Over the passing years, the landscape of search engine optimization (SEO) has continually evolved, growing in complexity.
Given its pivotal role in digital marketing strategies, neglecting your SEO objectives can detrimentally impact your long-term marketing endeavors.
Therefore, to ensure sustained business growth and achievement, this article will provide invaluable insights.
Delving into nine essential SEO goals, we’ll explore the necessary actions you should consider incorporating into your strategy.
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What Is the Primary Goal of a Search Engine?
Search engines like Google and Bing are in the business of helping their users locate the information they need to answer questions, complete research tasks, and reach their goals.
Sometimes a particular user just needs to satisfy their curiosity on a single subject, while other times, they’re looking for large amounts of complex data.
The primary goal of a search engine is to help every user successfully navigate the vast sea of information on the web and find what they’re looking for.
But there are a couple of different ways Google (or another search engine) might decide to organize and quantify the results of a particular search.
- First, the search engine seeks to classify the user’s query. Are they looking for a who, a what, a why, or something else entirely?
- Next, it assesses the user’s intent and uses its findings to compile a SERP that will help them find what they’re truly looking for.
In some cases, it’s determined that the user really was looking for the answer to a relatively simple question. But in others, the search engine may also decide that there’s a secondary intent beyond the primary one the user has specified.
The more accurate a search engine can be when it comes to determining a user’s actual goals and needs, the more likely that user is to be satisfied with the results presented to them. For that reason, one of the primary SEO goals a digital marketer will have involves ensuring Google thoroughly understands the content present on their blog, website, or landing page.
SEO Goal #1: Optimize Your Internal Linking Structure
An internal linking structure is the map of internal hyperlinks on your web pages that bring readers to other, relevant pages or resources on your site.
Internal linking has often been used to keep visitors on websites for longer, but they also have a key role to play in SEO.
Your linking structure should relate to your sitemap or the official organization of your website that’s submitted to search engines.
It helps web crawlers understand the structure of your site and how information is linked together, whether you have ten pages or several thousand.
Your linking structure needs to make sense and follow the logic set forth by your sitemap.
Visitors and web crawlers will both benefit from the linking, and the more internal links you have the stronger your structure appears.
SEO Goal #2: Increase Conversions
Conversions are essentially the pivotal moments when a potential customer takes a desired action that nudges them closer to making a purchase decision.
These actions can vary widely, ranging from signing up for a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or adding items to their shopping cart. Each of these steps demonstrates engagement and interest, and collectively, they represent a customer’s journey through the sales funnel.
This metric helps internal teams find out where gaps are as well as helping search engines rank how useful your information is to visitors.
Beyond just numbers, conversion rates offer insights into areas for improvement. If your conversion rates are lower than expected, it indicates potential gaps in your marketing strategy.
Are your calls-to-action clear and compelling? Is your landing page resonating with visitors? Are there barriers in the user journey that might be hindering conversions? By closely analyzing conversion rates, you gain a window into refining your strategies and optimizing your customer experience.
When you can increase your conversion rates, Google and other search engines know that you can provide web visitors with the answers they need and can prove that your traffic achieves something.
SEO Goal #3: Increase Visitor Time on Pages
Your content needs to do more than just draw people in — it needs to keep them on a page.
When you have visitors that stay on web pages for a significant amount of time, you can prove to search engines that the content you provide is valuable enough to be read through.
There are a few different ways to go about achieving this goal, but the biggest tip is to improve the quality and length of your content.
A page that can be read in a few seconds won’t keep visitors on the page long enough to impress search engines.
There are also a number of best practices to follow on your page and blog designs that can keep visitors on for longer, like interesting, relevant images, optimized content structures, and internal linking like mentioned above.
SEO Goal #4: Decrease Your Bounce Rate
As you capture visitors for longer periods of time, you can also reduce your bounce rate.
A bounce rate is a metric that measures the amount of traffic that reaches one of your pages and then immediately leaves.
There are a few different reasons that your bounce rates can be high, such as:
- Not answering the question put forth in search queries.
- Poorly written content.
- Pages that aren’t optimized with best practices to engage your audiences.
Whatever the reason, a high bounce rate demonstrates to search engines that your content isn’t valuable, and it will drive down your rankings in favor of articles and web pages that can capture the attention of visitors.
Improving your visitor time on pages decreases bounce rates, so you can accomplish two major SEO goals with the same approach.
SEO Goal #5: Maximize Page Speed
Is there anything more irritating than a site that loads slowly?
Think back to a time when you went to a website to find out information or look at a product and the page didn’t load or was only halfway loaded before you lost interest.
After a point, you probably left the page because the inconvenience of waiting wasn’t worth the potential quality of the content on the page.
You can provide the best content, data, or products and services in your industry, but if it’s hidden behind slow pages, visitors won’t wait around to see it.
