A friend of mine just wrote me that his friend is saying, “people who come from seo really buy.” I copied and pasted it here.
I replied.
With my usual long-text replies.
But then I got a hunch—I should write about this. And rushed here to write a blog post after disappearing for months.
I’ve said this before in my “How to Write an SEO-Friendly Article” post.
I’m sayin it again.
I short: No. It’s not SEO that converts traffic to customers.
It’s content. Not just any content—but quality content.
SEO is like taking a taxi to a shopping district. You know you want something, but you’re not sure where to get it. On the way, you see lots of stores. If one catches your eye and you like what they’re selling, then you go in, look around, and give a try.
Unless you know the brand, trust it, and have been eyeing its products for a while, then yeah—you’ll jump in a taxi, head straight to the store, and buy.
If SEO isn’t bringing us customers, then what’s the point?
What is the purpose of SEO?
Like social media, it’s TO BE IN FRONT OF YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS. To be an attention whore.
Well… I mean, that should be the expectation of doing SEO.
Aaahhh… if you want people—traffic—to make a purchase on your website, you need to conquer them with quality content.
SEO doesn’t convert traffic. Content converts traffic.
I know what you’re thinking.
Then how do we ‘invite’ our potential customers to read our content? We need SEO for that.
Ab-so-lute-ly.
Content and SEO works together. They are not separate.
SEO is just one way. It is one os the strategies of putting your content in front of your customers. Other strategies include messaging your prospect, sending emails, writing a post on IndieHackers, or a subreddit—places where your customers hang out.
Can we say that 90% of your customers hang out on Google and ChatGPT?
Google search results—we know. And guess where ChatGPT learns from? The web. Content that we create on the web.
As you may also know, ChatGPT gives sources—how we say, gives backlinks to the source they get information from. Again, to appear on ChatGPT, we need to create quality content.
But SEO isn’t just only about quality content.
SEO is also about UX and design on your website, speed, navigation, etc. how people behave on your website. We should understand that people have a short attention span, they want quickie, and they like nice websites. About the blog posts, they don’t read long articles—they skim. Things change, you know. You should prioritize humans and write people in mind so they don’t see your long content and bounce off, which signals Google like, “Nahh… people bounce off → they don’t read → must be poor quality.” Same with other factors that affect SEO.
What is quality content?
Google has a guide on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. Go read it.
In short, quality content is created for people (not clickbait, doesn’t lose the main point stated in the title, is skimmable, easy to read and digest, authoritative, shows expertise, original etc.). And if you create content for your ideal customer profile… pheeww… you win.
Google says quality, helpful content is something that you yourself would read, like, and share.
Google doesn’t say quality content should be created by people.
But we should avoid publishing content that’s purely written and NOT PROOFREAD by a human.
Why?
Because YOU (and vevy.ai 😉) know who you’re writing for—your target customers, you know their style of consuming content.
It IS ok to publish AI-written content. But people like emotions, style; if they know who’s behind the product/service, they wanna hear from you. So, you should incorporate your expertise, personal experiences, personality, and style into the content. Did I tell you that you should be an expert in the topic what you’re writing?
Think.
What kind of text content you like to consume?
- Content that gives you what you want.
- Content that you see as trustworthy.
- Content that is understandable, easy to digest, and easy to skim.
- Content that has consistent style and language that’s understandable—no jargon, not too many terms unless it’s a research paper.
- Content that doesn’t waste your time. Straight to the point. Like, if you want to read “How to create an SEO strategy,” you wouldn’t care much about the history of SEO. But if you’re reading “What is SEO?”—then yeah, maybe.
- Content that grabs your attention—keeps you hypnotized, engaged.
Why SEO does not convert
In my message to my friend, I replied:
“Think of the last time you searched for a software tool, saw an article, and immediately subscribed to the tool.” I hear you saying, “bEcAuSe tHe iNtEnT of tHe bLOg POst wAS NoT tRAnSacTioNAl.” And I’m replying to you: let’s say you read an article with the transactional intent about ‘Top SEO Tools You Need Today (+ Discounts & Free Trials)’, liked one’s pricing and features. What do you do? You just go and subscribe?
