Matt Cutts with Google’s Webspam team explains why website rankings aren’t the end all be all to website traffic success in this video.
He highlights some points of what does matter when building and ranking a website for the search engines which include;
- How long do people stay on your website for certain keywords
- Which keywords convert into sales, leads, and ROI
- Make sure you have a great Meta Description even use a Phone Number in your snippet. (we have been doing this for years and it increases phone leads)
- Just because you rank for a “trophy keyword” if it is more of an “exploratory” keyword and not a buying keyword phrase it will not matter that you rank for it.
- Pay attention to server logs to see how people are finding your website and what is keeping them there and or converting
Here are some other points we wanted to share from personal experience with over 200 websites & microsites we have “ranked” and managed for leads with the Search Engines.
- If you don’t rank at all you don’t get any traffic to test or learn from so rankings do have value.
- Going after the most searched keywords is not always the best idea. As Matt pointed out that “trophy keyword” with over 5000 searches a month per Google’s Keyword Tool could end up being the competition doing the searches and/or a low converting exploratory research keyword people are using.
- Going after keywords your competitors target isn’t always good either. Create a niche and own the market vs being the 178th person or website fighting for a spot on the first page where the end user already has 10 other great options.
- Does your website deserve to rank for what you are trying to rank for? Is it the best designed site with the best useful information for that keyword search? If it’s not, fix it so it is or target longer tail keywords at first that your website deserves to rank for.
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