SEO Conversion-Metric Rigor
Rankings and traffic are not results. Hold SEO to the same efficiency standard as paid.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
Schwartz's sharpest operational critique: SEO is the only channel that gets to report its own activity as its result. Nobody running paid says 'look how many times I'm number one' — they report spend against driven revenue. SEO must pick one conversion metric tied to a business outcome, then prune everything that does not move it, including traffic that converts for nobody.
Origin
Eli Schwartz, from years of consulting engagements where clients defended rankings and traffic as success metrics — including a two-sided HR marketplace whose entire organic traffic sat on the non-monetized side.
Core principles
- 01Rankings are a top-of-funnel activity metric, not a conversion metric.
- 02Traffic only counts as the metric if you are a media company monetizing pageviews.
- 03The conversion can be an MQL, a purchase, a phone call, a video view, or even inbound links for a pitch deck — but it must matter to the business.
- 04There is always less traffic mid-funnel, and that is fine, because the KPI now tracks a business metric.
- 05Traffic does not buy you generalized 'authority' with Google — that is a common misconception.
- 06It is legitimate to chase a ranking if someone who matters (an investor reading a pitch deck) genuinely cares about it — just be honest that that is why.
How to run it
- 1
Name who you are trying to attract and what they must do
Establish what the business actually cares about from search traffic — leads, sign-ups, revenue, calls. Choose the single metric that reflects it.
Pro tip If the real audience is investors and the real currency is a '#1 for X' line in a deck, say so explicitly and optimize for it deliberately.
Watch out Do not let 'traffic is up' stand in for a business result. Traffic in an investor update is a waste of a slide.
- 2
Audit existing pages against that metric
Find the content that generates traffic but produces zero of the chosen conversion — very often the wrong side of a two-sided market, or a blog built because 'blogs are good'.
Pro tip Check whether the traffic sits on the side of the marketplace you actually monetize.
Watch out Driving traffic to something that does not convert does not build Google 'authority' as a side effect. Only enormous sites with millions of visits get any such benefit.
- 3
Delete or rebuild the non-converting surface
Schwartz advised an HR-space SaaS in a two-sided marketplace to delete all the content on the non-monetized side outright. Redirect that investment to mid-funnel assets that convert.
Watch out Expect pushback: teams point to how much SEO work they have done. That work plateaus quickly if it was never attached to a conversion.
- 4
Report SEO like a paid channel
State what was spent, what it drove, and the efficiency of the two. Apply the same rigor a paid marketer would never be allowed to skip.
Pro tip Pair this with milestone tracking on the build (pages indexed after month one, etc.) so 'SEO didn't work' can be distinguished from 'we never shipped'.
In the wild
A SaaS in a two-sided HR marketplace monetized only one side, but all of its organic traffic landed on the other side and converted at zero. They kept it because 'traffic must be good for Google'.
→ Schwartz recommended deleting all the content on the non-monetized side; the traffic was worthless and was buying no authority.
SurveyMonkey generated a couple of hundred million dollars a year from organic traffic because the journey was clean: user has a problem, searches for the solution, finds a freemium tool, signs up, and pays if it works.
→ Revenue — not rankings — was the reported outcome, which is exactly the standard Schwartz argues every SEO program should be held to.
Common mistakes
Using rankings as the success metric
'It doesn't really matter if we convert on the word CRM, look, we're number one' is the trap. The ranking selects for high-volume, zero-intent terms — precisely the ones AI Overviews now absorb.
Reporting organic traffic in investor updates
Unless you are a media company monetizing pageviews, a rising traffic number with flat leads means you are acquiring worthless traffic. It does not help the business.
Is it for you?
Best for
Growth or marketing leads who inherited an SEO program reported on rankings and sessions and need to reattach it to revenue.
Not ideal for
Media businesses genuinely monetizing pageviews via CPM, where traffic legitimately is the conversion metric.
From the transcript
“they use the wrong conversion metric which is top of funnel ranking”
“no one doing paid marketing will ever say this is how many times I'm number one on this search”
“generally driving traffic to something that doesn't convert you for you wouldn't be a good idea”
From the episode
Rethinking SEO in the age of AI
Eli Schwartz (SEO advisor, author)