Traffic is NOT the end goal of SEO

I've started a new gig as a marketing director for a start-up. I asked her what the basic metrics on the website were, and she shrugged and laughed, saying, "Every single one of our demos got booked from word of mouth, even through the website, so I don't even bother looking."

This seemed strange to me, but okay. I then get access to the website and analytics and discover we're getting 10k sessions a month and there are no fewer than 4 visits going on as I watch in real time. Wait, how in the world are we not booking demos?!

I spent all of Friday digging into our organic traffic as part of the audit. We're ranking for every variation of "models of xyz" -- which is related to what we do but odd. Okay, so I'm having conversion problems on a relevant ranking page...

... Except that one search term looks exactly like a quiz question. I quickly do some anonymous searches for it and other models keywords.

Bingo. They're searching for the answers to a quiz related to the profession of my target audience. We only are talking to full-fledged independent professionals who have their own clients, not students.

All told, some 9500 sessions came from those damn quiz keywords. I tell my boss that I've figured out the traffic problem, and she says, "Fascinating! Guess those consultants I hired were more worried about traffic than conversions."

All of that is to say, don't just pick keywords because they have high volume. Actually search them before you rank for them to make sure they're on target for potential buyers!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out how to convert traffic of people so far up the sales funnel, they won't become customers for another two years. -_-