What Counts As Winning In The SEO World?

Search engine optimization is a challenging task. You want your website to rank highly for key terms, but you're likely to have to compete with folks who want the same thing. Winning is the goal, but what counts as winning in the SEO world?

Ranking on Search Pages

Generally, an SEO services provider is trying to help a client rank well for particular terms. If someone runs a fashion retailer, for example, they're going to want to rank highly for terms associated with the fashions they carry.

Notably, this doesn't mean the business has to rank strongly for the individual word "fashion." That may be an insurmountable challenge because the concept is broad and highly contested across the SEO space.

Many SEO strategies for highly competitive keywords focus on niches. Ranking highly for the term "hats" might be a beast of a challenge, but you might be able to target a narrower style of hat. This is especially the case if a trend is just developing.

Local Search

Many organizations aren't trying to conquer the world with SEO. However, if there are three grocery stores in a small town, one of those businesses is going to come out the top dog in a search.

At a minimum, you want to know your site exists for local search purposes. If it doesn't appear anywhere on the first page, especially for a narrow sector without notable competition in the region, that's bad. A business should appear in search locally for the basic things it does. Likewise, it should appear in industry-specific business listings with its phone number, website, social media pages, and email attached.

Analytics and Measurements of Growth

SEO efforts need to move the needle to count as winning. An SEO services firm will install analytics systems on your sites so you can begin to measure performance.

Bear in mind, you will also need to set performance indicators. A retail business will want to see increases in customers and sales, for example. However, a non-profit helping people leaving abusive relationships might want to increase contacts from target demographics. Make sure your metrics match your goals.

Continuing Improvement

You should never treat SEO as a fire-and-forget solution. Good SEO work allows you to continually improve. Once you've fixed the use of metatags in a site's code, for example, you should be able to move ahead with improvements in keyword targeting. After that, you can tackle grammar or A/B testing of headline structures. You are probably winning if you can keep moving toward higher-level SEO solutions after each iteration.

Contact an SEO services provider to learn more.