Your Gigs... Do Clients Want Sales or SEO?

[BiznessAsUsual]

Good morning folks,

Just curious as to whether most of your gigs are sales-oriented or focused on SEO. It seems as though the last few years have been dominated by SEO gigs (for lead generation and database growth), whereas now, gigs are more frequently geared towards direct sales.

I wonder if this is because SEO has changed, and for all intensive purposes, no longer exists.

You thoughts?

[Dan Furman]

I tell my clients to think about it logically - if "ranking" was as simple as putting in magic keywords, well, anyone could rank at any time. It's not 2002 anymore.

I'm convinced that SEO - in terms of copywriting - is borderline useless. And I generally tell this to my clients.

Now, let me be crystal clear in that yes, you need the important keywords in your pages. And keywords WILL rank you high if nobody else uses them. I can make a blog post rank #1 on Google in an hour But it would be for keywords that nobody would ever search for. I've done it - go type Gamera, Godzilla, and Bourbon into Google and see what comes up. (you need just do those three words... did you do it? Cool, huh?)

Anyway, the point I am making is *everyone* uses prettymuch the same keywords. If you are a Podiatrist in Des Moines, your 25 competitors are all going to use the same keywords. Oh, you might think you're cute in calling yourself a foot doctor or a toe specialist, but I guarantee your competitors thought of that as well. Bunions too.

These days, keywords only put you in the game on a basic level with everyone else. Other things (like backlinks, time online, usefulness of your site, etc) all count for WAY more than keywords.

[bulk]

My clients can be divided into three groups.
The first one understands that SEO solves problems of business. Some of them pay me exactly for sales, and I am okay with that.
The second group likes rankings and sometimes is satisfied with it even if it doesn't bring sales.
The third one wants traffic. Sometimes I can explain that traffic is not this all, but still...

[vangogh]

I don't think this kind of thing is limited to seo. Deep down people want the sale, but making a sale isn't necessarily an easy thing. There are usually lots of steps involved. When you aren't making the sale you think more about the steps along the way to the sale and how to improve them. If I can get more people to my site or to read my email then I should realistically sell more.

The problem though is people start to focus so intently on all the steps leading up to the sale that they lose sight of the sale itself. The forget that each step is just one in a process and it's the whole process that's important.

[jim.sklansky]

The main key factor is "SEO". Whatever your gig or site is, if you really do a good SEO for it, surely it will on the top rank. From my personal experience, i have seen some top ranked SEO sites where i found less information with much advertisement. So i'm little confused! :confused:

[imarketingpromoter]

I think people are now more aware that SEO doesn't necessarily get them sales and they know better what to ask for.

[dianecoleen]

SEO that has resulted through hard work should basically give you good sales. The term SEO should not only rely on links you earn or content you produce, but it should have to provide good information and a good user experience to consumers, making them feel valued by the owner of the site. Thus, resulting them to buy the services/products you are offering. What I mean is that along with all that technical stuff you'll do on your SEO, try not to forget that you are doing these stuffs because you want to gain traffic from a real human and not just robots. I know, doing these, wont be an easy mission. You have to test it via trial and error for you to attain the goal of ranking while converting the traffic into sales.

Most of our clients will probably don't have the idea of what does it take to do the SEO and other technical thing. They only think of paying us for the SEO and expect sales in return.

[Kumar Palani]

Although SEO is important at the end of the day your contents, website, business, investments and the rest are all focused on humans (your potential clients) and so it is always important to limit SEO elements to just a few keywords and images. Focusing on Call to action, trying to answer the questions and doubts that your clients might have are vital.

In the end Search Engines can only bring traffic, but its your content that convert them in to leads.

[Ola Rybacka]

We're trying to reconcile those two, because we believe that good position in Google search makes you more visible for potential customers and it generates sales. That's why we create a great quality content.

[Harold Mansfield]

1. Everybody can't be #1. Sometimes you'll NEVER rank high and you need to realize when those times are based on the resources you have available to you.
2. You don't have to be #1 to increase sales.
3. Everyone doesn't get the same search results anymore.
4. SEO is only part of an online sales and marketing strategy. It's not the whole kit and kaboodle. If all you do is focus on SEO and Google position and ignore everything else, you'll just waste a lot of time and money and end up frustrated. Not because SEO isn't important and doesn't work, but because you fail to understand how to market your business online...or what marketing even is.

[Harold Mansfield]

If SEO is done right and the website is promoted for the right keywords, then yes the SEO will increase sales. If the website is not optimized and sales ready ( I guess I should say a new term SALE OPTIMIZATION) then whatever traffic they receive on the website won't matter.
All the people asking for SEO are really looking to make money, so one way or another, it's all about the sales.
Sales and sales and making money, and they think that SEO and being on the first page will make them lots, which if everything is optimized could be the case, but most times SEO people will just target anyone to increase the traffic and google ranking.

People need to read that part multiple times. There is an unrealistic association that popularity means more money. It's not true on social media. It's not true online. It's not true anywhere. Common thinking is that if I just get more attention I'm bound to make more money. They also expect the web to be magic and overcome bad design, bad copy, bad hosting, poor service, and every other way that people shoot themselves in the foot every single day.

Just get online and everything will take care of itself.

The truth is that many small business owners have no sales or customer service skills (yet think they are awesome at it) and it shows in everything they do from their social media profiles to the copy on their website.

[HSteele]

Popularity means more money as well. Because here statistic laws begin to work. And if you have 1000 visitors per day than the possibility of their conversion is higher than if you have 10 or 100 visitors.

[Harold Mansfield]

Popularity means more money as well. Because here statistic laws begin to work. And if you have 1000 visitors per day than the possibility of their conversion is higher than if you have 10 or 100 visitors.

No it's not. It's all about targeting. Arbitrary numbers hoping to get a sale is wasting your time and resources and doesn't make you more money.
It's better to have 10 or 100 visitors who've found exactly what they were looking for, than 1000 random visitors hoping for a possibility.

Unless of course you're trying to make money from banner advertising. But if you're selling a product or service, targeting is how it's done.

[Harold Mansfield]

All true but in 2016 it's all about social signals. I've seen people outrank older businesses and new websites get on top in a day from thousands of social signals.
It's a stupid trend, but that's how it is. It's all about shares, pins, likes etc.
It can be one element. It's not the whole kit and caboodle.

[journalist55]

I think today a lot of business are definitely focused on SEO. With every company marketing themselves online it's important to get yourself up on the list.