEO that business owners don’t know.

In his article, “4 Things Most Leaders Don’t Understand About SEO,” columnist Trond Lyngbø describes a major problem with business owners and SEO—mainly that they perceive SEO as a quick fix, an add-on, instead of the holistic approach to online marketing that it should be.
Here are the five most significant points from Lyngbø’s article:

SEO should be incorporated into every aspect of your marketing, including PPC.
Before you can begin creating optimized content, you must do your due-diligence and research your audience’s needs and interests. This way, you can attract your ideal prospects. Then, once they’ve visited your website, your content will demonstrate an understanding of why they need your product or service. This is what will grow your conversion rate.
In order to optimize your content and get the highest click-through rate, your company’s branding (i.e. messaging) must connect with what your prospects want to hear. In your advertising, you should be offering answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Lyngbø writes, “Your story becomes more interesting when you talk about what they are already interested in.”
But SEO means more than just targeting the right keywords and content. It also means structuring your website so that the code is search engine friendly, pages load efficiently, navigation is easy, and internal links are sound.
However, SEO is not a cure-all. You must have a good product at the center of your marketing. That’s not only because you want your customers to spread the good word, but also because customer reviews will soon become a crucial ranking factor: “[Google] wants its users to keep coming back, so it will ultimately strive to suggest only high quality products and services which their users will love.”

Read the full article for further details, and feel free to check out additional columns by Trond Lyngbø on Search Engine Land.

Prospect Genius

Your Website's Ranking Is Not Important

Beef Up Your Local SEO With an Offline Boost

With PPC Ads, Users Prefer a No-Brainer

READ THIS: "4 Things Most Leaders Don't Know About SEO"

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