100K traffic and 10 junk leads OR 1K traffic and 40 qualified leads? Your call.

Have you been to Burger King or other similar restaurant?

“Of course, I have.”

Okay, cool. 

Imagine yourself walking in there right now without getting too much excited!

You take a look at the menu.

And you get to see different combos to choose from, all at SAME PRICE, let’s say INR 99 👇

→ Crispy Veg Burger + French Fries

→ Cappuccino + Hashbrown 

→ Crispy Veg Burger + Medium Soft Drink Cola

→ French Fries + Medium Soft Drink Cola

Sitting in the café, looking at so many options, you are puzzled!

You can only eat and drink so much! INR 99 is not the problem, you have got the money!

The problem is - CHOICE. 

There are just too many options and it will take you a bit to decide. 

BTW, which one are you going with?

“None of your business, Vishnu.”

Okay, no need to be rude, my friend!

Your money, your time, your food. I have no business with it. I get it. Am just trying to make a point. 

“And what’s that?”

Well, my point is about CHOICE available to you when you have got too many “combos” and too many options.

Now, think of it in context of SEO. When working on keywords and your content strategy, you have thousands and millions of keywords. 

Which one you shall choose?

How shall you pick up topics?

Out of all topics and keywords, which ones to prioritize?

Cause afterall, you want to pick up keywords and topics that 👇

→ Don’t just get you rankings

→ Don’t just get you traffic

→ But also get you LEADS & REVENUE

“That’s right. I want a LOT of leads. A LOT of revenue from my SEO. Not JUST traffic and clicks!”

Cool, let’s work on it together. Follow me 👇

Imagine you have built a customer service software. 

Now, you are working on your SEO strategy to generate leads organically.

To start, there might be a few keywords in your mind 👇

→ customer service

→ what is customer service

→ customer service meaning

→ customer service tools

→ best customer service tools

→ customer service software

→ best customer service software

“Yes, those keywords are exactly what I was thinking about!”

I got you. Although we are no Burger King chefs. But we can call ourselves SEO Chefs or Content Chefs! And now, let’s build combos out of above keywords 👇

→ ‘customer service’ + ‘what is customer service’ + ‘customer service meaning’

→ ‘customer service tools’ + ‘best customer service tools’ + ‘customer service software’ + ‘best customer service software’

So, based on what people might be looking for, we have two combos now! And we can convert these into two blog topics 👇

→ What is customer service: A beginner’s guide [With examples]

&

→ 15 Best customer service tools & software to boost your customer service in 2024

Now, let’s talk some data!

For keyword 'customer service' alone 👇

→ the global volume is 405K per month; means about 400K people are searching for “customer service” worldwide.

→ KD or Keyword difficulty score for ‘customer service’ keyword is 84/100; means getting ranked for this keyword is VERY difficult.

→ Salesforce ranks #1 for ‘customer service’ keyword and the page has 256 backlinks. See these screenshots 👇

And did I tell you that Salesforce has 520 other pages about ‘customer service’ and many of ‘em backlinking to their ‘customer service’ blog page! See 👇

And that’s how Salesforce has managed to rank #1 for keyword ‘customer service’ 👇

→ Domain Rating of 92; average SaaS brands get stuck at domain rating between 30-50.

→ 520 other blogs on different keywords related to customer service building topical authority; Most SaaS brands do not have 520 blogs in TOTAL on their website.

→ 256 backlinks just for one page; most SaaS sites do not have budget to get even 50 backlinks for each top page.

→ And of course, ‘quality’ content!

Now, let’s see similar data for ‘best customer service software’ + ‘best customer service tools’ keyword 👇

See 👆 snaps and you will notice that combined global search volume for keywords related to ‘best customer service software’ + ‘best customer service tools’ is about 2K. Plus, few more points when comparing these keywords to ‘customer service’ keyword. Let’s go 👇

‍‘best customer service software’ + ‘best customer service tools’ VS. ‘customer service’

→ Easier to rank

Keyword difficulty score for ‘best customer service software’ + ‘best customer service tools’ is just 39, much lower than 84 KD score for ‘customer service’ keyword.

That means it’s much easier to rank for ‘best customer service tools’ than for ‘customer service’ keyword.

‍→ Better for conversions

People who are looking to buy customer service software, what do you think they will search 👇

· ‘best customer service software’

· ‘best customer service tools’

OR

· ‘customer service’

· ‘What is customer service’

“Are you kidding me, combo 1, of course!”

Exactly!

That’s why, when building your SEO strategy, first you should aim to cover ‘conversion keywords’ in your blogs and pages. 

And by ‘conversion keywords’ I mean keywords where people have intent to buy your product or service. 

You see, ranking on top for ‘customer service’ or ‘what is customer service’ can get you 100K traffic but it will hardly get you any leads and revenue. 

“Why?”

Because people searching for these keywords are not in buying mode, they just want knowledge and educational content to learn about customer service. Even if some of those visitors, let’s say 10, sign up for your product, it’s very rare that they will be interested in your product because they are not looking for one right now. 

And when people search for keywords like ‘best customer service software’ and best customer service tools,’ they are definitely looking for best options to try and buy a customer service software that you are selling. And even if you get just 1000 hits on this blog, you will end up getting 40 qualified leads assuming 4% conversion rate. 

100K traffic and 10 junk leads OR 1K traffic and 40 qualified leads?

Choice is YOURS! 

That’s why traffic, impressions, average position are all vanity metrics. 

Yes, I am an SEO and those are my words. 

And yes, all those metrics are important when tracked for right combo of keywords and right combo of pages.

Next time a person shows off their 100K or 1M traffic on your face, ask ‘em about conversion rates and how much revenue that traffic is generating for ‘em. 

That’s the real test of SEO - Qualified leads and revenue numbers.

I have seen sites with 500 clicks a month generating 25 qualified leads and I have seen sites sitting at 10K traffic generating 10 hardly qualified leads.

Sounds surprising, right?

But true. 

And that’s the difference between junk traffic and qualified traffic. 

“Thanks Vishnu. Does that mean we shall never do blogs on wide topics like customer service?”

First, I said thank you to myself on your behalf because I do NOT hear it often! Hope you don’t mind. Even if you do, am okay with it 🙂

Second, indeed you should do blogs on wide topics like customer service but only when you have run out of all the long and conversion keywords (technically and B.S.-ically called ‘long-tail keywords'). 

If you are a startup and by startup I mean bootstrapped startup where your website is new and you are spending your own hard earned money to build and grow your business, focusing on conversion and long keywords is best strategy for sustainable growth because 👇

→ It needs low amount of content.

→ Can get you up with low number of backlinks.

→ Doesn’t need as much budget as wide or seed keywords.

→ Start getting rankings in comparatively shorter timeframe bringing cash back to your business quick.

However, if you have got investor and VC money, BURN as much as you want. Even if your business is about customer service software, write blogs about how to make good tea, how to start a YouTube channel and spend lavishly without thinking about profitability and ROI!

Do not give a damn about burning investor money just like 95% of startups raising it. Spend carelessly, burn it, raise again, and keep raising in loop!

Sorry. Let me breathe. Alright, that’s enough ranting on funding and funded ones! 

You might be in those 5% who care about profitability and sustainable growth even after getting funded. So, for you special one 👇

If you have got millions of budget for marketing and have bandwidth to do 1000 blogs a month, then as well, start with conversion keywords first. Once you are done with conversion keywords and have built decent authority for your website, then you can go wild on all keywords!

“Okay, got it!”

Cool! That’s it for now.