To drive results from any SEO campaign you need to have the right mindset and expectations.
There are a few factors you need to keep a check before you start any optimization campaign for search rankings:
1. Search volume for the selected keywords
2. Search results competition for the keywords
3. Search indent and relevancy
Let’s look into each of them a little deeper
1. Search volume
Is the keyword searched by the target audience every month? Or is it seasonal? If so how many searches does it receive?
Since not everyone who searches for the keyword is going to end on your website, you need a decent amount of search volume to take a piece of the big pie.
You can expect to reach 30-35% of the total search volume if you achieve the first ranking in search results. Now with this approximate percentage and search volume of the keywords selected, you can set the right expectation.
2. Competition analysis
The next factor is competing pages on the search results page for a particular keyword.
Understanding how strong or authoritative your competitors are will give insights into your possibility and effort to rank for the keyword in question.
Search competition is a relative factor most of the time with respect to your website and keywords.
A website with high domain authority and a higher number of quality backlinks will give you a tough fight for the positions.
You could use tools like Moz Explorer, SEMrush, and AHREF to analyze the backlink profile of your competitors.
Identifying the top 10 sites will give you a fair idea of the competition and will help you set a reasonable expectation.
3. Relevancy and indent
The factors we are looking into help you set expectations with regard to ranking effort but the most critical part of any business is what happens after the visitor or the prospect arrives on the website. That is conversion.
It does not matter if you have 1000s prospects on your website every month if you are not able to convert them into customers for your business. In order to do that you need to be the solution to your customer’s problem.
You can attract audiences at different stages of the buying cycle using the right keyword. It is not just about ranking your website and driving traffic but its also about how you convert them to sales.
In order to be successful in your search campaigns, you need to under concepts and set the right mindset and expectations for SEO.