Why the Quest for Higher Search Engine Rankings Almost Never Makes Sense

By John Somerton

Seth Godin on his blog today talks about signaling strategies - essentially the mental shortcuts people take when deciding which products or services to buy or which politician to vote for. Things like big expensive billboards, being on the New York Times best seller list, and celebrity endorsements all send strong signals to the marketplace to “buy this product!” And of course marketers know this and will work hard to game the systems and distort the signals.

One major form of signaling that I deal with every day is in the form of search engine rankings. Imagine your company sitting at the top of Google on a major keyword related to your business … sends a pretty strong signal, right?

But consider for a moment how that signal is helping you win in your market. Is it driving more bottom line business your way? Are those clicks turning into customers? Are you even getting much traffic from that coveted Google # 1 position?

In some cases, yes, the value is there (particularly if rankings are sought for branding or as a credibility indicator), but for the vast majority of keyword ranking efforts, I would agree with Seth that “the effort you expend gaming one signal or another is almost never worth the distortion that gaming produces.”

Instead of focusing your SEO on ranking number one for keywords x, y, and z on Google, why not instead focus on “delighting authentic voices”, as Seth so aptly puts it?

When search engine optimizers and web marketers focus solely on keyword rankings to the exclusion of everything else, they’re only addressing the tip of the iceberg, and are at risk of missing out on all the authentic voices that may be lurking just below the surface.

How do you measure the success of your SEO program?

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