Many SEO companies preach that your SEO rankings are all that matter. Where you rank on Google, Yahoo and sometimes even MSN, Live.com, Bing (whatever it’s called this week) are the ways you should gauging the success of your SEO efforts.
Of course rankings are important, if you don’t rank anywhere then nobody will be able to find your website, but they’re not the most important think with regards to SEO. Ranking on the first page of Google for a generic keyword is all well and good, but you won’t receive any targeted traffic for it. You’ll get people researching, browsing and generally looking around.
I’ll give you a for instance. If you rank on page 1 of Google for the keyword ‘divorce’, and you’re a divorce lawyer based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, you won’t get a lot of relevant traffic for that keyword. If however you rank #1 in Google for ‘divorce lawyers Newcastle’, your traffic will be targeted and you’ll get a lot of conversions for the keyword.
Rankings for generic terms are vanity. They’re nice to have and nice to brag to your friends and competitors that you have, but they’re not going to win the war on your SEO front. They’re not going to make you sales and increase your business.
If your SEO company just talks to you about rankings, ask them what traffic can you expect from the rankings before they begin. That’s what really matters.
[...] than a set of rankings. Of course one can in some instances follow the other, but not always, as this post by Stuckon [...]