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Stop obsessing over ranks - Here's why!

  • Cristian Level X3
    • 21

    Write the reason you're deleting this FAQ

    Stop obsessing over ranks - Here's why!

    Every time I read an SEO based strategies for a new project it always sounds the same and ends up with ranking number one for a bunch of search queries or keywords. 
    Stop obsessing over ranks - Here
    The essential goal of the SEO specialist is also not understood properly. My goal shouldn't be getting websites ranking in the first position. It should be getting you more sales, more leads and more profit.

    And guess what? You can actually have a bigger profit despite the fact that you aren't ranking number 1 for everything under the sun! 

    The most important question is: Should we still focus on ranks and do they matter anymore?
    Answer: Ranks don't matter as much as used to and you shouldn't dedicate your entire SEO strategy on ranks!

    The old idea was simple: if you increase a website's traffic you will get more sales. But, we all know that isn't true in this day and age. I believe websites need to be efficient in getting leads and sales, as efficient as possible and unfortunately, that means you are probably going to get less traffic, but as I said, the quality of the traffic is important not its quantity.  

    We all know that organic traffic isn't really free. Are you paying for SEO services? Then it isn't free. 
    Are you paying an SEO specialist, are you paying a digital agency to implement SEO tactics or do you do SEO yourself and waste time doing it? Then the answer is simple: organic traffic is not free traffic and I personally hate when SEOs try to sell it that way. 

    Now that we got this out of the way and we know organic traffic isn't free we should figure out the most important metric when it comes to making a profit online: CPS (Cost per sale) - how much money do you spend for making one sale and this includes SEO!

    Once you start seeing SEO services as a PPC campaign I assure you that you won't have time to obsess over rankings anymore and in the end, if your cost per sales goes down and the number of sales and lead go up you won't really care. 

    Here are my main three suggestions for increasing your organic leads and sales although you may lose some rankings and positions:

    1. Increase your organic CTR (Click click-through).
    You will need to increase your organic CTR because if you have a good organic CTR, theoretically your conversion rates should also go up. To increase your organic CTR you will need to optimize your title tags and meta descriptions, the content that actually appears inside search engines. 

    A good optimized title tag and meta description can bring in more clicks even if you aren't in the first position. If you are solving a user's problem they will choose you over your competition even if your competition is more SEO friendly and responds to Google's algorithm better. 
    In time you may even get top positions because of your good organic CTR, after the rank brain update Google is capable of understanding human behavior and will increase your ranks of you are answering people's problems better than the competition. 

    2. Focus on improving your headlines. 
    Stop wasting time developing highly optimized headlines that contain exact matches of your main keywords. Do you need to focus on conversions remember? What type of stuff should you say to keep users around and interested? Put yourself in their shoes, what type of headlines would make you stick around? 

    Test your potential headlines in your PPC campaigns, the ones that did the best should be chosen and implemented as real headlines, even if they aren't SEO optimized! Point is that users stick around and conversions go up, that should be your only concern. 

    Start researching into emotional words, power words and everything in between. Writing a good headline is an art and if you aren't taking things to the next level you will definitely be left behind by both search engines and your competition. 

    3. User experience based design. 
    Have you taken into consideration users experience when designing your landing pages? Are they able to handle organic users and meet their needs? No? 

    Well, you should better find a designer with strong UIX knowledge because you are missing out! 
    Keep mind that most users start reading a web page from the top left corner, do you packed sufficient quality information in that corner to keep your users happy and engaged? Learn to optimize your landing pages for conversions! Everything from design to the actual content should be focused on conversions and not get better rankings! 

    #Stop #Obsessing #Ranks SEO
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    wiseagent

    wiseagent

    I think that this ranking issue was created with only one purpose: competition.

    Looking on the customer / consumer side this is not necessarily a bad thing because the competition will make companies have more commitment in offering better products... But looking on the owners side, this obsession with the first places on the podium may be something very frustrating (but not necessarily disqualifying for their companies).
    7 years ago

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    vinaya

    vinaya

    Getting a good SERP is on the benefit of your website. When you have good rank on search engines, you are likely to get more traffic. Traffic from the search engine is organic traffic, when you get organic traffic click-through rate also increase, which means your ads are clicked, your products are clicked.
    SERP increases chances of organic traffic, however, it does not guarantee organic traffic and CTR. Therefore, we should focus more on getting sales and increasing CTR.
    You need to drive genuine customers to your website. You also need to publish better content with targeted keywords. When you optimize contents, related ads will appear on your website. When the ads are related, chances of getting ad clicks increases.
    7 years ago

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    augusta

    augusta

    I think the best bet is the content, with good content one tend to do well,therefore making room for success.

