When Do You Give Up On A Keyword?
One of the hardest things to do is admit defeat. No one likes to lose no matter what the situation is. This is especially true when it comes to keyword choices.
Clients look to seo professionals to guide them in the right direction and helping in the keyword selection process. But like all things in life, sometimes no matter how much you might want it, things just don’t work out.
So, how can you tell when it’s time to move on?
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If the keyphrase has been number one in Google for more than three months and little to no traffic arrives at your site. You need to retain the position that long in order to rule out seasonality of the phrase in question
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If your site is getting traffic from that phrase but is not converting – a sure sign that your keyword is not right for your target audience
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Your site doesn’t receive any halo effect phrase traffic. Words and phrases directly stemmed from your original phrase that deliver quality traffic
Never let the emotion of having a number ranking in Google determine your next move. While it might look great to some that you have a top ranked phrase, most smart business people would prefer a highly converting profitable phrase instead!
Until next time…
Paul
How many SEO Clients can you handle?
It’s a problem we’d all love to have, right!? In any business, the goal is to become so successful that you have to hire new people, expand your office and buy new equipment to handle all of the incoming clients.
But after all of that is taken care of, there is still the execution part of the deal where you have to be able to perform the job for which you’ve been hired to do!
So how can you determine what your optimum workload would be?
Since I can only use myself as a barometer, here are some of the factors that determine what I can take on at once.
Is it a new client?
Typically, the ramp up time is very time consuming. Most times the client site needs a bunch of seo coding implemented, and even if the client has an IT team to implement all the changes needed, you still need to review the code to make sure they’ve completed it correctly.
What type of campaign did they engage you in?
Most clients are happy with just saying “Get me ranked #1 in Google for whatever phrase”. Most of them don’t really want to know what you are doing, as long as their reports tell them what they want to see. But what about the clients who are actively engaged in social media? Maybe they have an active Twitter account that needs more followers and re-tweets? Perhaps a YouTube channel that needs more subscribers? Or what about the company fan page on Facebook? Any of those are going to eat into your productive time.
Are they in “holding pattern” mode?
Most of my older clients are all ranked at the top of Google for their phrases and are just looking to maintain their rankings. What needs to be done on a month-to-month basis in order to keep those positions?
How much handholding do they need?
Some clients are very hands on and need to keep updated on almost a daily basis. Every email and call responding to them is taking away your time to get them ranked.
Do they understand the organic optimization process?
Some clients think that organic optimization results can be seen as quickly as PPC. They insist that since they are paying immediately, the results should arrive just as fast. Additionally, the entire content creation idea with acquiring quality links is a time-consuming process. Thankfully with the latest Google algorithm they can see results within weeks, but it’s also a mindset that they need to understand.
So, to answer the question…
The most I’ve had at one time myself is 47. Collectively they were in different phases, with an average of only one new client ramping up per month. After a few months of working this way, it became apparent that burn-out was right around the corner and I’ve since handed off the work load to others.
I think this number will vary from each person and company, and each situation should be considered on it’s own.
Anyone care to share his or her workloads?
Conversions – What to Look For
So, for most people, they think getting the top spot in Google solves all your problems. All that traffic will just automatically convert, right!?
Well, for some products and services, yes. But for most of us, that is only the start.
Conversions are different for everyone. For some sites, the conversion is when someone completes a form, or provides an email address. The e-commerce sites are always looking to sell and for every completed shopping cart, that’s an obvious conversion.
But what about all this social media? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube? How can you measure the success of a campaign from those efforts? Unlike the past where you would buy a billboard advertisement based on the number of people that drove past everyday, now you can measure just about every person that arrives at your site.
One thing that most people forget is that social media shouldn’t be looked at to generate tons of conversions. True, there are some sites that take advantage of this and do a fantastic job of converting that traffic, for the most part people do not want to be sold to while hanging out on facebook.
This effort should be considered a branding effort if you are going to try to justify a spend in the social space. So what are the criteria for a successful social campaign?
1.) Followers/Friends/Subscribers
2.) Comments on each of the big three (defined as YouTube, facebook and Twitter)
3.) Retweets
4.) Traffic to your site
5.) Conversions that occur on your site from these methods
Social Media delivers some interesting prospects to your site and if you don’t account for what they want, they will be very quick to dismiss you and your company based on nothing more than the lack of a few social networking buttons.
