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Your SEO Investment Should Do More Than Drive Traffic

When you embark on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) investment for your business, you should have a good idea of what you expect as ROI on your investment. Driving traffic to your website is often one of the main goals of SEO. Don’t stop there, driving traffic is only the beginning of what SEO can and should do for your website and your company’s bottom line.

While part of the results of any SEO project is more traffic to your website, more traffic is only valuable if you are able to convert those hits to sales or at the minimum inquiries. When someone views your website and immediately bounces off, your SEO investment has done only part of the job. The best SEO results include more traffic, a low bounce rate and a higher average time spent viewing your site.

If you are not getting any or all of these positive results from your SEO, then it might be time to re-evaluate. If the visitors to your site are not finding relevant information that engages their interest, you may have the wrong keywords or content. One of your SEO goals should be to engage the website visitor so that they spend time viewing your site. How do you make this happen?

First, you have to know what your goals are. Do you want to generate sales leads or increase sales from your site? Do you have a percentage increase you are looking to obtain? Having a clearly defined goal helps you to evaluate the success of your SEO investment.

When choosing your keywords, those that will bring in qualified leads are better than those that will just drive traffic. Searchers tend to fall into two categories: those who are just getting started looking for information and those who know exactly what they want and are looking for specifics. Focus on the keywords that attract those potential clients who are ready to actively engage your business.

After choosing the keywords that are most likely to bring in top quality prospects, be sure that your site is filled with content that is relevant to their search. Provide them with specifics that will engage them and draw them into the site. Don’t let them go away wondering how they got your site for a search result. Give them information to whet their appetite, so that they explore more of your site. Creating content that explains how you are different from the competition goes a long way to showing the searcher that you are ready to help fulfill their need. But don’t promise what you can’t deliver. You must be able to meet or exceed your new client’s needs.

Converting traffic to sales is one of the most challenging aspects of any business. Make sure your SEO investment is doing more than just brining people to your site. Your SEO should be bringing qualified potential clients who are ready to purchase.

Rick Batchelor is the President of Qiigo SEO, a firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization as well as Pay Per Click Management, and author of the internationally selling eBook: www.seoforgoogle.com. For more info or to meet Rick live on web video, visit www.seoforgoogle.com/blog/meet-rick/