Most companies tend to think that rankings and traffic are the only things that matter for SEO – as long as you rank #1 for your biggest industry buzz word, you’re on top, right? It is important to investigate the best converting keywords in your organic SEO campaign, because although having top rankings and high traffic is a good thing from an SEO perspective, it is not the only thing. After all, the point of search engine marketing (or any marketing at all) is to make more money for your company.

Experimenting with PPC

The best way to ensure that your organic SEO campaign has the highest conversion rate possible is to work from an existing PPC campaign for the same site. Engaging in a Pay-Per-Click campaign before starting an organic campaign is a great way to experiment with different keywords and determine which phrases will be best for organic search.

Finding Your Site’s Best Converting Keywords for your SEO campaign

Once you’ve accumulated a few months’ worth of conversion data from your PPC campaign, you can view your best converting keywords. In your Google AdWords account, sort available data by keywords, and then by conversion rate. Any keywords that are bringing in a decent amount of traffic and have a conversion rate of 3 percent or higher should be considered the best converting keywords. These are the keywords that should be used when starting an organic SEO campaign and should be taken into account when writing new copy and building links to internal pages of your site.

Ongoing Management

It is important not to optimize your site for its best converting keywords and then assume that all is as it should be. Once every 3-4 months, your site’s AdWords account and rankings should be analyzed again for its best converting keywords. Clients often become fixated on rankings for specific terms, and seem only to care about ranking #1 for these words. However, having rankings for phrases that do not bring in enough traffic or do not convert into sales isn’t really helpful in your long-term organic SEO campaign.

For example, imagine your site ranks #3 for the phrase “cleaning services” and ranks #24 for “janitorial services.” Ranking in the top three positions for a popular search term is impressive, but what if that #3 ranking brings in 2,800 visitors per month with a 0 percent conversion, and the #24 ranking for “janitorial services” brings in 1,700 visitors per month with a 5 percent conversion rate? In this instance, ranking in the third position for “cleaning services” generates a lot of search traffic, but that type of organic SEO campaign isn’t bringing any actual money to your company. Since the ranking on the 3^rd page of results for “janitorial services” is converting into actual sales, your next expansion project should focus on improving this ranking (and not maintaining the #3 ranking for “cleaning services” as people often assume).  Focusing on best converting keywords and increased on- and off-page optimization for “janitorial services” will result in a higher ROI than increased optimization for a phrase that ranks well (and even brings in traffic) but does not result in sales of any kind.

Enjoying a Higher ROI

Once you’ve used your best results from your PPC campaign and applied them to an organic SEO campaign, it’s important to bring the PPC campaign to an end gradually and not all at once. Quitting a PPC campaign cold turkey will often result in a lull in sales, as organic SEO tactics often take a few months to really take shape. The smoothest transition comes from gradually decreasing your PPC spend as your organic rankings rise, and focusing your attention on keywords that convert well instead of those that only rank well. However, as you gain rankings for best converting keywords with organic SEO, maintaining an ongoing PPC campaign becomes useful for covering any gaps in your keyword portfolio that may have been created through SEO optimization (i.e. those that don’t convert as well and therefore aren’t focused on during the SEO campaign).