In SEO, Not All Clicks Are Created Equal

Search engine optimization – “SEO” for short – is one of the most important parts of any digital marketing plan. Search engines are, of course, those websites that help us find what we’re looking for. Google and Bing are the big ones, and they get to act as gatekeepers to countless potential customers who type or speak questions into their computers or smartphones. Where is the nearest pizza place? What’s the best eye doctor in my area? When it comes to questions like these, customers trust Google and Bing.

Which is why it’s absolutely vital to make sure that your company’s website is as friendly as possible with Google and Bing. This is the art and science of SEO, and it makes a huge difference. The right balance of keywords, smart use of images and metadata, and a great linking strategy will go a long way towards getting your company to the top of the results page for key queries.

But SEO isn’t quite as simple as that. After all, it’s not really clicks that you’re after – it’s business!

Conversion rates and SEO

The tricky thing about SEO is that getting the top of the results page for certain queries isn’t necessarily the end-all and be-all. If your store sells blu-ray discs, you might think that you’d want to be a top local result for a Google search for “movies” – and, sure, it wouldn’t hurt. But while being a top result for “movies” would get a lot of eyes on your brand, it wouldn’t necessarily result in a ton of sales. That’s because most people searching for “movies” are probably looking for showtimes at the local theater. If they wanted blu-rays, they’d probably type something more like “buy movies” or, more likely, “blu-rays” or “buy blu-rays.”

One look at Google Trends shows us that searches for “movies” absolutely dwarf searches for “blu-rays.” But it’s not just about how many people see your website – it’s about how many people want to spend money. And if you have a lot of people clicking your site and then immediately hitting the “back” button on their browser because it’s not what they wanted, then you what industry insiders call a high “bounce rate.” And that means you have a very low conversion rate – nobody’s buying!

“Long tail” SEO

Thanks to bounce rates and varying conversion rates on keywords, SEO isn’t as simple as finding the most-searched keyword you can and ranking as high for it as possible. Instead, SEO is about identifying the keywords that generate business. A keyword with low search numbers but a very high conversion rate may be worth more money to you than a keyword with lots of searches but a low conversion rate (plus, the low-traffic keyword may be easier for your site to rank high with).

Low traffic keywords are often actually keyword phrases – groups of multiple words. Longer, more specific phrases tend to have lower search traffic volumes. But they also tend to have higher conversion rates. This makes sense, of course: if someone searches “Blu-ray DVDs for sale in Lubbock, Texas,” you can be pretty sure that they’re serious about buying a Blu-ray today. If they just search “movies,” who knows?

Targeting long, specific, high-conversion keywords is called “long tail” SEO. And understanding long tail SEO is important, because it helps illustrate that SEO isn’t as simple as getting to “the front page of Google” for some generic keyword.

SEO isn’t everything, of course. If your site isn’t getting conversions, it could be time to invest in a new ecommerce web design, better app design, more extensive advertising, or even in better products or customer service. But when all else is held equal, SEO is vital for getting ahead in today’s marketplace. And understanding how SEO intersects with smart marketing and conversion rates will help you get more out of your SEO strategy – or help you hire a team that can.