I have been doing more and more work on SEO for both my own clients and as a white-label dev for some local agencies here in Manchester and I’m often faced with the a dilemma: how do you account for a lack of market fit or an inappropriate business model?
eCommerce and Sales Success is not Just About SEO
What SEO does for websites is to make it highly visible in search engines. It is the equivalent of having a good brick and mortar store location where visitors are most likely to be able to see and interact with a shop. It does not, however, produce sales. It enables the process, but does not actively convert.
Google has been pretty clear on this subject (as clear as Google can be) however it seems that people overlook the obvious when thinking about SEO. If your website ranks well but keeps bouncing users off because, essentially, the content isn’t a good fit, the rankings will suffer alongside your conversion rates.
Just because a website is keyword loaded, technically optimised and content-focused does not mean that visitors will connect with it or choose to purchase products/sign up or convert.
Ways to Make Sure Your Content is Matched to What You are Selling
The key to content marketing and on page conversion is to bring users in who are going to be interested in purchasing your products. For example, I have a high traffic post on embedding an Instagram feed on your website on another of my websites (PS, it’s outdated). This post is great for SEO, but does nothing for sales for the company because the targeting is off. It brings in people who are interested in working on their own website or other developers, not those who are interested in booking services from a freelance developer.
A Solid Business Plan and Model Still Trumps SEO
An analog business plan and model can be successful without SEO, however a poor business plan and model still won’t be successful with great SEO and content marketing. In the end, if people don’t like the product, it won’t be successful.