The dynamic world of SEO is awhirl with analytics, statistics and data. This month we thought we’d demystify three metrics at the heart of Search Marketing, explaining what they mean to your business. So here are three metrics that matter: what they are and why they matter for your website, and your business. Rankings
The most obvious measure of SEO success is the rankings of your important key phrases. Getting the pages of your site to rank well for these priority phrases is the first battle of an SEO campaign. The objective is to rank well for phrases that represent good search volumes on the one hand, yet low competition. This is a science in itself. When it comes to getting results, sometimes it can take just a month to push a page into a fairly good position; sometimes it can take many months. It all depends on factors such as your site structure, your content and how many other websites are actively competing for that same phrase.
Rankings are a fairly easy thing to measure, but they tend to fluctuate rather erratically depending on when you look. This makes an average monthly ranking hard to pin down since you could record a position on a low day or a high day. However, by keeping on top of this you will be able to see the overall trend in your rankings.
Visitor Traffic
Traffic is another metric worth tracking – after all, you want to know how many potential customers are finding your site and browsing your products or services. In theory, an increase in rankings should bring an increase in traffic to a page, owing to the increased exposure. However, be aware that in reality, this is not always the case and sometimes a boost in ranking in Google’s results might only generate a marginal increase in traffic. A comprehensive, ongoing SEO programme aims to assemble a mix of those phrases that delivers an increase in traffic in the long term and then, for those traffic generating phrases only, to focus on improving the rankings.
Conversions
Conversions are the various desired actions that visitors can take once on your website and are really the primary reason why we get involved in search marketing in the first place. These can include actions such as brochure requests, online enquiries, newsletter sign-ups, phone calls or bookings.
In theory, the number of conversions should increase as the traffic increases (assuming that the traffic is of a good quality and the conversion rate of your site remains constant), but of course, for traffic from certain phrases, this might always not be the case. At LeadGenerators we are constantly on the lookout for situations where we see in increase in traffic from certain phrases without the corresponding increase in conversions. It helps us fight the right battles for our clients – battles that actually represent an increase in conversions, not just traffic.
One way of determining which keywords might generate conversions at a better rate for your SEO strategy is with a short trial PPC campaign. In a relatively short period of time it can show us which phrases produce converting traffic and then you can consider including those phrases into your long term SEO campaigns.
But be warned: a key phrase that converts well from PPC traffic might not necessarily respond in the same way with organic SEO - and vice versa.
Marketing Matters
While these three metrics can indicate what is working and what is not, when it comes to online marketing strategies, metrics can only tell us part of the story. For this reason, we also encourage our clients’ marketing manager to contribute to search marketing strategies and online marketing decisions.
After all, SEO may be perceived a science, but marketing is an art.
Viva la marketing manager!
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