Not All Rankings Are Created Equal: A Better Way To Think About SEO

It’s no longer about getting the #1 spot on Google.

The way most people think of SEO is horribly, horribly broken.

I’ll get calls asking for help getting to the #1 spot for a particular keyword, without any real reason why. There’s no rationale behind why the keyword was picked, and the only objective is to rank #1.

Having your ranking as your #1 metric is a path that will lead to inevitable SEO failure.

I can rank #1 and drive you thousands of clicks for some irrelevant keyword. You won’t get any new business though. But, when you use rankings (or even clicks) as your primary metric you’d still evaluate my terrible strategy as a success.

Instead, we only look at one thing. New customers.

If your strategy isn’t generating new business, it’s failing. It’s as simple as that. Tie an ROI to it, and track it like any other marketing channel.

If you invest $5k/mo for a year, and generate $100k in new profit it’s a success. If you only generate $50k, it’s a failure. While SEO does work on longer time scales, after you account for that it’s still relatively simple.