Why ‘I Want More Website Traffic’ Is Not an SEO Strategy Goal

Does this sound familiar to you? You’re heavily reliant on paid ads to drive traffic to your website and after looking where your visitors come from, you want to increase the performance of your organic sources, such as search traffic. Instinctively, your goal would be ‘I want more organic search traffic to my site’, but is this really the best objective for SEO strategy? 

The answer is no if you want to start thinking more purposefully. Let’s break down why this is the case and how to focus your SEO goals into strategic thinking for a solid SEO strategy. 

What is an SEO Strategy and Why Do You Need One?

Just like with any marketing activity, you wouldn’t go in aimlessly sorting out bits and pieces of SEO here and there without a thought-out plan to follow, so this is where your SEO strategy comes in. Your strategy is simply a plan to make SEO work for your website, focusing specifically on your own goals, industry and fully tailoring any tactics to work for you. 

How to Think More Purposefully About Your SEO Targets

If you fall into the category of simply wanting ‘more traffic’ as a goal, then you are certainly not alone. While it’s true you do want more traffic (who doesn’t), but what is the purpose of having more traffic? What if you end up with a tonne more traffic but they are not the right people? What do you want these additional people to do once they land on your site?

As you dive deeper into the purpose of your traffic, this is where you start to think more strategically and can make cleaner decisions to create your SEO plan. Before you go anywhere near a plan, let’s begin thinking about purpose by asking yourself these questions. 

Key Questions to Discover Your SEO Goals:

What do I want from organic search visitors on my site?

• More leads/enquires?
• Make a purchase?
• Read certain articles?

Here is where you start to think more about the intent of your audience and will guide the type of calls-to-action and content on your landing pages.

Who is my ideal audience?

• What are their demographics? Such as age, location etc.
• What kind of language speaks to them?
• How are they typically finding my site?

By understanding your audience, we can tailor website content, calls-to-action and SEO elements such as titles, meta descriptions etc. to directly speak to your audience to feel more personal to them.

In what timeframe am I expecting to see results?

• Do I want a certain number of leads from organic search in several months?
• Do I want to increase revenue by a certain percentage by this time next year?

SEO is about steady, sustainable growth, so here think realistically as to what results you expect to see in a certain timeframe.

How will I measure success?

• What metrics actually matter to me? Leads, sales, visibility, engagement?
• Do I have tools like Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager set up to track these properly?

Measurement helps turn your SEO goals into something tangible. Focusing on meaningful metrics rather than vanity numbers like traffic gives a clearer picture of your progress.

These are the kind of questions you can expect to discuss on a discovery call with me and are a great way to get the most out of our initial conversation to create the best SEO strategy specifically for your small business. 

Turning Your Answers into a Strategic Plan

Now that you’re thinking with more purpose, it’s time to put those answers into an SEO plan that will work for your website. However, in order to do this fully, there is one key ingredient every SEO strategy needs, an SEO Audit. 

A full audit will show you the current state of your website’s SEO from technical health to content quality and keyword analysis to get you on the right track. Using your goals to guide your audit, you can then start to piece together your roadmap. Typically, for my clients I look to structure this using a Research > Refine > Results process where the SEO process is a continuous cycle of improvement based on data-driven results. 

So, if you’re looking for SEO strategy services that are tailored to your small business website then I’m here to help you. Get in touch today by using the contact form, or if you feel like you know your purpose already then book a discovery call and we can get started.