As a new decade dawns it is a nice time to take a step back and review your Search Engine Optimisation strategy.

Making sure you are aiming for and measuring the right goals is vitally important. If your SEO goals aren’t focussed on the right metrics your effort could be going to waste and the return on investment into SEO will suffer.

So, what goals do people set and what problems do these throw up?

Traffic
A focus on increasing traffic is a key goal for many companies and rightly so. However, using traffic numbers as the bottom line for measuring your campaigns is flawed. The relevance and quality of that traffic needs to be taken into account. It is quite easy to put time, effort and money into increasing traffic but the amount of return on that investment rests just as much on the quality of traffic that is attracted.

Rankings
Using search engine rankings is another very popular metric and most companies use them as a target one way or another. Rank higher, obtain more visitors, sales figures go up – at least that is the train of thought….

To rank top of Google for a specific search term is what most companies work towards, but this should not be done at the expensive of all other possibilities. Also, for new businesses this measurement clearly represents a problem because it is highly unlikely that they will obtain a top ranking in the short-term.

Successfully gaining a top placed ranking for a specific search term is a great achievement and could result in a good increase in sales. It will also help brand visibility. However, there is the possibility that overlooking a wider range of search terms and longer search terms (that make up over half of all searches) means restricting any potential increase in sales. Something to think about...

Link Building
Setting a target to obtain a certain number of links a month is a metric many people use and it really is a flawed one. It leads to seeking out a cost per link acquired and if that is the measurement to test results it is easy to contract out link building to India with great results. However, it is the quality of links that count and not the quantity. One good relevant link from an authoritative site could be worth thousands of other links that may have been gained on your behalf.

So, when reviewing your SEO approach and goals it is important to make sure that they fit in with your wider business goals. If you don’t tie your goals down tightly so that you can measure your success and see the best return on investment possible, then you could be wasting time and effort. As it is a new year, it is worth seeing if you could be working smarter!