3.5. It's Not Just about Rank

While your ranks are the easiest aspect of SEO to grasp, don't let them be the only thing you care about. We don't mean to be dismissive of people who really, truly live and die by their Google rank. We know that there are industries that are so cutthroat and specialized that this is the only thing that matters. But we have found this to be true:

Remember, good ranks do not guarantee conversions or website success! As you learned in Chapter 1, "Clarify Your Goals," your business goals for your website may range from online sales to political persuasion—whatever it is you want your visitors to do. Your keywords must be chosen to directly match these goals. You could easily gain some high ranks for, say, the term hydroplaning monkey, because nobody else is optimizing for it. Of course, nobody's searching for it either. Likewise, if you make some iffy choices regarding your top-priority keywords, it's possible that you'll track top-10 ranks, month after month, and have no conversions to show for it.

3.5.1. Ranks Change

Let's say you are lucky enough to be getting good organic ranks for a coveted, competitive term. Congrats, but don't take these ranks for granted; any number of factors outside of your control could send your site on a nosedive:

Competitor Activity Many times, SEO success is achieved not by brilliant optimization, but rather as a result of the laziness of a site's competitors. If yours is the only site in your niche giving SEO any effort, you're going to come out on top. But you never know when the other guys are going to get their act together and start a successful SEO campaign.

Common SEO Misconceptions If you're brand new to SEO, you may have a couple of incorrect notions in your head. Let's get rid of those right now: "Our site gets a ton of traffic! We're so popular, we're a shoo-in for top ranks." Search engines don't have insider information about your overall web traffic, so they don't know exactly how popular your site is. But they can count up how many sites they find that link to your site, and this is one factor in how they judge your site's popularity. "We've got to get more sites to link to us so that our ranks will improve!" If the only reason you set out to get more links is so that Google will rank you higher, you are missing the big picture. Inbound links are pathways that allow people to visit your site. They can be excellent, direct sources of targeted traffic! "Our site is doing great! We ranked #1!" Ranked #1 for what? Starting now, erase "We ranked #1" from your vocabulary and replace it with "We ranked #1 for the term_______". Ranks are irrelevant unless they are tied to a meaningful target keyword. "We're only going to promote our home page." SEO is not about your site—it's about every page of your site. Every single page in your site stands on its own merits and can sink or swim based on its unique combination of the factors described in this chapter. If you approach SEO as a page-by-page endeavor, you will be on a surer path to success. "We've filled in our meta keywords tag... we're good to go!" T he meta keywords tag carries very little influence with the search engines, and it's certainly not going to do much for your ranks if the rest of your site isn't shipshape. Just like any element of SEO, the keywords tag works best in the context of a holistic approach.

Your Server Performance The search engine robots visit your site on a reasonably frequent basis to make sure they've got the most up-to-date content to offer searchers. But what if a robot happens to visit your site while it's out of commission? If they can't find you, they probably won't rank you. You're likely to be very sad next time you check your ranks, at least until the robot comes back and rediscovers you.

Which Search Engine Database You Happen to Be Looking At We're talking billions of pieces of data from millions of sites. There's no way the search engines could keep it all in one database. This means that, at any given time, searchers are looking at one of a number of search engine databases, each giving out slightly different search results. Expect that your ranks are going to hop around a bit on a daily basis. Try not to sweat these little dips or put too much stock in the little jumps.

Algorithm Changes As we mentioned earlier, you never know when an existing search engine algorithm is going to morph into something different. There are so many people chasing the search engine updates, and losing sleep over the next little tweak in Google's algorithm, that a phrase was coined to describe them: algoholics. We urge you not to become one of them.

3.5.2. A Holistic Approach Helps

All of the rank-busters we just listed underscore the need to fill out your SEO campaign to tide you over with targeted traffic should your high ranks desert you. As the investment bankers will tell you: Diversify, diversify, diversify. These aspects of the SEO campaign that you'll develop in Part III will help you weather ranking fluctuations: Buzz Generation This means getting sites to link to you out of admiration (Donutopia makes great donuts! Click here!), commendation (Donutopia's Donut News wins "Bakery News Site of the Year." Click here!), or reciprocity (Please support our friend, Donutopia. Click here!).

Niche Directories The big search engines are not the only paths to your site. There are niche directories (also called verticals) for aficionados of everything from animal husbandry to Zen Buddhism. A small but fervently targeted audience is not to be ignored.

A Paid Search Campaign Sponsored listings can be a very effective way to get those targeted eyeballs to your site, especially if something is preventing you from breaking through the competition for organic rankings.

Good Writing and Usability Quality material on your site will always be there for you when the winds of algorithm fate shift again.

Remember that Your SEO Plan should focus on conversions, not just search engine ranks! If you're doing well with the SEO elements listed here, you may discover that—lo and behold!—a dip in ranking won't affect your conversions in any disastrous way.