5 Things SEO Won’t Do Search Engine Optimization is important, but it’s not a magic bullet. Here’s what SEO won’t do for you.	Visited: 2465 4.8/5.0 (25 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Brian Easter May 17, 2010

Interactive campaigns rely heavily on SEO, and for a good reason.  SEO is a great tool for gaining exposure, increasing traffic, and building a brand.  However, SEO is not a magic bullet that will cure all of your marketing woes in one fell swoop.  Often, clients approach an agency with little to no idea of what SEO is used for or how effective it will be.  Their ideas just don’t line up with how SEO truly works.  There seems to be some SEO urban myths out there - so what’s true and what’s not? 

SEO Won’t Necessarily Increase Your Conversion Rate

Don’t get me wrong, quality and targeted website traffic is a key component of the conversion equation, but additional traffic doesn’t necessarily mean a greater percentage of conversions.  As we mentioned in a previous article, we have a simple formula that serves as a litmus test for determining if an SEM campaign is a worthy initiative for our perspective clients to undertake.

Good Landing Pages + Good Products + Targeted Traffic = Conversion.

In reality, it’s a little more complicated than that, but at a high level that’s it in a nutshell.  If any part of that equation doesn’t pull its weight, the conversion rate is impacted.

Bringing a ton of traffic to a poorly designed site does two things.  First, you give a lot of people an opportunity to have a negative brand experience.  Second, you keep your web server busy.  Neither of these are worthy goals. 

People often ask us whether they should prioritize design or SEO.  Quite frankly, even though I’m a search guy, it’s an easy question.  The easiest way to improve ROI is by increasing your conversion rate, which is directly impacted by design.  Let’s say I spend 50k per month on marketing and have a 1% conversion rate.  To double my sales I have 2 options:

1. I’d need to double my monthly spend (from $50k to $100k) – $600k increase annually
2. Or I’d need to double my conversion rate from 1% to 2%

Which do you think would be less expensive? Even if I spent 150K on a new web design, usability studies, heuristic analysis, landing page optimization, and conversion rate optimization, I’d save $450k ($600k – $150k) in the first year alone.  I’d also have the added benefit of a better brand experience for my clients.

Like I said before, I’m a search guy and I believe in SEO, but SEO alone won’t necessarily make your conversion rate increase.

SEO Won’t Replace Pay Per Click

We hear too many clients say, “I’d like to get SEO going so we can turn off our PPC campaigns.”  When asked why, common answers include:

• PPC results in a charge every time someone clicks and we don’t like that.
  • Does it fall within your cost per conversion goals?  If so, why would you ever turn it off?  If you get traffic that converts at the right CPA, you’re growing your business.
• PPC doesn’t convert and we want SEO traffic instead.
  • If PPC traffic doesn’t convert, SEO isn’t likely to either.  This question often requires a conversation about the conversion formula.
• Because SEO traffic is free.
  • Nothing’s free, and SEO is no exception. You’re going to pay your agency, and you’re going to allocate internal resources for strategy, review, content, reporting, etc. There’s nothing free about that.

It’s also important to know that for the most part, natural search results get about 2/3 of the clicks while PPC ads get about 1/3 in the major search engines.  This means that if you turn off PPC, you’re essentially ignoring 1/3 of your audience.  Let me say that again – you’re ignoring 1/3 of your audience, and it could actually be a much higher percentage when you factor in regional searches.

Someone searching for “web design company” who is located in Atlanta, GA is substantially more likely to click a geo-targeted PPC ad with good ad copy that indicates the Atlanta location, versus a generic “web design company” located somewhere several hundred (or thousand) miles from Atlanta.  This means a hybrid strategy is a must, not an option.

For example, a local flower shop could create a regional SEO strategy for terms like “Atlanta Red Roses,” “Atlanta Tulips,” etc. and then buy PPC traffic with broader terms like “Red Roses,” “Tulips,” etc., but set the geo-targets at a regional level.  SEO and PPC should work in concert with each other for greater performance.

SEO Won’t (at Least Shouldn’t) Determine Your Brand

We’ve had more than one potential client ask if their brand or domain strategy should be influenced by SEO.  The simple answer – hell no.  We’ve helped one of our clients consistently ranked in the top three in the major search engines for the term “managed file transfer” over the past few years.  If their rankings dropped, I would never advocate a rebrand to Managed File Transfer, Inc.

SEO is a tactic – period.  Doing keyword research and/or reviewing your Web Analytics to help inform you on how people are searching is smart, but taking it a step further and trying to create a brand out of a desired keyword string is not. 

Branding is the most important asset your company possesses, whereas SEO is merely a tactic used to drive visitors to your site.  Using keywords as your brand can easily lead to ridicule within the industry or result in customer confusion.  Keyword research and SEO should be used to determine how traffic is coming to your site, but not what your brand should be.  At the most, SEO should be used to help influence decisions about new products, not to change the core concept of your company. 

SEO Won’t Make You Rich Overnight

Everybody wants a quick fix.  However, SEO does not operate like the lottery.  Hitting the jackpot is not something that actually happens in SEO campaigns, unless of course you’re referring to a great link source.  The main tenants of SEO - rankings, domain strength, and quality links - all require time to build. 

Think of search engines like taking a trip across the ocean in a cruise ship.  It’s slow, it’s tedious, but you know that eventually you will get where you’re trying to go.  Clients should know that if they’re looking for immediate rankings, PPC is the way to go and they’re going to be paying for their rankings.  Search engines like to sit back and wait to see if a website is just going to be a flash in the pan, or if they should reward it with higher rankings and trust.  Long story short, SEO is not a short term game. 

SEO campaigns often need weeks to months to show results, and when they do it’s still an iterative process to keep your campaign going.  SEO is like a pregnancy, 9 months of waiting and then years of attention to the result.  SEO campaigns require constant tweaks and adjustments, and even then SEO (just like unruly offspring) is not exactly predictable.  While SEO is the most efficient way to drive traffic to your site, it is important to remember that search engines are trying to provide the most relevant results to searchers, driving traffic to your site is just a byproduct.

SEO Won’t Bring Consistent & Stable Traffic

Fluctuations are a way of life.  There are however, some fluctuations that can make your heart skip a beat.  Those who expect SEO to perform consistently, with growth following a linear path and no downturns, may have experienced this physical phenomenon a time or two. Even for the best-crafted, perfectly managed SEO campaign, there are going to be some months when metrics don’t measure up.

SEO is not for the faint of heart.  You have to be willing to accept the hits.  When Google implements a new algorithm or outside factors change the industry, SEO campaigns can and will respond.  Dramatic drops are an unfortunate side of SEO that must be dealt with.

The best way to prevent dramatic changes in metrics to create a solid site that doesn’t rely on gimmicks to drive traffic.  Relevant content and a trustworthy domain are the most effective safeguards your SEO campaign can have.  However, no matter how good your site is, some months are still going to be better than others. Consistency and stability are two things to look for in a life partner, not an SEO campaign.

Conclusion

SEO can be perplexing even to experienced professionals.  Rumors floating around about algorithm changes, semantic search, and other trends make definitively explaining SEO a risky proposition.  Clients, who don’t have as much SEO experience, often demand a rigid and complete definition of what SEO is and how it works.  Explaining away preconceived notions is a big, although not fun, part of an SEO specialist’s job.  Knowing in advance what SEO myths you might need to explain will help you create a healthy working relationship with your clients.