Setting Expectations for your SEO Campaign
Great article I just came across about SEO campaigns and how to set expectations for them especially now during this difficult economy.
It talks about setting real expectations for your SEO campaigns. You shouldn’t freak out if you’re not listed on page one of Google’s search results page right away. SEO isn’t simple and there are a whole slew of things that affect the positioning within the search engines. Moving toward the top of those listings is going to take some time and effort. It’s not going to happen over night. Some people tend to get frustrated because the results are not instantaneous like it is with pay-per-click. SEO is an effective, long-term investment, but the results are going to take some time. If you know this and understand this right off the bat, this will help you know what to realistically expect from your SEO campaign.
First page rankings depend on many things such as keyword competitiveness, link popularity, and content volume. You need to know that your listing is not guaranteed a page one result in the SERPs and that you cannot simple “move” your organic listing to page one. Making sure the person who approves the budget for SEO understands this should help you from the beginning.
Make sure you are measuring the right thing. While increasing the number of visits from the search engines should be a goal of your SEO campaign, it shouldn’t be the only data point you want to measure to prove the value of your campaign. Take time to identify your calls to action and know what your conversion goals are. What is your company trying to measure? What is their goal? Once you know that, you can then measure each conversion point within the sales funnel.
Maybe it’s a request for more information, a newsletter sign-up, a brochure download, or an application submission. Having all this data and being able to tie it back to other reference points with your SEO program will help you prove the value of the increase in search engine traffic.
Setting a baseline to measure progress over time is extremely important.
Don’t forget that the search engines need time to index your web pages.
Try looking at month-to-month comparisons as opposed to daily comparisons, as the month to month data tends to be more realistic. Understanding the month-to-month implications of your SEO efforts is important. Don’t give up on your entire SEO plan just because you notice a slight dip in one day’s results after you have changed something, like the heading tags, for example. Looking at the day-to-day data can be interesting and even become quite addictive, you should make a habit of comparing the month over month data.
Make sure you understand what’s working and what isn’t working. Keeping a log of the dates on which you implemented each SEO activity can help you do this.
Any data that you can tie back to your SEO activities will help you justify your need for SEO—especially now when budgets are so tight.
In summary, if you are setting realistic goals, measuring your performance towards reaching those goals over time, and if you are identifying key conversion points, you should be on your way to having success and longevity with your SEO campaign.
