The opening statement of this title is simple and direct, and having laid the groundwork, the next paradigm to shift is that SEO in addition to any form of internet marketing you engage, should pay for itself. Getting consumers to engage your website is not a liability or expense but rather a necessity regardless of the method used to drive traffic.
The Golden Rule: SEO or Internet Marketing Should Pay for Itself
Forget about the bells and whistles and the sizzle, at the end of the day, its all about the steak and how many order you received, leads were generated or how many prospects are in the queue. Sometimes we are short sighted and forget to look at the big picture of search or fully embrace “the marketing part” of Internet marketing to complete the circle and generate a return on investment or monetary compensation from our investment of time in our endeavors.
Its not always about increasing traffic as much it is about increasing the conversion rate of the traffic we receive. Let’s be realistic, SEO delivers traffic but what good is it if they bounce or never get to your best landing page?
Engagement matters and the notion of “your best page” is a perspective that is unique to everybody who visits your website. The idea is, this elusive concept may impede you from viewing each page as its own best landing page by infusing it with something more than just traffic and attention.
Combine that with the fact that even “that attention” will change based on the variable of the visitors original intent and mood. Are they simply there to window shop or peruse or is purchasing the intent or their visit? With the advent of analytics our websites are like having a live litmus test running in the background 24 /7 to see which pages have the highest yield of visits, traffic and engagement is no marvel.
What is important however is that if commerce is your objective that you understand that SEO is only one part of the equation. Traffic must convert or you should change the format of your value proposition and call to action so that it does.
People either approve of your content, layout and design and invest enough attention to contextually extract relevance from your ensemble or they do not. Depending on how well you implement “the total package” (clear conversion objective, clear benefit to them) can illustrate and provide a solution to a problem or manage to hit an emotional or click trigger. If you make that the priority, then no amount of SEO will ever matter because each visitor that lands on each page will have a higher rate of conversion which it the basis of return on investment.
Getting the message out is great at the end of the day, but just makes sure that you have done your homework about who your preferred audience is and what expectations they have when the process and metric of transactional analysis (what they get and what you give) commences.
The following post were all written to encompass what happens next or what else matters in addition to SEO. We hope you enjoy the resources and extract something of value to take away and implement to aid you along the way.
Suggested SEO Design Solutions Reading List:
- How to Use Action Words to Increase Traffic and Reader Response
- How to Get Your Call to Action and Conversion on the Same Page
- How to Encourage Reader Response with a Clear Call to Action
- Which is Best PPC, SEO, Lead Generation or Advertising?
- SEO, Marketing and Other Metrics that Matter
- The Psychology of a Click-Through
- How to Create Optimized Landing Pages that Convert
- Proceed to Checkout Close or Fail!
- How Persuasive is Your Marketing?
- SEO, PPC or Conversion, Which is More Important?
- SEO or Conversion Optimization
- SEO Alone is not Enough
At the end of the day, SEO should pay for itself. If it does not, then perhaps you should think about the most cost-effective method to sell whatever type of information, product or service you offer so that it does.
In closing, its not just about SEO, you also have to refine your offer, your price point and achieving a higher rate of conversion. Having said that, we hope the resources above will help you increase the bottom line and go from cash flow negative to cash flow positive.