Maximizing your page speeds to have fast loading times will help traffic get to your site.
Most of the culprits behind slow pages are related to the images on your site.
Large image sizes and old image formats can significantly slow your website’s load times, so if you notice your pages have slow loading times, start with the images on the page and on the backend.
SEO Goal #6: Strengthen Domain Authority
The authority that search engines find in your domain is one of the aspects of SEO that can have a major effect on rankings.
When search engines believe your site is authoritative, you’ll get priority over other sites in your industry and will appear higher on search engine results pages.
Your domain authority has to do with the quality of content on your site and the interactions your visitors have with your content.
The more comments, shares, and engagements customers have with your content can improve your authority and deliver better experiences to leads and prospects.
Building an effective content strategy is the best way to improve domain authority.
Take a look at the topics and formats that have the highest performance, and develop your strategy to answer questions and deliver information related to those topic groups.
You’ll be able to build your authority and positively affect your customers.
SEO Goal #7: Improve Your Backlink Strategy
As we discussed earlier, your internal linking structure is important to help visitors and search engines understand your site’s layout and mapping.
Equally important is your backlinking structure, which is the number of links on other sites that direct traffic off the original site and onto your website.
Backlinks are important to SEO strategies as they boost domain strength and improve your ranking potential by essentially telling search engines that your site is an industry authority and reputable source of information.
There are a few different strategies to increase your backlinks, but it’s important to improve your efforts to gain more authority.
You can reach out to other respected companies in your industry and offer to guest blog on their site, or work on your content strategy to create content that other sites will naturally use in their posts (like an awesome interactive quiz).
SEO Goal #8: Increase Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to the traffic that comes into your site from search engines, rather than someone typing in your web address or coming in through an ad or backlink.
Organic traffic is often used as the first indicator of SEO success, as a high amount of organic traffic means you’re ranking high enough on search engines to be found by those inputting queries.
Your business should see a steady increase in organic traffic.
Significant dips in your organic traffic metrics are often the result of SEO penalties that can occur if you violate SEO best practices.
You can also see dips in organic traffic if your content strategy is missing the mark and your domain is losing authority.
One way you can improve your organic traffic is by optimizing for search intent.
That means writing content that addresses the direct questions that searchers are typing into search engines and the larger context of search queries.
For example, if you type “how to write a great email” into Google, the results address the best ways to write marketing emails, even though “marketing” was never used in the search.
The algorithm has developed enough to understand the intent of searches, and you need to adjust your strategies accordingly.
SEO Goal #9: Increase E-Commerce Sales
E-commerce enterprises require a distinct approach to SEO for direct monetization and optimization.
Optimize Product Details: Elevate product descriptions and names with targeted keywords, heightening visibility on search engines for increased sales.
Navigating Competitiveness: E-commerce SEO thrives amid competition; holistic optimization involves user experience, speed, responsiveness, and focused content.
Strategic Links and Content: Forge a robust linking structure and content plan, targeting high-value keywords, to establish authority and trust.
Authority Advantage: Building niche authority attracts organic traffic, encourages loyalty, and fosters referrals.
Understanding the Difference between e-commerce sales and conversions:
Increasing conversions and boosting e-commerce sales both drive business growth, but they focus on different stages of the customer journey. Increasing conversions emphasizes turning visitors into customers, fostering actions like signing up or downloading resources, while indicating your marketing effectiveness.
On the other hand, amplifying e-commerce sales targets the final step of the journey, guiding customers to purchase directly from your online store. This involves refining product details and enhancing the overall shopping experience.
In essence, while conversion optimization engages potential customers, e-commerce sales optimization streamlines the buying process to directly impact your revenue. Both are essential, each catering to specific aspects of your business’s success.
6 Common Website Goals and Objectives
Although every business and brand will be unique regarding what demographics it’s looking to reach and to what extent, there are still certain far-reaching SEO goals and objectives almost everyone will have in common. Here’s a look at a few key examples.
1. More Sales and Higher Conversion Rates
Although there are certainly some websites out there that don’t necessarily exist to support a business and bring in money, most do. If it’s not an actual company looking to attract a clientele and move product, then it could be an individual creator selling services or looking to bring in ad revenue.
For many businesses – especially those that do not have conventional brick-and-mortar locations – a website is a primary hub for selling products and services. That said, the entire site is set up to drive sales on one level or another. It may do this by:
- Educating customers on the actual products for sale
- Explaining how those products are the solution the consumer is looking for
- Building a community around the brand and the various items it sells
- Boosting trust and encouraging customers that do convert to become repeat customers
The company’s SEO goals will support these objectives by helping search engines understand website content, raising the likelihood that it will be recommended to appropriate search engine users.
2. Greater Brand Awareness
Ultimately, it’s not enough for a particular brand to offer amazing products and essential services that set new industry gold standards. Consumers only partially make purchase decisions based on the product’s actual benefits.
