Posted by Ray Comstock

My recent presentation at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York afforded me the opportunity to talk about:

1. The importance of measuring the right data from each step in the “search cycle” and then,…
2. Taking action based on that data.

Many people get caught up in metrics and measuring all kinds of things that don’t drive any tactical optimization activities. In an ongoing SEO campaign, resources for continued optimization need to be prioritized based on analytics data, so as to maximize ROI. Therefore, we need to measure the right data in each step of the “search cycle” in order to understand the proper allocation of those resources.

The “search cycle” is a five step process that illustrates how potential customers become customers through search:

Each of the steps in this process have certain metrics that can be leveraged to drive SEO strategy. Because of time constraints I was only able to discuss rankings and traffic at my presentation. For today’s blog post, I will be discussing Search Rankings and Wednesday I will write about Search Traffic.

Search Rankings:

In the search rankings phase of the cycle, its obvious that the primary metric of concern is the ranking of a phrase. But it’s important to note that where the phrase is ranked is not always consistent between users. Between localization, personalization, universal search results and ranking fluctuations between data centers, ranking #1 for a particular phrase in Google, Yahoo or MSN, isn’t as clear cut as it once was. That isn’t to say that top listings for competitive keyword phrases aren’t important, they certainly are. But they are getting harder to measure accurately.

It’s also worth noting that typically, an enterprise level Web site that gets thousands of search visitors a month, is not able to check rankings for every keyword permutation that they are interested in. Therefore they chose a smaller set of “fat head” keywords that are competitive and will in theory, generate the highest revenue or at least search traffic. But in reality, if you optimize a site for a three word phrase, you are likely also optimizing it for dozens if not hundreds more related long tail keyword phrases. And the resulting taffic from these long tail keywords for sites that target high traffic niches can be significant.

The main takeaway here is that rankings in and of themselves don’t tell the whole story about your SEO campaign. So its important not to rely solely on rankings as the primary metric of success. It’s certainly a key indicator, but the rest of the search cycle must be considered in order to both understand and improve your ROI from search.

So with that in mind, I gave some tips on how to use search rankings to drive SEO strategy:

1. You should create a “keyword map” in Excel that lists all of the keyword phrases that you are targeting as well as which URL you would like ranked for that URL. The keyword map serves a number of purposes.

   One, it is a permanent record of which pages have been optimized for which keywords. This is very helpful in both internal and external link development on an ongoing basis.

   Two, in the event that a different page on your site is listed for a particular keyword, it allows you to see the differences in what content you think is most relevant for that phrase versus which content Google thinks is most relevant. Often times this will provide excellent clues on how to improve your optimization.

   Additionally, you can then ensure that the messaging on the page that is ranked, is consistent with the page you thought was going to be ranked, thereby improving your conversion rate. In other words, if you sell a product and you have a blog post about the product, and the blog post gets more links and gets ranked higher than the product page, make sure you have a “buy now” button on the blog post.

2. The second way rankings can drive strategy is understanding that rankings in the top 10 are the only rankings that really matter, because they are the only rankings that consistently produce traffic. Therefore, it makes sense to monitor your top keywords to see which in are the top 30 or so that are not in the top 10. These rankings illustrate an immediate opportunity where a few small improvements can make a big difference.
3. Additionally, it pays to look at long tail keywords that convert well and add them to your optimization. Often times it doesn’t take much optimization to really improve your ranking for a long tail keyword. And the difference in traffic between a #8 listing and a #3 listing can be substancial.

In summary, any ranking not in the top 10 represents an opportunity for continued optimization. There are usually more opportunities for more SEO (content, internal links, external links, etc) than there are resources. In that event, it is useful to prioritize based on which terms convert better, which terms drive the most profitable sales and which terms are in markets where the company has a competitive advantage. It is advantageous to have a keyword map that serves as a master gameplan for your optimization. This will allow you to understand if your visitors are going where you want them to and that they see messaging that will result in the highest possible conversions. Adding long tail keyword phrases to your map that convert well according to your analytics and then optimizing for those phrases can significantly increase rankings for those phrases.

Rankings are really just the tip of the iceberg as it relates to what you need to measure to maximize your ROI for your organic search campaign. In my next blog post, I will talk about traffic metrics, what’s important, what isn’t, and how that data should drive your ongoing optimization.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under Analytics, SEO, Search. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Ray "Catfish" Comstock has spent over 9 years in the search engine optimization field and has successfully ranked numerous companies in the top-10 of all major search engines for ultra competitive markets such as travel, real estate, computer software, retail, broadband internet and various manufacturing sectors.