| There Should Be More to
your SEO Consultant Than Rankings
By David Leonhardt, SEO Consultant
Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions in SEO is that
ranking at Google and Yahoo is all that counts in search
engine optimization. Potential clients come to me with a
single goal: "Get me a top-ten ranking at Google."
Some will also mention MSN, and a few will rhyme off a list
of search engines and want to rank well at the top 200 of
them.
It is time to separate fact from fiction.
Yes, your SEO consultant can get you a top-ten placement
at Google. But...
1. If the placement is for "dirty brown shoes",
it probably won't help our shoe store one bit, even if I
get you the first place ranking. Few people are actually
searching for that term.
2. Being number ten might not help much either, depending
on the term. People searching for "Essential Nectar
liquid vitamins", will probably click on the first
result they see, or at least on one of the "above-the-fold"
results that do not require scrolling. On the other hand,
someone searching for "liquid vitamins" might
check through two pages of results to familiarize herself
with the options available.
3. If your title tag reads like a cheap list of search
terms, it will not be enticing. For instance, if it reads:
"vitamins, liquid vitamins, multivitamins, multi-vitamins",
you might skip over it in favor of the next result that
reads "Liquid vitamins from the Liquid Vitamin Supplements
Store".
4. If your description tag is a mess, people will more
likely skip over your listing, even if it does rank number
one, in favor of one that sounds like what they are looking
for. Google and others use the description tag usually when
the term searched for is found in it, so make sure to include
your key search terms in a description tag that actually
reads well.
I recently responded to a forum question, which went something
like this: My site ranks number one for this term at this
engine. The term is searched this many times per day, and
the engine has this percentage marketshare. Can I expect
this many visitors?
That's not an SEO challenge; that's a math problem: searches
x
marketshare = visitors
I responded with a few factors that override mathematics
in the SEO game, including the site's title tag and description
tag, as well as whether the term lends itself to scrolling.
I also pointed out that it depends on the title tags and
description tags of the competition, too.
Another factor that makes predicting traffic difficult
is the abandonment factor - how many people click on none
of the results because they get interrupted or confused,
or abandon the search for a new one because they find themselves
off-topic or searching too broadly.
It also depends on how many sponsored links there are and
how they are marked. Often at Yahoo and Lycos, for example,
there are so many ads that the average searcher might never
scroll a screen or two to see the organic (natural) results.
And, of course, it also depends on the color of the walls
in the room the searcher is clicking from, the weather outside
and how well they slept last night. But there is little
you can do about that.
What you can do is to work with your SEO consultant to
choose the most effective search terms for your business
and make sure he develops a title tag and description tag
that sell to both humans and the search engines. Then make
sure he is monitoring not just the rankings for your key
search terms, but also the description used by each of the
search engines.
A good ranking at Google and Yahoo is just one measure
of your SEO consultant's success. A more complete evaluation
is that he is your partner in building long-term, targeted
traffic
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