If you’re feeling stuck on what goal to set for your website, don’t just aim for “better SEO.” Use this rule instead.
Resources
- Tool of the Week 👉 Flick.
A social marketing platform that helps you schedule your social posts, generate hashtags and helps with caption writing. It has some really cool reporting too. - Recommended Podcast 👉 Coming Home to True Refuge by Tara Brach.
Tara’s talks often provide insights for me. New awareness into what’s in my brain. She says “we habitually leave presence and go for what I call false refuge.” She goes on to say that it’s not false because it’s bad, but because it blocks your way to true refuge, true peace. We need to see them to choose to change them. Fascinating episode.
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple
I want to start this pice by telling you about a weird (for lack of a better word) lead call I had.
The person wasn’t weird but the context of the call was, like how they were referred to me and what they might have been expecting.
Someone I know, told someone else I know, that they needed to talk to me about their website.
“You need to talk to Barb”, they said.
It’s one of my most favorite phrases in the english language. Well, any, language really.
That call turned into my recommending a number most people never look at.
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So before the call I prepped and looked at the person’s website.
I noticed that they appear in top spots in the local maps for what I would consider core target keywords.
Things they want to come up for.
I was pulling surface level information to get a feel for things because we hadn’t yet had any conversation about their business.
I shared my observations and asked them if they were having any trouble with who they were working with or is there something not working in general.
And that’s when I learned that no, they were just told they needed to talk with me. They are very happy with who does their website stuff right now.
So I shared, well, here’s the thing, I wouldn’t recommend my Website Power-up Plan™ that was referred to you because it’s designed for people who aren’t happy with their website numbers or performance or whatever.
And if you’re not experiencing any troubles or challenges, I can’t say that this is worth the investment.
I forgot about Suits! You ever see that show?
They appreciated those words. Then I moved into a suggestion as I asked do you have a goal? And I don’t remember the exact wording but we learned they did not.
So I offered up the idea of If they wanted to double their leads from their website, we can back out the numbers and then they can have a goal for improving them.
Because we always want to improve where we can, right?
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Here’s where we get into the 2% rule.
Generally, about 2% of people who land on a site should inquire.
That number varies by industry, but 2% is a solid, safe benchmark to aim for if you’re a service-based provider like a photographer, a coach, consultant, a copywriter or web designer, etc.
So let’s say you wanna get 10 leads a week, you’d need 2000 visits a month.
So, rather than having a goal of “better SEO” to improve, you assign this number as your goal.
You could even take this further by looking at your closing rate. If you close 75% of those leads, you can calculate exactly how many leads you need to hit a specific revenue number.
Let’s say you want to hit $500k annually. And your average service is $1k/mo recurring.
With the 2% website conversion rate and the 75% booking rate, you’d need 2800 visits a month to get 42 clients.
You work backwards from your revenue goal by factoring in what a client pays in a year, how many people inquire on your website, and how many of those inquiries actually turn into clients.
If all of that sounds like too much, just shoot for some percentage more or double or 3x what you’re getting now.
The Takeaway
If you’re feeling stuck for what goal to set for your website, pick one single thing you want to improve whether that’s search visibility, leads, or just publishing one thing on a schedule and go from there.
