I've been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks but had not found the time; thinking about what actually matters vs what looks good on paper in a chart. 

What happens when a business strives to get to the top of search results (Google Yahoo and MSN) for it's main keywords and succeeds?  A year earlier, I'm told, the site had good rankings but not what it wanted for it's main keywords; now it does.

Is having top search engine results enough?  I decided to explore the issue of search results vs. revenue in this post.  I've often seen businesses do much better on branded keywords anyway, but it's also important to get the generic keywords, like "office furniture" vs. "Ikea desk".  Even though the data leaked from AOL last year allowed some of us to figure out the amount of traffic a listing in a search engine should get, based on positioning, it did not seem like the traffic or financials really matched what the search positioning suggests they should be. 

Now we're seeing positioning in search engines becoming less and less important.

So, what happens when you get what you wished for and it's still not enough?

Not an easy situation to fix - that's why I'm writing this post.

Fundamentally - nothing really changed, even as the traffic and rankings got better from a year ago, based on the chart below - for a variety of reasons (including the economy) - though the keywords this site ranks on are very competitive and highly valued. 

Here's part of this "example" scorecard - without the names or industry affiliation). Caveat - there was rumored to be a change in Analytics that might skew some of the numbers, IE: pageviews and visits - but I suspect, not by much.  Also, the numbers for this month are based on estimates from the first 26 days of January)

In the case of this business, Visits, Uniques and Search Traffic are up from a year ago, so it would appear SEO is doing it's job.  Also, the number of visits from search engines to sell a widget went down by 8% which is actually good.  So, some of the numbers here are positive; in fact, revenue increased by 14% from last year.  

When looking at the numbers in the scorecard one point jumps right out at me - the SEO firm increased the number of visits from search engines (organic and paid) but the quality of the experience (visit) remained the same (pageviews/visit and similar search engine visits per sale).  Since the conversion rate is pretty low to begin with, the additional traffic did not produce much change in revenue (bottom line).  Also, some of the additional traffic was interested if free widget magazines or low cost widget kits vs. the higher end kits which are more profitable to sell.

Personally, when called to look at results like this - more traffic is not better traffic - clearly the quality of traffic is not delivering acceptable results.  And maybe it's a problem with the site. 

If someone came to me with this kind of scorecard - I'd only take them as a client if I had control over more of their marketing.  Let's look at the scorecard -

First, the percentage of search traffic to overall traffic is actually down by 4.7% and second, overall search traffic (as a % of all their traffic) is down by 3.6%.  Meanwhile  the number of visits to sell a widget is actually the same as it was a year ago and the overall transaction size is down (probably more low cost widgets are being sold at the expense of higher cost widgets) meaning that each transaction, overall, nets 1/3 less than a year earlier.

But the site is doing very well now for it's search engine keywords.  The SEO has delivered but the problem is not with search engine traffic; in fact, fundamentally, the increase in Search Traffic has made no meaningful difference to the bottom line and the bottom line is what counts in business.

What happened?   Well, for one thing - it looks to me like they focused too much on increasing Search Traffic and buying search listings and keywords (even though  these tactics are evidently not driving results).  Instead, what they should focus on is improving transaction size and making the site more user interactive, possibly including more social media and enhanced site search functionality to help people locate what they're looking for. 

You want to keep people on the site - keep them returning and keep them engaged.   That's what matters - and that's what drives results.

I think what's really happened is we've moved to Search 2.0 where site relevancy and site experience is much more important (since Search is moving towards personalization anyway - top results don't matter nearly as much as they did 5 years ago); search engine traffic and even being on the top results for your main keywords is no longer enough.  Also, people have changed in their expectations - and it's much harder to engage your average visitor now because everyone is jaded by so many distractions.

It's like Cory Doctorow said at the Google Unbound conference last week -

"…There's so much information competing that are only one click away that  I'm not going to have a chance to look at …and making something two clicks away is an exercise in unfitness."

Now, the SEO firm appears to have done it's job, based on the scorecard, - but it's clearly a problem with how the site/business is structured - something beyond an SEO firm to fix.  People today are getting hit by so many marketing messages they've become much more selective in how they are engaged.  If a site and it's marketing strategy don't change to match where people are at - you get results similar to the chart above. 

And if the business has a lot of competitors - it's even harder to stand apart in your target audience's eyes.   

True, every business is different and I believe if the business structure is off - the results will reflect it- but that's much more noticeable in a small business than a big one.  A large corporation can be "off" and yet still do well, up to a point - but a small one can't.  In a small firm, everyone is crucial - if even one person is off, it can affect the bottom line.  I think that's what happened here - but I don't know the actual people so I can't say for sure.

Sometimes, a change in management helps.