5 replies to this topic

[Lisa-BFWM]

Hi all- I have been out of the loop for awhile- a LONG while :-)

I have been focusing on my own blogs for last couple of years. I have not done any paid SEO consulting for awhile. I am looking at getting back in and curious what tools people are now using to track and report on their websites.

A million years ago I used webmaster gold.

Glad to be back,

Lisa

[qwerty]

Hi Lisa. I'm guessing you're referring to Web Position Gold, and based on that, I'm further guessing that by "track and report" you're referring to running ranking reports, since I'm pretty sure that's all WPG is for.

 

If I'm right about that, you should probably read an article Jill published about a month ago: Why Running Ranking Reports is a Fool's Errand

 

If you were actually asking about reporting on something other than rankings, just let us know and we can talk about the various tools that are out there.

[Lisa-BFWM]

Hi- that is exactly what i am referring too ! I do have WPG but haven't used in ages.

 

What do people use to report back to clients?

Back when I did SEO professionally ie for other people they liked "reports".

I am guessing now that success is measured more using  Google  Analytics and traffic to specific pages/ conversions etc?

I am sorry to be so vague I am not up on current lingo and don't want to look outdated :-)

[qwerty]

A lot of clients will still ask for ranking reports, so you need to educate them on why they shouldn't want them. Everyone's search results are different these days, so rankings just don't tell you a lot. And even if everyone saw the same results for a given search, having a high ranking doesn't necessarily lead to much of anything. Maybe you've got a high bounce rate, or your snippet is so bad that no one clicks through. Or you're ranking at the top of the SERP for a keyword nobody searches on.

 

What should you be reporting on? Growth in organic search traffic, the keywords bringing people to the site, conversions and the funnel leading to them, time on site, average page views per session, stuff like that. It's likely to vary depending on the business your client is in, of course.

 

And there are ways to get data on what your ranking was when someone clicked through from the SERP. That can be valuable information.

Edited by qwerty, 02 April 2013 - 12:45 PM.
Wrong "you're". How embarrassing.

[Lisa-BFWM]

Thanks so much, Excellent article. I was in fact thinking of WPG.

One of reasons I stopped working at SEO for others and focused on my own sites was I found it so frustrating dealing with clients. Ranking were everything and trying to educate clients on traffic and conversions was an uphill battle.

I found webmasters and clients who had done a little bit of reading and became "experts" were particularly CHALLENGING.

 

When working with clients how to you measure and report success for them?

Edited by Lisa-BFWM, 02 April 2013 - 12:52 PM.

[Jill]

Also see my Content Marketing Metrics article which provides information and links to a way to check the actual rankings of pages when they were clicked on via  your Google Analytics. (Plus it provides a free content marketing dashboard which you can email you client on a regular basis.)