Expert Internet Marketer

Setting up a goal at the early stage of optimization helps to understand the customer’s buying cycle and convert their visits into a buying decision. It can save marketers from getting into the trap of measuring results based only on the immediate post-click conversion.

Since customers go through variety of stages before they make a decision to buy a product or service, focusing on the immediate post-click conversion could make a huge loss of market share to the competitors who are smart and willing to attract customers at every stage of the cycle.

When a search query is conducted, there’s only two possible outcomes your business can encounter – whether you get the traffic or your competitors. Your metric should not be only immediate conversion but target audience who are in the early stage of buying cycle.

Focus on the keywords that will get more visits related to your product or service. For example, if your business is in the finance sector, you can target keywords such as ‘credit cards safety’ rather than only ‘citibank credit cards’. The reasoning behind is that your potential customer could be in the process of making a decision to buy your product.