I used to have about a dozen clients with the agency I ran with a friend a few years ago. I found out a number of things when I was working closely with my cli

I used to have about a dozen clients with the agency I ran with a friend a few years ago. I found out a number of things when I was working closely with my clients. Most were doing ok in the SERPS and a few did really well because of the niche industries they were in. Some things I found out: 1 - SEO helps, but is never the determining factor in hiring any of the companies I worked with. This means you can be #1, #1 in Google and still not get any business because of it. 2 - Tracking contacts is critical. We mandated all of our clients use an answering service. They would contact people within 24 hours of receiving a contact form. The owner would then follow up to set up appointments, consultations, etc. Once we did this, we saw a massive jump in sales conversions which had nothing to do with SEO. 3 - If your design sucks and people can't find what they're looking for quickly, they're going to leave your site no matter how high you're ranking. We found this out with several of our clients who didn't want to redesign their site for various reasons. They ranked high, but their traffic and conversions sucked. We redesigned their site(s) for easier navigation, and prioritized content and got rid of other content that clogged their site. Conversions jumped by 43% over a 6 month period. SEO does matter, but even if with massive amounts of traffic because you're ranking well isn't a magic bullet for success. You also need a good design and content people can find quickly and easily.