AuthorityLabs founder, Chase Granberry, explains why organic search rankings matter to any business.
SEO has been a hot topic for a long time now. Some naysayers think rankings don’t matter, but more and more people are trying to learn about SEO than ever and rankings are the first indicator of whether you’re doing things right or not. For beginners, small and medium sized businesses, rankings can be the lifeblood of your website traffic.
Most noticeably in this economy, when ad spends are being cut, more dollars are being put towards SEO. SEO is a long-term investment in a site, but making sure that the company or consultant you hire does their job is a completely different story.
The SEO industry has gotten a bad rap over the years because of shady business practices. People didn’t know how to protect themselves from fraud when they know nothing about what’s actually being done to try move them up in the results. You also get “professionals” who can get your site #1 for a keyword no one searches for, but how hard is that and what value does that bring to the client … nothing. There are people that do quality SEO work, they’re just a little hard to find. Ask around, get references from friends and clients of the people you talk to.
Monitoring your own rankings independently of an SEO professional is important from a business perspective. It keeps everyone accountable. It’s also a valuable business metric if the Internet is a part of your model (which it should be … it’s 2009).
Managing rankings is important not only with regards to traffic, but branding as well. Which keywords are people finding you through? Where do you rank for those? What other results come up alongside yours? Is there any negative listings about your company within those results? What pages on your site show up for which keywords? Many people go to Google before they visit a website, so it could potentially be the first place your brand is encountered online.
Ultimately, search is just one part of the traffic (or marketing) mix that should sit right next to social media, email marketing, direct mail (yes I said it) and anything else that works for you. But the first place your going to see changes in traffic from search engines is where you rank, not knowing that is like not knowing who your last direct mail campaign went to.
Chase Granberry is the founder of AuthorityLabs, a simple rank monitoring service. The service allows companies to get feedback on how changes to asite affects search engine rankings and search traffic.
Tags: AuthorityLabs, Build Traffic, Keyword Ranking, Keyword Tracking, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
