Ranking in the first slot on the Google rankings may not even get you any traffic from the SERPS.

The process of getting organic search traffic does not even start with ranking your site on the first page of Google.

The process of making sales online starts with understanding your ideal customer(s) and defining their buying process.

Once the above has been done, you then need to decide the stages of the buying process for each persona of customer you are targeting with each page on your website.

From here, you can identify the keyword phrases they might type into the Google search engine to find information on the type of service or product you wish to sell.

When you have a list of these keyword phrases for each stage of the customer’s buying cycle, you then need to work out which of these keyword search terms is likely to make you the most money.

Only when this has been completed can you think about executing your search engine optimisation strategy.

The SEO strategy will define on-page and off-page pages and/or new content that needs to be developed.  Particular attention needs to be paid to the following:

1. URL of the page you are developing.
2. Meta description and title of the page you are developing.
3. Quality and relevance of the inbound links you are developing.
4. Quality and relevance of the content on your page: particular attention should be paid to the use of the H1–H4 tags.

Points 1 and 2 are not only important for your high-ranking position in the Google search engine, but these are what your prospect will see if they actually get to see your SERP entry.

These three elements not only need to be optimised for Google and Bing but also need to be compelling so that your prospect actually clicks on your entry and arrives at your web page.

Now your SEO efforts have done their job, and you have the visitor on your web page, but you must have highly relevant content on the page. Design and layout for optimal lead conversion are essential as each sentence should seek to get a micro yes.

The micro yes is your prospect rewarding you by reading the next sentence or paragraph.  Each micro yes goes towards educating your customer, proving your value, delivering your unique selling proposition and moving towards them taking whatever you have defined as the primary call to action for that page.

We see many web developers, website designers and SEO consulting firms completely ignore this aspect of sales generation and wonder why they get visitors to the page but do not get leads or sales from their SEO efforts.

There are many subtleties in designing and wording any web page to achieve its overall goals.

At Effective Business Growth, we follow the Meclabs methodology, which is widely recognised as the leading on-page psychology and conversion methodology available, validated through conducting over 20,000 unique page optimisation and conversion experiments using A/B testing methodologies.

Local SEO

Local search engine optimisation is often less competitive than regional, national or international search engine optimisation.

As an example, the requirements to rank for the term accountant are much higher than the requirements to rank for the terms accountant Oxford, but all of the processes outlined above still need to be followed.

National SEO

National search engine optimisation is an SEO that does not use geo-specific locations.  Looking back at the above, we might be targeting the word accountant or accountant UK.  The only difference in the approach from a search engine optimisation strategy point of view is the need for a higher number and greater quality of highly relevant backlinks you may need for this broad national term.