NO!
Best you can do if you really want to use an SEO platform will be booking a call with sales person. If the product is known one, like ahrefs or SEMrush, you will read their articles, take their hours long courses to learn how to use them, then subscribe.
You see where I am going with this?
First off, it depends on the product type if the organic traffic—traffic from search results—can be converted or not.
Especially for software products, it doesn’t happen like that unless you already know and have heard of the product before. Like, if you’re a developer, you surely know Digital Ocean, you know why you want to use their service, and you go straight to the platform (with the intention to buy and start using it).
For eCommerce stores, it’s also different. You search for “black shoes,” and if a brand’s images appear on Google, then good. They have a chance to make sales.
Let’s not forget about other on-site and brand-related factors that affect buying decisions—like reviews, testimonials, quality images, refund policy, etc.
As I wrote above, the purpose of SEO is and should be to get in front of people’s eyes. Unless your website is a movie/music streaming platform or you’re running display ads on your blog to make money—a purely transactional website—SEO’s goal isn’t direct conversion.
Content marketing + SEO is a long term strategy to get customers. Not immediate.
Marketing is to changing beliefs, creating new patterns, helping customers that we want to help to achieve what they desire. And, content is the strongest marketing strategy to do that.
📖 Recommended: read my blog post about marketing.
We need quality content to rank on SERP.
We understood, no need to repeat.
What about the whole content strategy? Not just one case study, blog post, or webpage.
This is where it gets crucial—content marketing strategy.
Ahrefs did not created all those content – knowledge base articles, blog posts, webinars, YouTube tutorials so when you search “keyword research” and read their article you subscribe. No. I started using ahrefs 4 years after I got to know them.
THE PURPOSE OF SEO IS TO LAND TARGET CUSTOMERS ON OUR WEBSITE SO THEY CAN SEE WHO WE ARE, WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE OFFER, HOW WE OFFER..
The more they see it, the more they like it, the more it stays in their mind. Like every time I searched something SEO related stuff on Google, ahrefs would bump in results page.
We need to create content marketing strategy that creates awareness that our product/service exists, educates our potential customers, and show us expert in what we do.
How content marketing engages, converts, and retains customers
In the simplest form, content marketing is moving a user from one stage to another:
Awareness → Engagement → Conversion → Retention
A good strategy makes organic traffic like your content, consume more, engage with your site, explore your other content, and view your brand and content as expert and trustworthy. It makes them think, “Ahh, I remember this site/product. I can read/learn more about X here.”
When visitors land on your site for the first time, your goal is to engage them.
If they like your content and engage with it, they’ll come back for more.
If they subscribe to your newsletter, sign up for your platform, book a call, or browse other content—great. You’re in their mind. Or you have their email. Either way, you’ve got them.
An effective content marketing strategy includes content you create with different aims (informative, product-related, semantically related, educational, commercial, transactional, promotional, etc.), in various types (video, text, course, podcast, etc.), and for different stages of the user lifecycle (awareness, engagement, conversion, retention, reactivation, etc.) across different platforms and channels.
Examples:
- [informative-video-for engagement-landing page],
- [semantically-related-text-for awareness-IndieHackers],
- [product-related-case study-for conversion-web page],
- [educational-text-for retention-email]
- [testimonial-video-for advocacy-hosted by other website], etc.
[More about creating the content marketing strategy will be in my upcoming blog posts, maybe in a year.]
So… do people who come from SEO really buy?
Not exactly.
SEO brings people in. Content convinces them to stay, consume, and convert.
If your content is helpful, engaging, and trustworthy, that’s what moves them to buy.
SEO puts you on the map. It is long term goal.
Remember the taxi example I gave in the intro? Well.. a solid content marketing strategy will make your customers TO KNOW which store to head when they want shopping.
Content makes you the destination.
Until the next time.
Cheers.