Why SEO Is NOT The Same Thing as Sales

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, July 2, 2009 Comments (7)

Sales and SEO. SEO and Sales. Same thing? No. They’re not.

Too many webmasters, and some of them are darned good at SEO, have a bad habit of confusing SEO with sales. They are, like, totally, NOT the same thing.

So why is this mistake so easy to commit? I think there’s a very good reason. If you are good at search engine optimziation and you hit on a really good success early on then you could mislead yourself into believing that your SEO made you sales. Yes, you can say it made you money. But it didn’t make you sales. SEO never makes sales. Landing Page Conversion Content is what makes sales.

Sometimes you can create great landing page content by accident then drive a successful campaign and that creates an illusion that SEO creates sales. But you need to think of these as two separate activities, two different sets of problems, and two completely and set apart methods of marketing. Yes, they overlap and compliment each other; there’s no doubt.

SEO is so very important. And sales is important too (it is what keeps you in business!).

Comments (7) Category: SEO

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7 Comments

Made Thursday, 2 of July , 2009 at 11:25 pm

That’s very easy for people to miss since many teach that if you get the traffic you’ll earn money. But the secret is as you said, “create a great landing page content”. It’s a little out of context, but essentially it will increase the conversion rate. SEO is important and when the landing page is optimized for it with good copy the conversion rate will be higher and the sales will be generated.

This was a good article that is well written, short and concise. Thanks!

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Friday, 3 of July , 2009 at 7:36 am

@James Stratford – Thanks for your comment and reading…it is amazing how many people actually miss this key factor!

Comment by Lisa Tiyamiyu

Made Saturday, 4 of July , 2009 at 10:55 am

I agree that the 2 are separate and it’s important to understand that. But it’s equally important to understand very well how they complement each other and how to balance the related activities. Otherwise it can happen that SEO traffic is driven to pages that are not optimised for conversion. Or the opposite, optimising the pages for conversion makes it harder to drive traffic to them. So the key is to bring the both together.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Saturday, 4 of July , 2009 at 7:31 pm

@Lisa Tiyamiyu – This is very true having a combo of sales (user focus) and SEO efforts is a must!

Comment by Iphone 3g External Battery

Made Monday, 6 of July , 2009 at 5:38 am

I agree with Nick, that SEO and sales are not same but one affects the other. I feel SEO actually helps driving relevant content to the pages and its the page content, design and so many factors involved which leads to sales. SO SEO is not sales. Its effort can lead to more sales.

Comment by Tom Zoethout

Made Tuesday, 7 of July , 2009 at 3:27 am

I agree with Nick. We are based in The Netherlands. Here the ‘Landing page technique as SalesPage’ is quit new. You can drive traffic to that specific salespage, but mostly the argument to get to that salespage are the previous pages.

Those pages are focused on various ways in which your potential client is describing his/her problem. When they recognize their problem, they feel more comfortable to go ahead. So in this matter the landingpage is no salespage.

Looking at Adwords, it is mostly a salepage, to get max conversion on the marketing dollar! So a complete different approach.

Tom

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Tuesday, 7 of July , 2009 at 6:13 am

@Tom Zoethout – Exactly SEO and PPC Landing Page Optimization are different areas that do require a different sales approach…thanks for your comment!