After the last two sections, this one will seem pretty light. Goal setting seems pretty straightforward: You figure out what you want to accomplish through SEO, write it down, and keep track.
But I’ve found that setting measurable goals for SEO is incredibly difficult. It’s not because it’s hard to figure out what the goal should be. It’s because it’s so damned hard to convince everyone else what the goal shouldn’t be.
Examples of good goals
A few good goals might include:
- Increased sales from organic search;
- Increased pages viewed per visit from organic search;
- nn% reduction in cost per lead;
- nn% increase in conversion rate;
- And yes, even nn% increase in site traffic is OK, if it’s all you can measure.
These are all goals that go straight to your business goals. Even #5, if you’re a publication, can be a direct business goal.
To pick your goal, ask yourself these questions:
- What’s my company’s goal? To sell more products? Teach more people about the importance of tooth brushing?
- How does our website contribute to that goal?
- Is there a trackable action associated with that goal, such as a shopping cart, or a ‘contact us’ form?
I’ll talk more about the nuts and bolts of this in Analytics 101. For now, you just want to be able to write down the goal, whatever it is.
For example, if my company is a bicycle shop, my business goal might be ‘get more long-term customers and take great care of them’. In that case, my website contributes to the goal by showing bikes we have for sale, and inviting cyclists to stop by for a tune up. My options for a trackable action aren’t great, but I can at least watch how many people go to the ‘contact us’ page, which has a map and directions to my shop. If I can drive more visitors to that page, I have a chance at getting more walk-in customers.
Bad goal! Bad!
Then, there’s that one goal every CEO in America wants:
A high ranking for “[insert key phrase here]“.
I’ve seen clients and colleagues abandon entire campaigns because they couldn’t rank #1 for some incredibly challenging key phrase. Never mind that sales were up, or traffic from organic search had increased 100%. If they didn’t have the ranking, then forget it.
Repeat after me: A ranking is not a business goal.
More sales is a business goal. A ranking is not.
But Ian, you say, this is just some silly semantic difference. A high ranking for ‘clothes’ will get me more customers and sales!
Yes, it might. But it could take you 10 years to achieve that ranking. You can also get more customers and sales by improving your site’s visibility and rankings for 1,000 less-challenging ‘long tail’ terms. Chances are, you’ll succeed faster and with less effort, too.
Even worse, there’s no great way to consistently measure rankings any more. With personalized search, geotargeting and other customization that search engines apply to every search result, it’s very difficult to track consistent rankings. Yes, we can do it, with proxy servers and fancy stuff. But that still won’t show you what Jane Consumer down the street sees.
So don’t make rankings a goal of your SEO campaign. Focus on real business goals, instead.