Have you spent thousands of dollars with an SEO Consultant and found yourself wondering where the money went? Or have you spent countless hours following every bit of advice you could find to optimize your own website with nothing to show for it? The problem most likely isn’t that your SEO consultant stinks, or that you don’t know what you are doing – the real issue here is that we put too much stock into SEO in the first place.
The most common problem businesses face with their own SEO strategy or their SEO consultant’s strategy, is that the goals of SEO are not in line with the overall goals of your business!
Your Goals vs. SEO Goals
Let’s look at this further. If your SEO consultant comes to you after 6 months of work and proudly shows a report indicating that you have taken the top slots in search engine results for all of your desired keywords, that’s a win right? Well – it is for the SEO consultant. In fact, that’s all the SEO consultant is really worried about – your site ranking high in the search results. In the end, that is the primary goal of SEO – building a rank and placement advantage over your competition.
Now, let’s look at it from your point of view. If your boss or shareholders ask to see your progress after 6 months, what are they going to be most interested in? I’ll give you a hint – they likely could care less about search engine ranking. They care about leads and sales. They want to see movement in the bottom line. As a leader in a business, growth and sales are YOUR primary goal. So while your SEO takes his monthly check and pats himself on the back – you are left to puzzle over your new traffic, making sure it is a) relevant traffic and b) it is actually engaging with your website in a way you can leverage it for business.
So What Can I Do? Have a seat!
The first thing to do is realize that SEO, as a strategy, is not bad. In fact, SEO is a crucial element to a good inbound marketing strategy. The key, though, is that a good inbound marketing strategy is a COMPREHENSIVE marketing strategy. Think of inbound marketing as a three-legged stool. Here are the legs:
- First Leg: Generating Website Traffic
- Second Leg: Converting Traffic Into Leads
- Third Leg: Converting Leads Into Sales
We’ve all heard the three-legged stool illustration. You take away any one of those legs and the stool falls over. So many business rely too heavily on SEO alone, and as a result, find themselves frustrated and questioning their investment of money and time into SEO
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Inbound Marketing Explained
If you have heard about Inbound Marketing but aren’t completely sure what all is involved, this free eBook will answer any questions you may have.
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Stop the frustration, transition to Inbound Marketing
If you find yourself frustrated by SEO or any other area of digital marketing, having a good understanding of Inbound Marketing is a great place to get your bearings. When you understand the whole playbook, and how every component fits into the strategy, it takes the mystery out of these individual technologies and services and you begin to see how they all work together to drive traffic, generate leads and close deals – which, by the way, moves your bottom line and makes you a hero at your next board meetin[callout width=”400px” align=”center”]
Inbound Marketing: Attract Customers with Gravity!
We have developed this great eBook that explains inbound marketing in a very unique way. Inbound Marketing creates a gravitational pull that attracts customers to your website and this eBook has all the details on how this works.
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