This is Part of our Blog Series: How to Build a Winning SEO Strategy. Previously, we covered: What is SEO? 

The first step of establishing an effective SEO plan is to define your SEO goals. Are you interested in the visibility of certain keywords for their own sake, better branding, or more leads? Define your goals, and then make sure that you focus on those goals and track the results of your activity.

Most of our clients think about SEO as an important tool to help them become more visible on the search engines SO THAT they get more traffic to their website, SO THAT they get more leads or new business. Remember that in order for the last thing to happen, your website needs to be set up to catch and convert the leads which requires a good design, architecture and a strong call to action. All keywords, of course, are not created equal. It will be much easier to rank #1 on your company name than for a keyword like “financial advisors Boston,” or “financial advisors.” Not only do more general keywords have more traffic, they are also much more competitive, which makes it more challenging to rank well on general terms. If you are successful getting on the first page of the search engine results of a keyword with high traffic, it can make a big difference for your business. If you are successful in being visible on a keyword with little or no traffic, you might not even be noticed.

Remember that your end goal is not just search engine visibility, but traffic and ultimately sales or leads, so choose your keywords carefully. If you end up ranking on a keyword that is not relevant to your business, you may increase traffic to your website, but you may also increase the bounce rate from your website, since people clicking from that keyword will leave seconds after they arrive.

Establishing goals is the first step to SEO success. To learn additional techniques to rank better on search engines, please download our white paper, “How to Build a Winning SEO Strategy.”