SEO in a Recession: Optimising for Value

Perhaps its never been more potent than in today’s economy for SEO’s and search specialist’s to Optimise for value and provide direct value back to the business.

Optimising for value can be defined as the practice of optimising for conversion. Traditionally SEO and SEM as a whole have largely been concerned with absolute traffics numbers. Whilst it is still incredibly important for a site and its content to be exposed and perform well in search, traditional SEO metrics reporting Visits, Entries, Impressions, Page Consumption and Bounce Rates, (Of those arguably only visits and entries are truely "search" metrics) may increasingly come under scrutiny.

Traffic on its own needs to be monetised before it’ll provide revenue and therefore value to the business. Whilst its true more people on to a site that’s Ad inventory is fully sold will directly provide more revenue to the business, its not true that more people onto a premium site, shop or paid service will necessarily equal more customers.

A shift toward "Optimising for Conversions" may well come under a search specialist’s remit over the course of the next few months. New digital marketing skills such as persuasive architecture, lead generation from other website areas, split testing, SEO optimising valuable content areas and tightening up PPC campaigns by shifting keyword terms to more niche and focused users will increase CTR and the quality of the lead at the expense of high visit numbers.

Have you noticed a shift towards "optimising for value" and "optimising for conversions"?  How have your strategies changed?

Update:

It look’s as though Google Analytics has started to use the “Optimise for Value” line in their marketing material. Have a look at their strap line “Win Customers, not just Visitors” below: