If you are watching your website’s rankings for a handful of really important keywords, and not paying attention to traffic quality, sales and other conversions… you are doing it wrong.
Are Keywords Still Important?
Finding and using the right keywords in moderation is still important. But when it comes to checking your website’s rankings, most good SEOs will tell you that keywords are just one of many things you should look at as a way of measuring how your website is doing. I have even been telling some clients to forget about keywords altogether, since obsessing over a few keywords is a leading cause of search engine misery.
What?! But if I don’t rank #1 for “Blue Widgets” I will go out of business!
You sure about that?
Check your Organic Search Traffic in Google Analytics or another traffic monitoring tool. You may be surprised to see that since your SEO campaign started, your traffic has improved – even if you aren’t ranking well for “blue widgets”. But if your SEO is too focused on just a few keywords and not truly optimizing your site and its content, you probably won’t see an improvement with all your eggs in one basket.
Real people search for real things.
While some may search for your exact two word key phrase, many do not. They search for “best prices for widgets in blue”, “blue widgets with free shipping” or even a complete question like “Where is the best place to find blue and red widgets?” (especially if they are using Siri). If your optimization and inbound marketing are done well, these people will find you – maybe even without searching for the exact phrase, “blue widgets” at all! For example, the real estate website I am so fond of using to demonstrate things like this may not always rank at the top for “Jacksonville Real Estate”, but it gets a huge amount of traffic and leads from people searching for homes in specific neighborhoods, by street address or MLS number. Relatively few sales or leads have come directly from “Jacksonville real estate” or other allegedly high-value search terms, even when the site ranks #1 for them. “Cityname real estate” searches do have a lot of volume (the number of times the phrase is searched) if you check Google’s Adwords keyword tool or some other keyword research method. But think about this: how many realtors and SEOs are feverishly checking the rankings all day every day which inflates that number?
Another good example, and SEOs often point to this as proof of ability, is “cityname SEO”. But what if the SEO company isn’t too concerned with the local area? They may not even think about localized key phrases.
So an SEO may be able to point to a decent postion for that phrase and claim it means something, but how is the overall organic search performance? Are they getting visitors who searched for something more meaningful? Knowing how your site ranks for certain keywords is helpful in getting a broad view of how it is going, but reaching more people for a wider variety of searches that are relevant to what you have to offer is much more productive.
Organic Search Term Diversity = More & Better Traffic
Here are some charts from SEMRush showing the organic search traffic to KerCommunications.com, and a few competitors who also rank well for “Pittsburgh SEO” or “SEO Pittsburgh“. The graphs show all organic searches, not just “Pittsburgh SEO” which has a monthly search volume around 500 searches, most of which can probably be attributed to all nearly every SEO agency in Pittsburgh checking their own rankings frequently. Real SEO customers tend to search for other things.
Our organic search traffic is much higher than the others because rather than micro-managing one or two keywords, a much wider net is cast.
Note to competitors: If you figure out how to copy what Ker Communications does and it starts working for you, send a thank you note or something.
If Not Keywords, What SHOULD you be looking at?
Well, it depends on your business and your goals, but traffic and conversions are going to be more useful than keyword rankings alone. Ecommerce sites may need to rank for specific products to get the traffic and make the sales. An informational site about blue widgets may in fact need that keyword to do well. The important thing is to make sure you know what success looks like, so you don’t focus on the wrong goal. Keep your eye on traffic volume and quality, and whether or not you are achieving your business goals, not just your keyword goals.
