Identifying The Main Objective Of Your SEO Campaign

by Guest Blogger on February 25, 2011

Guest Post by Bharati Ahuja | WebPro Technologies | @webprotech

Bharati Ahuja is founder WebPro Technologies, SEO Trainer and speaker, Web Entrepreneur, Blog Writer, Internet Marketing Consultant. Welcome, Bharati!

SEO? What's SEO?

SEO as a part of a digital marketing strategy cannot be ignored by any marketing organization. SEO, though a subset of online marketing, has a completely different character of its own. People are more likely to click on an organic search result compared to a listing under Ads. The website owners are allocating increased budgets to digital marketing, and ranking for organic search is one of their primary goals.

Well planned and chalked out SEO campaigns require sizeable budgets and every business would surely ask for the return on the amount invested in the SEO campaign. Complete ROI from any SEO cannot be calculated with 100% accuracy, as any good SEO campaign gives you good web visibility in addition to the SERPs, establishes your online brand, helps you to establish an online reputation and have a global reach. The total benefit from all this cannot be converted in metrics.

But, you can get an adequate idea about the ROI by first and foremost deciding the primary objectives of the SEO campaign.

Do you want your SEO campaign to result in :

Increase in direct sales?
Generation of more leads?
Driving more traffic?
Building you an online brand ?

The answer to these questions will make things easier for the SEO as well as you. The SEO will know what he needs to focus on and you can also know which metrics to keep track of, in order to to measure the success of the SEO campaign.

A complete web centric SEO campaign, which focuses on achieving organic rankings by etching the right quality digital foot prints on the web for your website, will – in the long run – give all the above mentioned benefits. If the priorities are set then the whole campaign has a direction and can be geared , monitored and managed accordingly.

Options...

If the priority is to achieve an increase in direct sales or generate more leads then the SEO (along with working on the on‐page and off‐page optimization for ranking on the SERPS) has to also focus on the following issues :

Are the landing pages well-designed for the targeted keywords ?
Do the landing pages have the requisite info. so that the visitor can make a decision to buy?
Does the website have easy online payment options?
Does it have simple and small forms to fill to register?
Are the leads generated being attended to and getting the necessary info from the staff when they call or email? This is important, in case the visitor needs to confirm something before buying.
Are all inquiries via phone or email, generated as a result of SEO, being recorded?
How many of such leads converted into sales?

All this is possible when the SEO and the client can work with a mutual understanding; there will be a lot of data in this case, which the client company will have to give to the SEO to calculate the ROI and gauge the success of the SEO efforts.

If the priority is to drive more traffic and to establish an online brand then the focus should be on :

social media integration
A well managed and maintained blog. As regular posts on informative topics related to your industry can surely drive the targeted traffic and also with the help of social media you can promote the post and generate a good WOM.
A high engagement level on Twitter and Facebook
Sharing views on other blogs of your industry which put forward you viewpoint and establish your identity.
Posting guest posts and thereby reaching out to other communities in your industry

Eventually, a genuine and well planned SEO campaign will undoubtedly give the website all the above mentioned benefits. However, setting priorities and an immediate objective helps in designing the path to follow so the SEO can focus on the priorities of the client.