Ranking is not important...

[pow-wow]

Whats the point of ranking well, if you drive in no customers???

5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success

[SkinnerW]

It all depends which words you are ranked high for...
I can not agree with statement that "ranking high doesn't matter".

Sure if you sell electronics ranking #1 for the term "furniture" will not drive you a lot of targeted visitors and conversions...

[OldWelshGuy]

Jill The Author is a very good friend of mine, we have worked together, and I am a founder member and moderator on her forum athighrankings.com , so little wonder that I agree with her

I take clients on, they want to rank#1 for 'a keyword'. they are often not interested in conversion factors, not interested in making the site more usable they just want to rank. I convince them that it is not JUST about rankings (which is the point jill is making).

The slap across the face I personally use with clients is this simple question "WHY do you want to rank #1 for 'a keyword'?

So lets run through it now, Y'all WHY do you want to rank #1 for a keyword? answers below

[Bagi Zoltán]

Most of the time it is only a prestige for me but have two sites that is different. I want my forum rank high for certain keyphrases to improve the registration ratio, and i want Boss Cart to rank number 1 for many ecommerce related keyphrases, because i would like to help people finding one of the best shopping cart software

[scfc16]

ranking is good to get google adsense revenue !

[OldWelshGuy]

Originally Posted by scfc16

ranking is good to get google adsense revenue !

BINGO

So you do NOT want ranking, you want adsense revenue. is that right? people THINK they want top rankings for 'my pet key phrase' when in reality they don't give a rats fart, ALL they want is money, and they THINK that ranking #1 for 'my pet key phrase' will bring them that.

A professional will explain how the web works, a professional wil look at their existing stats, look at earnings to traffic, and carry out professional keyword research. A professional will showthem that currently they are converting 1:100 and that conversion earns them $10 .

A professional will explain to them that with a few on site usability improvements, that ratio can be halved. making EXISTING traffic deliver twice the earnings.

Now they are hooked, and will listen to anything you tell them, BECAUSE you have just doubled income at a single swathe.

You now put in place the secondary stuff that further improve conversion ratios. You have a reference point

E.G.
you take the site on, it earns $10 per conversion, it is earning $30 a day as they get 300 visitors a day. You have made the changes to the site, it is now earning $60 a day.

You show the client the keyword phrases you have researched, you show them the search volume, you show them the competition, you lay out a short medium and long term traffic expectancy plan.

Short might mean traffic up by 100% They IMMEDIATELY equate this to earnings up 100%, (as you just did).

And guess what?
You just bought into the 'traffic is the metric, above 'keyword ranking is the metric' ideal

[tb987]

Originally Posted by pow-wow

Whats the point of ranking well, if you drive in no customers???

5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success

No point whatsoever, anybody can rank at #1 for something that few use it is all about getting quality traffic that converts well because you have a great site - to summarise OWG. This is easier to measure if you have some kind of transaction happening on your site and more difficult if you just have a brochureware site.

Tony

[andrej]

Well of course your site must rank for some "rich" keywords that have potential and have some search volume in order to profit. And it also depends on your niche.