November 11th, 2009 by Or, Why SEO Is Not Enough
SEO, or search engine optimization, has been somewhat of a craze for awhile now. I believe this is an important part of developing an effective website. If no one can find your website, you will never sell, distribute information, or adequately promote your cause online. But you also need to focus on your online conversion rates.
SEO is not enough. Why not? It is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Merely driving more relevant traffic to your website is insufficient to meet your site’s goals. It helps. It helps quite a bit. But having a lot of people visit your website is probably not why you developed a web presence. You probably want to tell the world about something. You may want to sell a product. You may want to persuade people.
SEO sets the stage for meeting these goals. But SEO success is never a good measure for how well you are meeting your website goals.
So what is needed? You need to be able to measure the actual online conversion rates of your website. Conversion rate is basically a measure of how well you meet your goals. It could be the percentage of people who buy your product, the percentage of people who sign up for your newsletter, or how long people stay on a page to read an article. If you can measure these things and take steps to improve them, you will be in a much better place than if you focus all your efforts on SEO.
Are you seeking to provide your site visitors with a positive experience? Are you helping them find what they need? Does your site have broken links? Is your web copy easy to understand? Are you giving your site visitors what they came to your site to find? (Do you even know why people are visiting your site?) Is your site’s design complementary to your site goals, or does the design undermine these goals? Start working on some of these things, and you’re bound to see your online conversion rates improve.
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