What’s the Most Important Metric for Product-Led SEO?

When you think of SEO, what comes to mind?

Rankings, traffic, backlinks?

While those metrics are often considered the right metrics for SEO, they’re not necessarily the most important, especially if your goal is to grow your business.

In a Product-Led SEO strategy, there’s a more important metric to focus on: conversion and, ultimately, revenue.

Let’s learn why conversion and revenue should be the focus of your SEO efforts, how they align with Product-Led SEO.

Understanding Product-Led SEO: A Quick Overview

Before we dive into metrics, let’s clarify what Product-Led SEO is…

In traditional SEO, the focus is on optimizing content to rank higher on search engines and generate traffic. This approach usually revolves around keyword optimization, backlinks, and domain authority.

Product-Led SEO, on the other hand, is about creating content that emphasizes your product’s value to your target audience. The goal isn’t just to attract more visitors to your website but to convert them into paying customers by showcasing how your product solves their problems.

While traffic and rankings are still important, Product-Led SEO aims to guide users from discovery through to the product itself, all while focusing on delivering tangible value at every stage of the user journey.

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Why Conversion Beats Rankings in Product-Led SEO

One of the most common mistakes in SEO is focusing solely on rankings or traffic as measures of success. A high Google ranking may look good on paper, and a big increase in website visitors might seem like a win, but neither of these metrics guarantees revenue. After all, what good is a #1 spot if none of those visitors convert into paying customers?

I strongly believe that rankings and traffic are similar to Facebook likes. Nice to see but don’t move the needle, a vanity metric if you will.

Conversion rates are a far more telling metric in the context of Product-Led SEO. This is because conversion is directly tied to your ability to turn visitors into users or buyers. It reflects how well your content matches user intent and how effectively you guide visitors to the next stage of the funnel.

In short, conversion rates reveal how well your SEO strategy drives actual business results.

Revenue Over Traffic: The True Goal of Product-Led SEO

At the end of the day, the true goal of any business is revenue, not traffic. Revenue is what keeps the lights on, and it’s the most critical metric that aligns directly with the growth of your business.

While traditional SEO strategies often focus on increasing traffic, Product-Led SEO shifts the focus towards quality traffic—the kind of visitors who are more likely to engage with your product, sign up for a demo, or make a purchase.

This shift in focus is crucial because, in many cases, fewer highly qualified visitors can generate more revenue than an influx of unqualified traffic. The most important question isn’t “How many visitors came to my site?” but rather “How many of those visitors turned into customers?

Common SEO Metrics That Don’t Matter as Much as You Think

While rankings, traffic, and backlinks are commonly used to measure SEO performance, they’re often misleading if you don’t also consider conversion and revenue. Here’s why:

• Rankings: High rankings don’t always translate to high engagement or conversions. Ranking for a keyword with high volume but low relevance to your product won’t drive conversions.
• Traffic: More traffic doesn’t necessarily mean more business. If your website visitors don’t convert, then you’re simply attracting window shoppers, not buyers.
• Backlinks: While backlinks are important for domain authority and ranking potential, they’re a means to an end, not the end goal. High authority backlinks won’t matter if they don’t help your audience move down the funnel.

How to Measure Conversion and Revenue in Product-Led SEO

Measuring conversion and revenue from your SEO efforts isn’t always straightforward.

The more complex your marketing (how many channels you have) the more complex your reporting attribution will be. Most experienced marketers will look at first click, last click and mixed attribution to understand how each channels assists each other in a buyer’s journey.

But let’s assume you can apply a straightforward approach like this…

1. Track Conversions: Use tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Intercom to set up conversion tracking. Define what a conversion means for your business—whether it’s a sign-up, a purchase, or a demo request—and track how users from organic traffic convert.
2. Monitor Revenue per Visit: Set up ecommerce or revenue tracking to see how much revenue you generate from each visitor, especially from organic traffic sources.
3. Set Clear KPIs: Define key performance indicators (KPIs) that directly relate to revenue and conversions, such as conversion rate (CR), average order value (AOV), or customer lifetime value (CLV).

Everyone would agree SEO is a marketing channel. So why treat it any different than paid ads, sales or partnership/affiliates. Those channels rely on MRR as their goal, SEO shouldn’t be any different.

Aligning SEO with Product: The Key to High-Conversion Content

The core of Product-Led SEO is to align your content with your product’s unique value proposition. This means your SEO content should not just be about getting clicks but about guiding users through their journey with your product.

For example, if your product is a SaaS tool for managing social media accounts, your SEO strategy should focus on creating content that educates potential users on how to solve their social media challenges using your tool. This approach positions your product as the natural solution, and, as a result, you’ll drive more qualified leads and higher conversions.

Case Study: How Focusing on Conversion Boosted Revenue for Carrot

To bring this all together, let’s look at Carrot, a company that provides real estate investors with high-converting, SEO-optimized websites.

Initially, Carrot focused on driving traffic and improving rankings, which led to significant growth in visitors to their websites. However, they noticed that many of these visitors were not converting into leads or customers.

After analyzing their data, they shifted their focus to optimizing for conversions rather than just traffic. They started creating more targeted, product-led content that addressed the specific pain points of real estate investors. Instead of generic articles about “real estate marketing,” they focused on how Carrot’s websites could help investors generate more leads, close more deals, and increase revenue.

Measure What Matters – Conversion and Revenue

When it comes to Product-Led SEO, the most important metrics to focus on are conversion and revenue, not rankings or traffic. High rankings and increased traffic can be misleading if they don’t translate into meaningful business outcomes. Instead, prioritize creating SEO content that aligns with your product’s value and drives users to take action, whether that’s signing up, purchasing, or engaging with your product in a meaningful way.

If your SEO efforts aren’t leading to conversions or revenue, it might be time to rethink your approach. Focus on what matters, and the results will follow.