    To capture targeted audience one must work on the headlines, the must be targeted, catchy and enticing enough.
    7 years ago

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    Corzhens

    Corzhens

    That is a good explanation for those who are kind of obsessed with the ranking. I know that the ranking is the key to getting traffic which means the higher the ranking, the more traffic you can get. But being obsessed with the ranking will just give you the pressure that you do not need because the traffic will be coming in as long as you are doing the SEO work regularly.
    5 years ago

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    vinaya

    vinaya

    It does not matter whether your website has high DA, PA or Search rank. What actually matters is you are generating good traffic and your traffic is converting well. Traffic conversion is the only way to generate revenue. It does not matter with you are getting 10k traffic or not, what matter is whether your traffic is interacting on your ads and products or not.
    5 years ago

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    Baburra

    Baburra

    Great tips, thanks for sharing! I do agree that ranks don't mean as much as they used to because back in the day when social media was a little less popular, you only had search engines to rely on for publicity, but nowadays, you could just share your links on social media so even if you aren't ranked first, as long as you are making moves in social media then you are still able to gain some audience and possibly cultivate a community. I think it's still a helpful tool to get the top result spot in searches, but the main goal should always remain as gathering an audience instead of just making it to the first page.
    7 years ago

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    overcast

    overcast

    I think pagerank is dead and the ranking for the SEO is also dead. The thing these days is more or less into the image making and the branding. And on that point you can see that people are obsessed with the SEO in wrong way. They think of SEO as push button solution. And they think doing some things would bring the result. And on that understanding it'd be unreasonable for the obsession of the SEO.

    I personally let the clients know what things are and educate them on the action. That's the thing about SEO that is harder to tell the clients because they are result oriented.
    7 years ago

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    DarthHazard

    DarthHazard

    Page rank is still quite important but equally as important as some of the other factors that you have described. For example, people still search for sites on Google. Let's say they search for "Kitchen Plumbers in London". Your page rank will be important because they are much more likely to click the first few sites. It doesn't matter how nice your site is if they can't find it when they search for you on Google.
    7 years ago

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    overcast

    overcast

    Page rank is dead. Google does not count it. And they have stopped the toolbar with ranks. Now a days authority ranks are made through private data companies. Google does not have official page rank documentation and the content anymore. So page rank related tips are old and does not work anymore in 2017. So you can ignore it safely. Go for authority based sites. And branded and the sites with decent value can be used in that case.
    7 years ago

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    kgord

    kgord

    I don't think page rank matters as much as having a core of dedicated users using your site. Page rank is just one of the factors and ways to get new users to your site, but it is not the only factor. Those who want to use your site will go there regardless of the page rank.
    7 years ago

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    wiseagent

    wiseagent

    I got your point and I kinda agree with you, but... Don't you agree that a good ranking position can more easily (at least in the first moment) draw the attention of potential new users?

    This can make a big difference in the outcome.
    7 years ago

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    kgord

    kgord

    Yes, I think that is true too. I think the point of the article though, is that we shouldn't get overly focused on page rank. It is just one of the things that we should be looking at when we are appealing to new and previous users.
    7 years ago

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    wiseagent

    wiseagent

    A position in the raking is only one of the points to be observed, because if the website / forum doesn't keep up to date with useful information and / or interaction between / among members the advertising will die pretty fast (as well as the position in the raking).
    7 years ago

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    DarthHazard

    DarthHazard

    The user's experience of the site is extremely important and people tend to forget about it sometimes. How easy it is to use your site can drastically improve your organic leads and sales. If your site is not easy to navigate through then you may end up losing potential customers and sales. It's the same with a poorly designed website that does not look professional.
    7 years ago

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    randomzzguy

    randomzzguy

    The rankings are basically there to motivate users to do better which in the end will benefit the website by creating competition between users
    7 years ago

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    wiseagent

    wiseagent

    I think with this whole competition among blog owners / websites are the visitors / members that will win because the competition will directly stimulate the improvement of the services offered by the competitors.

    In the end, it's good for everyone. Stop obsessing over ranks - Here
    7 years ago

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    jpyy

    jpyy

    Actually, I wouldn't say that a lot of traffic is totally useless. I mean, cold traffic can be made warm or even hot. However, though, it takes time. Nonetheless, if people are looking for quicker sales, then I wouldn't waste money on traffic that won't convert fast.
    7 years ago

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    Judas2018

    Judas2018

    Ranking highly in the worlds most powerful search engine is the goal of any online business owner. But that doesn't mean you can't piece together other strong sources of traffic while you pursue the former. Social media, word of mouth, business card and paid advertising traffic is just as strong, if not stronger than the traffic you'd get from ranking highly in googles search results.
    7 years ago

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    Corzhens

    Corzhens

    I agree that we should not be obsessed with the SEO ranking. Think of how many searchers will reach your website if your niche is common. For example, my niche is pets. So how do I get to the first page of the search result? There may be millions of websites with that niche. My idea is for traffic because it is traffic that means money and not the SEO ranking. Regardless of the SEO ranking, if your website is getting more traffic then that’s good enough.
    6 years ago

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    jaymish2

    jaymish2

    @ corzhens your SEO rankings determine your traffic, that's why everyone is obsessed with SEO rankings. What I object to is people who want to rank highly and do not want to put the work in that is required to come in with a high quality site. I agree that we should focus on have amazing content and a well designed website more then on having our site highly ranked. I agree that they are other sources of traffic apart from SEO like social media, which people can pursue while working on their sites and waiting for their site to rank.
    6 years ago

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