It kind of reminds me of people discussing stock using what looks to me like numerology. They don't really focus on the underlying company or what it does, they mainly look at the stock graph and use more or less complicated models to try to predict future performance. Sometimes they actually have no idea what the company does.
I feel a bit the same way reading this article. There's a lot of talk about conversion rates and funnels and semantic cores and awareness ladders but in the end does do they have a product that people actually want?
Having bad SEO and a confusing website is bad because it could make it harder for people to buy your product but it's not going to magically make people buy something they don't want.
Also I wonder if focusing entirely on "conversion rate" is fair. There are other benefits to advertisement, such as increasing brand awareness for instance. After all look at the vast majority of real world ads, there's basically a 0% conversion rate. People don't see a Coca Cola ad on TV and immediately go the supermacket to buy a bottle. I don't see a football player wearing Nikes and immediately go online to shop for shoes.
Maybe somebody will click on your ad, browse your website for a bit, think it's interesting and months later they'll convince their boss to use it for their next big product.
I think focusing on conversion rate is fair in this case. I would think Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is more for conversions and less for brand awareness.
Their example query of "file upload php" is someone who's looking for a solution right this second, so it's not unreasonable that they would sign up and try out the service right this second.
Did you read the article? Your last paragraph refers to a demographic and should be accounted for in a rung in the awareness ladder.
The reason people focus on conversion rate is because you can easily calculate spend and predict RoI. Coke can spend on a TV ad because it's a drop in the bucket but every dollar is valuable to a bootstrapped company. Exactly why you want to know what you'll get before one blow 50k on adwords.
I feel a bit the same way reading this article. There's a lot of talk about conversion rates and funnels and semantic cores and awareness ladders but in the end does do they have a product that people actually want?
Having bad SEO and a confusing website is bad because it could make it harder for people to buy your product but it's not going to magically make people buy something they don't want.
Also I wonder if focusing entirely on "conversion rate" is fair. There are other benefits to advertisement, such as increasing brand awareness for instance. After all look at the vast majority of real world ads, there's basically a 0% conversion rate. People don't see a Coca Cola ad on TV and immediately go the supermacket to buy a bottle. I don't see a football player wearing Nikes and immediately go online to shop for shoes.
Maybe somebody will click on your ad, browse your website for a bit, think it's interesting and months later they'll convince their boss to use it for their next big product.