A lot of SEOs and bloggers will tell you that the key to getting top search engine rankings is to get a high volume of traffic. But what’s more important: rankings or traffic?
The answer isn’t as black-and-white as it seems. SEO ranking and traffic are both important metrics to determine how well your website and campaign are performing. However, if you lose sight of what’s really important, you’ll waste a lot of time and money on your SEO campaign.
This article will delve deep into both SEO rankings and traffic to help you figure out where to focus your efforts.
Table of Contents
Does Website Traffic Really Matter?
A lot of SEOs will tell you that website traffic is one of the most important metrics in digital marketing. Rightfully so, website traffic helps you determine how many people are interacting with your site.
However, the bottom line is simple. What are people doing once they visit your website?
Are they staying on the site or are they clicking out to another website?
If you’re not seeing conversions, your traffic is worthless. But if people are taking action (e.g., buying a product), then it’s clear that those numbers have value and should be considered when evaluating where to invest SEO time and tactics.
Conversions are the Most Important Metric
If you’re not seeing conversions on your website, then traffic means nothing. It’s an easy way to waste a lot of time and money on SEO if people are just scrolling through the pages without taking any action.
But what do we mean by conversions?
A conversion is anything that leads someone to take an end-goal desired action (e.g., purchase). If they don’t convert, it doesn’t matter how many times they visit your site or click links from social media posts. Those numbers have no value in determining where to invest resources.
Website Traffic isn’t Important Unless You Rank
If you’re an SEO specialist, there’s a good chance that your main focus is ranking.
But what if you have the best website in the world but nobody can find it?
That doesn’t matter either because all of this work will be for naught unless people are finding your site and taking action on their visit. In other words, traffic isn’t important unless your website ranks high with search engines like Google for our desired keywords. But how are you supposed to know which keyword to target first?
The answer depends entirely on where prospects are coming from when they land on our pages.
Rankings Aren’t Important Unless You Convert
Rankings may not be important unless website visitors are converting, but they’re still worth considering.
If your website ranks high for all the keywords that your prospects are searching for, then it’s clear that rankings do matter and should be one of your top priorities in SEO strategy.
But if those terms don’t lead to conversions (e.g., visitors clicking on a call-to-action), then your website ranking won’t mean anything because they won’t help you grow your business or generate more revenue potential.
How to Boost Your Website’s Conversions
As you can see, rankings and traffic are both important. Though, conversions reign supreme. Below are some ways you can boost your website’s conversions and build more revenue for your website:
Create Relevant Content:
The most important content you’ll need to create will be the kind that truly resonates with your target audience. If people are drawn in by what they read or see on-screen, then chances are high that they’ll stay and convert.
Improve Your Website’s User Experience (UX):
If your website is difficult for visitors to find their way around, it doesn’t matter how many times you rank because all of this work will go to waste if no one can navigate through the site successfully.
Visitors want websites that are easy-to-navigate so they can quickly find whatever information they’re looking for without wasting their time clicking from page to page or scrolling endlessly down a long webpage.
Set an SEO Budget:
When it comes to SEO, the saying “you get what you pay for” is true. The more money you invest in rank-boosting services or tools, the better chance your site has of ranking high among search engine results pages (SERPs).
Identify Your Target Audience:
Don’t waste time creating content that will be irrelevant to a certain group if they’re not going to convert on your website. It’s important to know who your target audience is so that you can create marketing campaigns and copywriting material tailored specifically for them.
Make Sure Your Website is Technically Sound:
If your website has design flaws, technical errors, or broken links (e.g., 404 pages not found), it doesn’t matter how many times you rank because no one will be able to click on the content in Google’s SERPs and convert it into a customer.
For this reason, you should hire an SEO agency to perform a website audit and check for any technical errors that are hindering your site’s performance.
Build More Backlinks:
The best way to rank higher is through backlinks from other websites. This will require you to have a link-building campaign in place, which may include contacting bloggers and asking for guest posts or sponsored content placement on their site with your URL included as the anchor text.
Hire a Qualified SEO Agency:
It’s the best way to start out a campaign with guaranteed success. A qualified SEO agency will be able to help you identify which keywords are driving traffic and converting for your business, what type of content should go on each page, design changes that need to be made in order to rank better, etc.
At Dev.co, we take pride in being one of the top SEO agencies in the United States. When you choose to work with us, our team will help you turn your website’s traffic and ranking into meaningful conversions.
Contact Us Today!
Ultimately, rankings and traffic mean nothing when your website isn’t converting visitors. Do you want to learn more about how we can help? If so, contact us today to speak to a member of our team.
- Your Law Firm SEO Expert: Choosing a Marketing Partner for Your Law Firm - April 10, 2024
- 7 Most Important Keyword Metrics to Track in SEO - April 2, 2024
- Niche Edits: A Guide for Niche Edits in SEO Link Building - February 5, 2024
