Soccer Practice by woodleywonderworks on flickr (cc)
SEO is part of a sound marketing strategy, but not an end in itself. We shortchange ourselves if we fail to look beyond search engine rankings.
More Web site traffic, top-10 search engine rankings, or more sales / leads … which of these is your goal? You may think that top-10 ranking will bring you more traffic, which is bound to bring in more sales or leads, but that’s not necessarily always the case. So choose one … which will do you the most good?
My vote is for more sales and qualified leads. Let’s step back from the worldwide web for a moment and ask those three basic questions that should form the basis for all of our marketing decisions:
- Who is your customer?
- Where will you find him?
- What’s the most effective way to reach him?
Define Your Target Market
If your market is 30-45 year old, primarily male engineers, you’re obviously going to need to market to them differently than if your market is 16-21 year old students. Web traffic from the latter group may gain you some visibility among their peers, possibly a few backlinks if they find you interesting, but will it create any sales? Probably not.
Match Your Message to Your Market
More than that, if you mistakenly think that this 16-21 year old student traffic is a source of sales because you don’t understand your market … if your copy is written toward them instead of the engineers … not only will you have not made sales to the student, but your copy will likely have turned away your real market.
Ok, it’s an extreme example. I doubt many business owners would confuse those two very different markets. (Then again, even a brand as large as Motrin proved they didn’t understand one of their market segments late last year with a failed ad campaign aimed at babywearing moms. In case you missed it: Motrin Messes With Mommy Bloggers and Loses)
But I digress.
SEO performed before you understand your market is an exercise in futility. What good are top rankings for phrases that don’t convert to customers? Are there other channels you should be considering in addition to SEO and Internet Marketing?
Related Posts about SEO:
What is the Big Deal About Keyword Research?
Choosing the Right Keywords for Your Demographic
Links About Search Engine Optimization
Related Articles (Offsite):
Ruud Questions: Barry Welford on the difference between Internet Marketing and SEO / SEM
Internet Marketers are from Mars. Traditional Marketers are from Venus.
Unfortunately most people that are targeting number one positions write specifically for SEO and Google bots and is shows by the junk sitting at the top of the SERP’s. However, I have always tried to write with my target audience in mind and SEO being secondary and it works. Eventually we will get to the point where if we don’t police ourselves, Big Brother (Google) will do the policing for us even more so than they are now!
It’s better to obtain a handful of conversion than a truckload of traffic that goes nowhere.
@emini trading systems “Unfortunately most people that are targeting number one positions write specifically for SEO and Google bots and it shows by the junk sitting at the top of the SERP’s”
lol..at least I didn’t say it this time. I get into trouble when I do.
Thanks for the great advice! I just came across your blog and love the content. I look forward to reading your posts in the future
SEO marketing is always the best thing to do if you want to market products on the internet-”,
I admit I’m an old guy, so I grew up when the yellowpages were the prime source of business directory.
Why couldn’t a business buy their way into the top spot? Are their any search engines that do that sort of thing?