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Measuring Success as an SEO
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
March 8 2006
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“How do I know if my SEO campaign has been successful?”
I was asked this deceptively simple question the other day. I wasn’t
able to give the fullest response but considering the circumstances, I gave
it a great effort.
It’s mid-spring in Victoria and the golf courses are playable again
so I joined a friend and a few of his acquaintances for a short round on
Saturday. By the time we had gotten to the third tee-box, talk had turned
to Google and eventually search engine marketing in general. That tends
to happen around me for some reason.
This is not a golfing story but its kernel was found on a golf course and
golf is a game that is rich with metaphor. Golf, like SEO, is a deceptively
simple game. On the surface it is easy enough to understand but once you
get involved, you learn there is always a lot more to learn.
Like search marketing, the golfer’s goal appears simple. Top placement
is measured by the lowest number and a 1, 2 or 3 looks amazing on anyone’s
scorecard. Fortunately, it is infinitely easier to score a 1 in SEO than
it is to do so while golfing. Unfortunately, explaining success in the world
of search marketing, over the course of 9-holes is hardly possible. As it
is in golf, success in search marketing is a very subjective thing.
To put it in a simple sentence, success equates to meeting one’s
goals. What those goals are, and how they help you or your business achieve
a greater objective is another matter.
Pure Rankings
The easiest way to measure success in SEO is still found in pure search
engine rankings. Either the site appears in the Top10 listings under target
keyword phrases, or it does not. Top10 rankings are what most SEO firms
promise their clients.
While pure rankings are the easiest metric to measure, they are not necessarily
the most accurate one. From rankings, we learn generally where a site appears
from day to day but that’s all. We can never be certain that the rankings
we see or record are exactly the same as those seen by our clients who might
be drawing results from a different server.
Pure rankings are often the first goal of most SEO campaigns however what
happens after that goal is achieved is where most SEO firms really provide
value for their clients.
Visitors
The second simplest measure of SEO success is found in the log-files
kept by every Internet Service Provider. When someone visits a site, the
host ISP records the visit in the log-file of that site. Those logs are
available to the client and the client should make those logs available
to the SEO.
If the SEO has achieved high rankings under relevant keywords or phrases,
there should be a notable increase in visits recorded in the site logs.
If there is not an increase, there is likely something wrong with the targeted
keywords or with the listing as displayed on the search engines.
For new webmasters, it is important to note that a hit is not necessarily
a visit. The ISP presents both as stats. A hit is a record of a file being
drawn from the server (often, several files are put together to make a standard
HTML page). A visit is an actual entity (live or electronic) coming to the
site.
An increase in visitors is the second basic goal for an SEO. In reality,
the client might think they are only paying for strong rankings. Even if
Top10 rankings are the agreed upon goal, the client is really paying for
more visitors. That is what they expect to reap from their investment and,
more often than not, that is exactly what they get. The question then becomes,
what does one do when visitors come calling?
Conversions
Websites that rank well in the major search engines tend to draw far
more traffic than websites that do not. SEOs, if successful, make client
websites easier to find and therefore far more visible. Drawing traffic
immediately opens an important question. Once you have it, what do you
do with it?
Conversions are the most important metric to measure the success of an
SEO campaign and conversions come from planning.
Experienced SEOs appreciate the value of strategic marketing planning.
It is important for us to know that our clients have a long-term plan. If
they don’t we are happy to help them come up with one or to refer
them to an expert who can. A good website marketing plan looks at how live-visitors
will act while visiting the site.
Goal-Orientated Conversions
The object is to actively direct site visitors towards a goal of some
sort or another. For some cases, that goal is a sale. In others it is
the provision of information, the acquisition of email addresses or other
contact information.
As a metric, visitor/site conversions are far more valuable. Conversions
are the measurement of completed goals and good SEOs know how to help increase
goal-orientated conversions.
Keyword conversions
Some keywords or keyword phrases will convert better than others. Even
if one set of keywords or keyword phrases tends to draw more search-traffic,
those words might not lead to successful site conversions.
When faced with a question about increased traffic that does not lead to
increased conversions, we tend to first look at the keywords used to generate
that traffic. Some words will obviously have a different effect on the searcher
than others and might influence the course of their visit. For SEOs, watching
how your counterparts dealing with PPC keyword buys can help provide clues
to winning keyword combinations.
On-Site conversions
The greatest influencer of how a visitor acts when on a site is, of course,
the site itself. Websites that convert well tend to be laid-out in a way
that actively encourages site visitors to move from one section of a site
to another.
The same principle that applies to moving spiders applies to moving live
visitors. A good SEO makes site transit simple for spiders and intuitive
for live visitors.
Sales
Ultimately, for our clients at least, conversions are supposed to lead
to a sale. Great placements and excellent conversions are useless for
the website owner who can’t put food on their table. Sales are an
important metric to measure the success of any advertising campaign against
but, it is important to note that measuring the effectiveness of your
SEO by online sales is a false metric.
The vast majority of actual sales happen offline. Take the travel industry
for example. With the exception of the larger businesses operating in travel
and tourism, most actual transactions will take place in person or over
the telephone. I might book and pay for an airline ticket online but am
much more likely to pay for my accommodation and all meals at the time of
purchase. A similar transaction cycle happens in the fashion and clothing
sectors. People research their clothing purchases online and buy them in
a store. If your actual sales are up, chances are your website marketing
efforts are at least partially responsible. If not, you should look at all
facets of marketing and presentation, including the SEO efforts.
Return on Investment
By far, the most realistic metric to measure any advertising campaign
against is return on investment. The basic question here is, am I making
more money after investing in search advertising than I was before. If
the answer is yes, chances are the search marketing component in your
overall advertising mix is working well.
For me, the return on my investment of time and energy on Saturday morning
has been excellent. Not only did I improve my game and meet a couple friendly
business contacts, I was given a deceptively simple question to deal with.
Golf is a game of personal honesty. For a good search marketer, so is SEO.
In order to enjoy success on the search engines, a fair degree of personal
honesty is invaluable. Some campaigns will succeed where others fail. Some
will only meet a few of their greater goals while others will ace them every
time. Overall, measuring success can be boiled down to one basic but deceptively
simple question, “Was it worth all the effort?” For our clients
at least, the answer is, far more often than not, a resounding “Yes!”
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