Search engine optimization (SEO) is no longer just a secret tool of web-savvy marketers on the cutting edge. Even companies that have been around for a long time have to make sure that search engines like Google and Yahoo can always find them. This is because search engines are the main way that prospects and people who have influence find out about products and services.
Too often, companies don't care about search engine optimization or put requests for it on the back burner because senior management doesn't understand it well enough to lead and support it. And if the top management doesn't think it's important, marketing and sales staff are less likely to go after it. They will use old, "accepted," tried-and-true methods and avoid one of the most effective and measurable ways to get in front of prospects.
Too often, executives only pay attention to the technical parts of SEO and miss the more important strategic parts. Meta tags, spiders, hits, and visits don't mean much to the people who own and run a company. Results, in the form of more and better leads, do.
Here are some questions (and answers) that every CMO should ask and be able to give:
What do we want our web visitors to do?
Whether you want a demo request or a filled-out inquiry form as a response, management should know and agree on this "primary" action and share it with everyone who needs to know it. You might want to keep track of a few different things.
How many people who use search do what we want them to do each month?
Since this article is only about SEO, we are only interested in people who come to the site through a search. If you know this number now and keep track of it every month, you'll get a quick idea of how good and how much search traffic you get. Do not be surprised if up to 99 percent of this traffic does not do what you want it to do. It's always a challenge to get the right kind of traffic and turn it into real leads. A big first step is to figure out how well (or badly) you're doing in this area.
How many people who find our website through a search leave it within 10 seconds?
This magical number, which I like to call "short visit syndrome," is obviously about all of your website traffic. But if we look at search visitors, we can learn a few things. First, are you getting search traffic from the right places? Second, does your website do a good job of getting them interested or giving them what they are looking for? Companies often spend a lot of money and time to get people to find them through search engines, only to have most of them leave within 10 seconds.
Which search terms do we want to focus on?
You want to show up on search engines when people type in the phrases that your best customers and people who can influence them are likely to use. You'd be surprised at how different the way people actually search is from how your sales and marketing people think they search. This is because most searches happen during the research and investigation stages of the buying cycle. In fact, more than half of all B2B searches for purchases over $50,000 happen between two and six months before the purchase is made. And the person doing the search might not know enough about your product or service to find it. The key is to think carefully about how your audience searches (there are great research tools out there) and come up with a list of about 20 phrases that will be your company's target phrases. These are the phrases you should be measuring and putting most of your efforts on.
How often do we show up for our key words?
Too often, a webmaster, marketing manager, or even the chief marketing officer (CMO) thinks everything is fine because the company is at the top of Google for its name or for a very specific phrase that doesn't have much competition. It's important to know how often your target phrases show up on Google and other big search engines like Yahoo and MSN. Even though it might be more fun to focus on what's coming up, it's better to look at what's not coming up and where you're missing opportunities.
How often do we get compared to the other companies?
If it's important for you to know which major tradeshows or events your competitors attend and exhibit at, wouldn't it make sense to know how often your competitors are found on search engines compared to you? After all, the Internet and search engines have turned into the world's biggest and most popular trade show.
Putting everything in context with the big picture
Obviously, there are other, even more important things that a CMO would want to know about an SEO effort, such as the number of opportunities created, the cost per opportunity, the revenue generated, etc. Many executives think that this information is being tracked and reported on. But it's unlikely that anyone is. If you start to remember and act on a few of the simple ideas in this article, it could help you figure out how effective and productive your online work really is.
All of this information should be easy to find if your company has put together a smart search engine optimization plan and used some basic, widely available tools. If you don't get this information, you're missing out on a growingly important way to grow your business. SEO may be the most effective and cost-effective way to bring in new business if you compare it to the time and money you are already spending on it.
