Don’t become SEO obsessed, or you’ll suffer from ROS.

All we need is yet another acronym in our bowl of search engine marketing alphabet soup that already includes ROI, ROAS, CT, SEO. But there is one more worth mentioning, one you should be aware of and avoid at all costs: Ranking Obsession Syndrome, or ROS.

You don’t have to search hard to find someone who’s obsessed with whether their company’s search engine rankings has moved from position #3, down to #10, and back up to #6. People with this obsession come from big and small companies alike. Even the wisest of business leaders can fall victim.

Sadly, businesses people often worry about their natural search rankings when, the truth is, in most practical cases, they have little if any control over the day-to-day results. (Worrying or even concerning yourself about rankings would be like watching the stock market several times a day when you are a layman, long-term investor, trying to build overall financial health.)

I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t get concerned (or even panic-stricken) if you were on the first page for some phrase and suddenly were nowhere to be found. I am saying you should focus your time and energy on things you have some control over, such as the conversion rate of your website and monetizing your search traffic as a whole, be it leads, subscriptions, or transactions.

Breaking Free From Ranking Obsession Syndrome

Here is a list of some items to put your efforts toward in place of obsessing over your search engine ranking:

• Make sure you’ve optimized your website as best you can. This means clean, search-friendly code, and well-written content that is tightly themed around the phrases you wish to rank highly for. There are likely past recommendations that were given to you, or that you came across that haven’t yet been implemented. Start there.
• Make sure you are pursuing phrases that people actually search for. What good is a #1 ranking if people don’t ever search for it? Equally as important, don’t just pick those phrases that have the highest search volume on some keyword report. Rather, add modifiers that really match your prospects’ needs for your services.
• Consistently look for creative and efficient ways to get other websites that are relevant to yours linking to your website. Write articles for other websites. Regularly send out optimized press releases. Get out there on other blogs and post comments. Put something so compelling on your website that other people will want to link to it as a service to their visitors.
• Is the search traffic you are getting currently converting into leads, subscribers, or revenue? At what rate? It can always be better. Doubling your conversion rate will produce a dramatically better return on investment than time and money spent trying to improve your rankings (but you should continually work at both). As an added bonus, that gain in conversion is yours to keep, enjoy, and build upon.

A Healthier Outlook on Your Search Engine Marketing

I don’t want you to think search engine rankings aren’t important and valuable—of course they are! But rankings are just one indicator of the overall health of your search engine marketing.

If you don’t like what you are seeing one morning when googling yourself for a certain phrase, change your perspective. Look at the overall month-to-month contribution of all of your search traffic in terms of leads, opportunities, and return on investment. And keep in your heart one of the world’s most famous prayers:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.