• Fuel Interactive , Wednesday, October 1, 2008 2:30 PM

Brian Carter throws some kerosene on the "rankings don't really matter in SEO" fire with this post, arguing that the metrics chosen by clients are the ones that should have the most weight (and get the most attention) -- be they rankings, traffic or conversions. "Every client has different needs," he says. "And every client has different key metrics."

For some clients, it may be lead generation. In that case, you'd focus on the keywords and tactics that would generate the most leads. The same goes for sales. "But if you have a client (and we have several like this) that need top 5 or even #1 rankings for particular keywords to fulfill other parts of their business strategy, then focus on rankings," Carter says.

While focusing on any one metric at the expense of a holistic SEO program may not be an ideal strategy for all clients, Carter argues that certain clients may not need soup-to-nuts SEO. "It's understandable that optimizers would want to do SEO optimally, every time," he says. "But take the bigger view: your real goal is to help your client do business optimally. So, fit SEO into their overall business objectives optimization."

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