Measure Success, How do you measure success Options

[braveheartdesign]

Interesting conversation this morning with a prospective client re how to measure the success of the SEO work.

Using WPG Gold for example you can see the number of top five rankings for a site. Problem is that WPG treats all rankings equally. So for example a first page ranking in Ask Jeeves is viewed the same as the first place ranking in Google.

And if that isn't enough, what about the # searches for a word and its rankings? For example you have optimized for two phrases and both have #1 rankings. One phrase is searched 5,000 times a month and the second phrase is searched 100,000 times a month.

To both of these examples my questions are:

Are these equal rankings or is the second one more valuable?

How do you measure the success of your SEO work?

David

[OldWelshGuy]

Excellent question BH.

SEO is NOT what people want, it is an evil that they must have, just the same as as advertising, no one want advertising, but advertisers want more business, hence, they advertise.

So my reply (for once is short)

You measure your success by the bottom line, nothing else, as there IS nothing else to measure it against.

It is all about getting more of whatever their required action is, be it newsletter signups, sales, or visitors to a forum, whatever.

Thats the only way to measure in business.

[braveheartdesign]

OWG, I agree on that if you have end result, like an e-commerce site that is easy to track. But what if the goal of the site is brand awareness or is information driven where there is no easily tracked end result for the visitor to do?

David

[sbubear]

If the site's purpose is awareness, how about web log analysis? You can easily see how many visitors are coming from which engines with Web Log Analysis software.

However, it sounds like your client has made a big mistake if he has a site without a real purpose in mind.

[braveheartdesign]

Hi Sbubear

Goal of client's web site is informational and also to build brand awareness. Good goals, but success is difficult to measure especially as they do off-line advertising.

Log analysis is a good option. So if the % of traffic from the search engines increases I must be doing a great job.

So are you saying that the # rankings is not a good measure of SEO success?

David

[sbubear]

No. I think Webposition analysis is valuable and means something. I use it. (WebPosition Gold) I use it to keep tabs on where I am at and make decisions on where to tweak my search engine positioning.

I just think log analysis means more to a client. If you can say 20 top 5 terms for keywords with real traffic and a 40% increase in site visitors. It connects the dots.

[OldWelshGuy]

In a scenario like that, I would thoroughly research keywords, then implement those words into the SEO plan, then, show the client how many more 'on target' visitors they are getting.

Obviously you are going to rank highly if the job is done right, so rankings go hand in hand with increased targeted visits. I tend to push the targeted aspect a lot more than the quantity though, as after all if something is optimised it means it is performing to the best of its abilities, or, as Jill calls it ' being the best it can be'.

Traffic costs money, traffic is NOT what people want, they want interest. To get brand awareness your going to have to aim for some pretty generic words, then convert them into brand words. This should be possible, and if done right, you can show these stats to your clients.

OWG

[qwerty]

By analyzing your logs, you can find out more about building brand awareness than just how many people are coming in from searches on what queries.

You can find out how much time people are spending on the site, whether they're looking at mulitple pages, whether they're bookmarking pages, coming back for multiple visits, etc.

[braveheartdesign]

So is the consensus then that the way we measure SEO success is either tracking the desired end results (i.e. a sale) or by the increase in traffic to the site?

If that is the case, then what I hear is that the number of top 30 rankings is not that important, what is important is traffic

David

[SearchRank]

It can mean different things to different clients. really depends on their goals.

1. Some may want more traffic. They have a site where advertisers are attracted due to the amount of traffic the site draws.

2. Some may want an overall higher PR measurement so they can attract advertisers who want the same thing with backlinks.

3. Some may want increased brand awareness.

4. Others will want to attract investors.

5. Still others will want to increase customer acquisitions and/or sales.

6. Some may just want to show up first in spite of their competitors whom they hate!

There can be many other goals as well. Therefore I would define the success of an SEO campaign is to meet or exceed that clients goals, whatever they may be. That is why IMO a good SEO will try to figure out what the clients real goals are rather than just what keywords they want to rank # 1 for.

[sbubear]

For me, it is a sales funnel. Targeted search engine positioning builds qualified site traffic that leads to sales.

I look at each level to see what I can improve. But at the end of the day the most important measurement is sales and margin. The site has to make money.

[lyn]

If the issue is "how well has my SEO effort performed?" then I think you have to look at how the well the site is ranking on the SERPs relative to what it was doing before. The ultimate measure for the value of the site is successful conversions to the desired action (purchase, sign-ups, etc.) there are an awful lot of other factors that come into play. It ain't all SEO!
It's no different from putting a value on the results of any ad campaign or any contributor to an ad campaign. Great commercial but a lousy media buy. Great buy, great concept, poor camera work. When a campaign fails, who is to blame? When it succeeds, who gets the credit? It takes a ton of work to isolate the variables and figure out what workde adn what didn't.
At our shop, we figure we've done a good job if the client comes back for more.

L.

[lyn]

The point I forgot to make there is that you can't solve a problem you don't own. If you're hired for SEO, you need metrics that measure search engine performance. You can't take responsibility (credit or blame) for the entire marketing effort.
Before you start, find out or recomend what's meaningful to the client, agree on the metrics (key words, relative ranking, which search engines), set your benchmarks then do the job.

L.

[incrediblehelp]

Of course using web position to show the current ranking position of each keyword is very important to show value in our services to the client.

Another additional way to rate these keywords is to simply go through your list (the client may do this as well) and rank each keyword with a rating of One, Two or Three. One, Two and Three is a simple rating for each keyword for the sake of taking the Web Position report a step further.

Once each keyword has a rating of importance of One, Two or Three import this to an excel sheet with its current corresponding ranking from web position and do a simple average displaying the the average position of each rating One, Two and Three.

This will give the client a good idea if you are performing well for their top tiered words comparable to the bottom tiered. For example in the client list you are averaging a ranking of 7.4 on Google for keyword ranked as One. For keywords ranked Two you are performing at a level of 4.3 in Google and so on.

I know this is simplistic way to look at the keyword value but it does help give the client a sense of security in knowing that you as the SEO is performing on their important keywords.

[OldWelshGuy]

You also have to keep in mind that after SEo traffic might well go down. Many sites get traffic by chance, or irrelevant traffic due to the wrong words being used. SEo is all about maximising the quality, rather than the quantity of traffic. Quantity also comes in most cases though (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) but lower traffic, higher conversions is also possible, and happens often.