Every SEO agency runs a little differently, but just interview a handful of them and you will notice one common focal point: rankings. Some SEO agencies will be flat out ridiculous and promise first-page Google rankings within a set time-frame, while others simply emphasize rankings as being the primary goal and the single most important thing that any organization should focus on.
But you are not in the business to rank, and ranking well doesn’t automatically generate revenue.
Instead, ranking should be one of many steps that effective SEO agencies use that enables the right buyers to find the right content most likely to convert them into paying customers.
This article is intended to not only help executive teams and managers learn how to find the best SEO agencies that will help them hit their growth goals, it will also help them learn if SEO, as a solo strategy, is even the right investment to help them hit their revenue targets.
Ranking well on Google to attract customers is a goal almost any company would like to hit, but before jumping on that train you should first ask yourself to what extent it will actually help you increase sales.
If you have products with low price points and short sales cycles, and your customers tend to buy them within a few minutes of finding your website, then working with an SEO agency that focuses on rankings your products for target buyers can be an ideal investment.
However, if you have a longer sales cycle, you sell luxury products or services, and your buyers invest thoughtful time in doing research before making a purchasing decision, then ranking content for the right buyers should be done within the framework of a growth marketing stack that leads organic traffic through a nurturing process until they are ready to make an educated purchasing decision. This means it is critical that you invest in an SEO agency that uses a growth marketing approach built on how your customers make purchasing decisions.
Many SEO agencies make the mistake of going after relevant keywords that have massive search volume. First of all, ranking for these keywords takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. Depending on the size of the SEO team, their skills, their tech tools, and how competitive the keyword is, it can take several months to a year to rank these. But more importantly, the keywords with the largest search volume are broad keywords. This means they are general and bare no context that reflects the user’s needs. If in fact your products are high-end and you have a longer sales cycle, your SEO agency should follow these guidelines:
In order to use keywords to rank content designed to convert traffic into sales, there must be variety, and they must all work together to achieve the same goal–attract visitors most likely to convert.
With its hundreds of updates that rolled out in 2019 (and a few core algorithm updates), one thing remains abundantly clear: Google has, and will continue to, award content that seeks to provide a solution to the searcher’s needs. This means content enriched with the right contextualized keywords must adhere to the following in order to generate conversions from organic traffic:
When your SEO agency produces well-written, natural content that achieves these points, using the right keywords, in the right context, you can rank custom content for target buyers that will garner revenue increases, as opposed to ranking blindly to the moon for the sake of appearances and little else.
Download our FREE guide on the WEBITMD SEO approach, and determine if it is ideal for your business, or if it would garner more sales used within a growth marketing stack. This will likely require you to have a free consultation with our team to find the best solution, so call today!
