At least there is a high probability they aren’t. If they are, well then disregard the specificity and pay attention only to the concepts.
- Traffic Quality versus Quantity – Qualitative versus quantitative thinking
- Content
- Conversion
Here’s the point, people buy, not some statistical number known as traffic, not high rankings, not Google. That isn’t to downplay “traffic”, or as they said back in the day “hits” (you aren’t talking about “hits” any more are you?), but traffic alone isn’t going to drive sales. You need quality traffic. Your product is bought by real living people who want your product.
1000 visits with no sales or 10 visits with one sale.
There is a conventional wisdom out there in online marketing that places great emphasis on web traffic. The concept or belief is that copious traffic will mean copious sales. Not necessarily true.
- Being on page one is only relevant if you are on page one for the searches made by the people you want to reach.
- You have copy that gets into their heads and answers their need and solves their problem.
- You tell them EXACTLY what to do next.
So what’s the gist? Google doesn’t buy from you. (See above if they do.)
The meaning here in the internet marketing realm is that qualified targeted prospective buyers, people, are more important than statistics, or being on page one of Google’s rankings if your site sucks.
Search engine optimization has swept the internet marketing realm with thousands, so it seems, of SEO “experts” (many times with really bad English) hawking their “guaranteed” rankings and so on. The reality is far different.
The reality is that all the traffic in the world is worthless if that traffic doesn’t buy, doesn’t increase your profits.
Rarely, if ever, will you find an SEO expert offering to increase your sales, they simply offer to increase your traffic. This is actually quite easy to do. What isn’t so easy is to make your site sell. Well, actually, it is, but that is the most overlooked part of internet marketing, copy that converts.
So being on page one for the wrong keyphrase, or an almost never searched keyphrase is pointless, but more pointless still is having a web site that does not communicate well and simply fails to close the sale.
Targeted traffic + top quality copy = increased profits.
Traffic used be called “hits” and then eventually as the web became more humanized we started realizing that actual humans visiting was the important metric and we now track “absolute visits” or people. This hasn’t alleviated the fixation on traffic, but clarified what traffic is. Good.
So dominating Google rankings for your “keywords” is great, if and only if, the people looking for the information, products or services you offer are searching those keywords. That’s step one.
Step two is that these people then actually convert to customers in whatever form that takes, making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, whatever.
Knowing your keywords is logically the first step that is all too often botched or not targeted enough. In other words, you can rank for the wrong keywords, get tons of traffic, and your bottom line sees no change at all. Be sure to target the right keywords.
Remembering that driving sales is the goal, not just driving traffic, will keep your eye on the prize and not divert you into a meaningless numbers game.
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