When consumers habitually return to the same company or website to make additional purchases, it’s because the brand behind it has successfully sold them a lifestyle, image, and brand identity that aligns with their own personal value set. But before that can happen, a company needs to build brand awareness.
Consumers buy from brands they recognize and are familiar with, even when making the first purchase. That said, many content marketing strategies and website SEO goals are about helping consumers become familiar with a brand, its mission, and its brand assets in the knowledge that it dramatically raises the chances of a future conversion.
3. Better User Experience
Remember, Google, Bing, and all the rest of the search engines are in the business of helping people find whatever it is they’re looking for among the world’s 1.14 billion websites. The better they do this, the more successful they’ll ultimately be at drawing new users, selling advertising, and all the rest of it.
That said, user experience is at the heart of any successful business, whether that’s a search engine, a sole person’s freelance operation, or an emerging brand looking to sell products and services.
This includes the type of user experience someone can expect from a website, as a poor user experience leads to high bounce rates, lost sales, and lost opportunities to build an audience. Common goals and objectives related to website user experience include:
- High site speeds and fast load times
- Adequate mobile accessibility across a full range of different devices
- Easy navigability that helps visitors quickly find what they’re looking for
- A pleasant, enjoyable user experience that encourages repeat visits and sales
Goals like these go hand in hand with applicable SEO goals, as the better the user experience on a particular website, the more likely it is to rank well on the SERPs.
4. Higher Satisfaction Levels
Everyone knows what it’s like to have a bad or frustrating experience with a particular business, website, or brand. At best, it will discourage a customer from trusting and purchasing from that brand again. And in many cases, all it takes is one poor customer service experience to end that potential customer-business relationship forever.
That’s precisely why a high satisfaction rate is one of the most common objectives for any website. Providing an intuitive, smooth website experience in the first place is part of that. But so is excellent customer service on any level. Ways you can seek to accomplish this include:
- Promptly addressing poor customer experiences and actively making them right
- Incentivizing consumers to finalize purchases or make repeat purchases
- Making it easy for a customer to get in touch with a company rep if they have questions or need assistance
- Giving customers multiple ways to do things like complete a purchase, pay an outstanding bill, keep in touch with the brand, or contact reps for help
Great customer service and high satisfaction rates are largely about listening to visitors and customers alike, taking their suggestions and requests into consideration, and using what you learn to make your brand offerings even better.
5. Boost Organic Traffic
Although there’s definitely nothing wrong with paid traffic via pay-per-click and other forms of advertising – especially when a site, product, or business is brand new – it’s no substitute for good old-fashioned organic traffic.
Ultimately, a website’s percentage of incoming organic traffic is the best metric for determining whether its overall SEO goals are being met or not. Organic traffic is important because it:
- Shows search engines that you’re producing valuable content that successfully addresses people’s needs
- Exposes your brand and product catalog to a broader range of potential users
- Ultimately results in even more traffic, higher SERP rankings, and steady brand growth over time
What percentage represents important SEO goals reached for your company depends on what business you’re in, what your long-term objectives are, and what your current audience size is. Where you come in against current competitors could be another factor affecting how you feel about your overall percentages.
6. Diversify Traffic Sources
Traffic numbers and search engine rankings aren’t all that matter when it comes to meeting the most common SEO goals and objectives. It’s not uncommon for a particular website to see only one or several pages gain traction regarding traffic. Those highly successful pages continue to bring in higher numbers as they mature, while others languish in obscurity.
There are several reasons why a lack of traffic source diversity is a potential problem. They include examples like the following.
- When all your traffic comes from only a handful of sources, it makes it harder to assess the true success of your SEO efforts.
- Fewer traffic sources mean fewer opportunities to expand your audience and reach new, potentially desirable demographics.
If your website is like most, it likely contains many different types of content. Each of those is going to reach a different kind of user.
For example, informative blog posts might be most effective at attracting potential buyers still in the information-seeking phase of their buyer’s journey. Meanwhile, sales-driven pages are most likely to boost conversion rates and improve your overall bottom line.
Regular site audits are one way to help improve the reach of more of your pages. Look for opportunities to cull obsolete content, refresh valuable content that may be outdated, and more.
Wrap Up: Ready to Attack These SEO Goals?
SEO is an essential part of a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.
Without it, you wouldn’t be able to succeed in your marketing efforts and you could actually damage your brand’s online reputation and rankings.
Regardless of your long-term SEO goals for your website, you need a team of experienced, knowledgeable professionals in your corner to help you boost your reach and make steady progress toward your key objectives.
This includes content creators who have what it takes to generate, refresh, and optimize your content so that it gets results.
WriterAccess by Rock Content is proud to be your one-stop destination for all your content creation needs. Sign up for a free two-week trial today, and learn firsthand how helpful the right assistance can be!
