You’re on the First Page of Google. Now What?
Josh Cline | Sunday, April 3rd, 2011 | No Comments »
By Josh Cline
As online marketing continues to integrate with traditional practices, it is easy for newcomers to fall into a common trap: believing that reaching the first page – or even the top search-result – of Google will guarantee success. But the search engine is not a digital version of a Golden Ticket.
After months of grueling work, your keyword research, on-site optimization, and search-engine marketing have paid off, and you are now near the top of Google’s search-results — congratulations! Your website’s traffic should start to skyrocket. But do not break out the champagne just yet. Executives and managers who are just starting to understand and incorporate so-called “inbound-marketing” techniques often — and understandably — confuse the means with the ends.
In general, the major purpose of any type of marketing department is to drive as many relevant leads to the sales department as possible (at least if you are a for-profit firm that offers products or services). As a result, if the sales team is less than stellar and unable to convert the prospects into paying customers, then all of the work of the marketing department will amount to little.
In online marketing, SEO and SEM are tasks of the marketing department, and websites play a significant role in the sales process. In this context, drawing a high amount of traffic to a poor-quality website that does not convert visitors into leads, prospects, and sales is useless. You may rank first in Google for your chosen keywords, but if that success does not translate directly into sales and dollars — or advertising clicks, contact-form submissions, or any other identified purposes — what, really, has your online marketing accomplished? It is easy to become confused by the numerous acronyms: SEO, SEM, SMM, PPC, and so on — but the important principle to remember is that all of these tactics are merely parts of what should be an integrated strategy.
Too many companies and organizations build a website and then think about optimizing it for search engines. However, this strategy focuses on Google, not potential customers. The first stage of SEO is keyword research, and this practice is the best way to determine how people are trying to find your product or service online (and how your competitors are trying to attract them as well). Once you have identified the best terms, then you can build a website targeting your prospects – using traditional-marketing theory – around the keywords. (Conversely, firms that research keywords for SEO after building a site usually find that they need to revamp the site — it is a waste of time and money.) It is crucial to create the keyword-based site before you continue with the rest of your Internet-marketing practices such as site-optimization, search-engine marketing (SEM), and social-media marketing (SMM). You would not want guests to come to a party at a house that was only partially renovated, would you?
So, before you start fighting for the first page of Google, you first need to integrate your online-marketing goals with traditional-marketing philosophies. This involves the standard practices of identifying your business model and then forming a comprehensive marketing plan – using both “old media” and “new media” – that will support the business model. Market research is crucial. Who are your target customers? What are their demographics? What is their general level of education? What websites do they visit? Do they use Facebook? Twitter? To which branding messages do they respond? And so on. These questions are just as relevant today as they were decades ago.
Once you have identified your customer targets, you can build a website that incorporates the keywords, appeals to them as consumers, and then converts them. Good websites, of course, will need items including crisp sales-text, attractive images, a clear value-proposition, and prominent calls-to-action. A top-ranked website in Google that lacks these factors will have a high number of clicks — but few leads that convert into prospects and even fewer who become paying customers.
It comes down to simple mathematics. Which would you prefer: to have 3% or 8% of the 10,000 visitors to your site per month become customers? Obviously, the latter. A marketing strategy that focuses only on getting a high Google ranking will deliver poor results unless it is complemented by integrated marketing-methods that combine traditional theory with modern practice as well.
Otherwise, you will see that you are getting a lot of traffic but few sales — and you will wonder, “But we’re on the first page of Google! Now what do we do?”
