You gotta understand. SEO/SEM is a set of techniques that raise your ranking on a search engine. Whether that nets you more traffic and whether that traffic produces the results you want are separate questions. Whether or not the traffic that you may or may not get is the most cost effective way to reach the goal remains to be seen.

In many segments beyond our little recruitosphere, SEO/SEM techniques are losing favor. Strong search engine results do not inherently correlate with strong market performance. There are simply too many variables involved.

At the very best, SEO and SEM techniques create a flow of traffic that simply reinforces the inadequacies of the organization. Converting the traffic into profitable results (the “right” candidates or customers) involves enormous amounts of discipline and persistence. Once the flow is correct, then the transaction is in the hands of the user-experience designers.

In other words, if SEO/SEM live up to the hype, all they can do is generate prospects. Closing those prospects, the essence of sales, is up to the recipient of the SEO/SEM deal. For the most part, user experience is so bad that the deals don’t close.

That’s what we mean by “measuring what we missed”.

Without a fully deployed, well branded, outcome focused experience at the end of the game, SEO/SEM simply doesn’t matter. You just get to be number one in the search results with nothing to show in your business results. SEO/SEM is the cheese. The deal happens in the mousetrap.