If you have read this blog for awhile, you had to know that question was coming. We always talk in terms of goals and strategies around here. So let’s take a look at some SEO goals.

Maybe your SEO goal is simply to drive more traffic to your site. That sounds good. Why do you want more traffic to your site? Want more opportunities to sell your product or service? That sounds good too. Now let’s take a closer look. Is any traffic okay as long as it’s traffic? Or would you rather have a little less  traffic, but have that traffic be “quality” traffic? Let me ask that another way. Would you rather have 100 people visit your site who are not really interested in your product; or would you rather have 10 people visit who are really interested? What is your on-page SEO Strategy? What is your off-page SEO strategy?

Driving quality traffic takes a bit more research. You have to find those long tail key words that bring people directly to you. It may not get you as many “tire kickers”, but it may get you more people who are looking for your unique product or service. Something to think about.

If your SEO goal is to get more visitors so you can get more customers, you will also need to give thought to how you are going to convert visitors into customers once they hit your site. Do you have any calls to action or offers that would help you do that?

Of course, when you talk about goals, you have to talk about measurement. How will you measure your ROI? Do you have any analytics so you can see where you are starting? Can you tell what keywords people are currently using to find you? Do you have any idea what your visit to lead conversion rate is? What about your lead to customer conversion rate? You need to have a benchmark of where you are so you can meaningfully set goals about where you want to go.

There are free analytic tools that can give you some of that information. Google Analytics will let you know how many people are visiting you, how many unique visitors, what keywords are being used to find you and where your visitors are coming from. If you are just starting out with SEO and setting SEO goals, this may be all you need to get started. Paid tools such as Hubspot can give you the same information as Google Analytics plus it can tell you your visitor to lead conversion rate and your lead to customer conversion rate.

Now that you know where you have been, you can set goals about where you want to go. How many visitors do you have to convert in to leads and how many of those leads do you need to convert into paying customers to get to your goal?

Bottom line is, it is always important to have a goal. If you don’t care where you are going, anywhere you end is fine. Is anywhere fine for you?

Key Take-Aways:

1. It is important to set goals for your SEO so you can create strategies that will meet those goals.
2. Quality of traffic is more important that quantity of traffic if your goal is to convert visitors into customers.

Next Steps:

1. If you do not have any analytic data on your site, Google Analytics is a good place to start. It is free. You can get it here.
2. If you have been following your Analytics for some time and are ready to take it to the next level, contact us to see how to get started with a free 30 day trial of Hubspot.