Have you heard the story about the guy who made a boat load of money after he got his website ranked on the top of Google’s search results? If you are reading this article, you are probably wondering what it would take for your website to get ranked #1 for your product or services best keywords. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a very important role in ensuring that your website earns and retains the best search engine ranking, which should result in increased traffic, leads, sales for your business online.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a websites content and metadata to improve search engine rankings. Metadata includes the page title, meta description, heading, emphasized text, and keywords. SEO also covers internal and external links and overall structure of the website.
Impact of High Search Engine Ranking on Sales
Internet market research estimates that between 70% and 90% of people shopping online will use a search engine to find and purchase a particular product or service. Let’s take a quick look at some of the factors that can influence sales to see how effective search engine optimization can help to increase your revenue.
3 important metrics can be used to estimate online sales: average ticket, conversion rate, and the amount of website traffic:
- Average ticket is the amount of money a customer spends on a typical transaction. Jewelry and electronics stores have high average tickets, while online candy stores have low average tickets.
- Website traffic is measured by the number of site visitors that originate from direct, organic, and paid channels.
- Conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of page views per month, expressed as a percentage.
The Role of Keywords in Search Engine Optimization
Keywords are words or phrases that users type into search engines like Google and Bing to find specific information, products, or services. The search engine checks the content of a page to determine whether a particular page is relevant for certain words or search phrases and ranks them accordingly. Thus, strategic and effective keyword selection is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization.
Valuable keywords you target must be relevant to the products or services you are offering on your website. Ranking #1 for “roller skates” is meaningless if you primarily sell ice skates on your website. Potential customers will find your web page, quickly realize you are not offering the roller skates they were expecting, and leave your site. As a result, the conversion rate will suffer, and increased bounce rates may also hurt your SEO efforts.