4 replies to this topic

[seo_bright]

It is often said that rankings should not be taken as a measure of our SEO success and that traffic onlly determines success. But I find that for some months when rankings go down for few competitve keywords, the traffic also falls considerably. Why is it so? Does that mean that rankings in search engines are a direct correlation to traffic?

[Randy]

Actually, traffic is an indicator. Just like rankings.

The real metric to watch is Conversions.

Can rankings loss on your major phrases adversely effect both traffic and conversions? Yes, it certainly can. Which is why rankings are an important part of the mix. However it's phrase dependent. Because some phrases that look like good ones to pursue because of the amount of traffic they can deliver may also be phrases where searchers don't convert. The phrase can even be 100% relevant to what you do, but are simply too general in the grand scheme of things to do you a lot of good on the conversions side of things.

Yes the above is an odd concept, but I've seen it time and time again. This is why it's important analyze your stats, with Conversions being your most important metric. It can give you a whole different view of which phrases are your most important phrases.

Then there's the heavy reliance too many place on organic search traffic. In a perfect world an e-commerce web site should be a sales portal. As such it should get traffic from multiple channels while delivering your marketing message. These channels should include organic search, but should also include referrals from other sites where the users in your target audience (Perfect Customers in Randy-speak), offline advertisements that point users to your site, email marketing, online and offline paid advertising, etc, etc.

In a perfect world organic search traffic should make up only half or less of the traffic your site receives. Anything over 50% means you're relying too much on free traffic from the search engines, which isn't a sound business model.

[kynduvme]

Rankings can be important if they are important to your client. I have had clients that wanted to be number one for their business name regardless of their traffic for it and a few other key phrases. Now, as an SEO obviously traffic is worth more than rankings, but when the client is paying me based on "I want to be number 1 of Georges Widgets in NY, well heck, thats the most important goal for THAT account.

[Randy]

but when the client is paying me based on "I want to be number 1 of Georges Widgets in NY, well heck, thats the most important goal for THAT account.

Or simply a client that needs to be educated.

[Mhoram]

Rankings matter when the client sells ad space (even the proper way, with nofollow and everything). I can educate my client about conversions all day, but when an advertiser stops renewing because the site dropped from page one to page five for some favorite keyword, all my education goes out the window. She can try to educate her advertisers, show them traffic reports and click rates that prove she's giving them just as much bang for their buck as before, but it's a losing struggle. A certain number of them are fixated on rankings and simply can't believe they're still getting the same value.

Maybe that means the paid-ad, monthly-rate business model has run its course, and should be replaced with PPC ad sales. I suspect even that wouldn't satisfy some of these advertisers, though; they're really attached to the prestige (or something) of advertising on a page-one site.