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measuring SEO

SEO: Looking Beyond the Rankings

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With several algorithm changes in the past years, the definition and primary focus of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed immensely. These changes have caused confusion amongst many business owners. Although many businesses understand the importance of SEO and have benefited from it, few are aware of the process that goes into it. Most believe that SEO is all about rankings. Yes, SEO will increase your rankings in the search engines, but that’s a byproduct of the process, not the end goal.

SEO

What is SEO?

Wikipedia defines SEO as, “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page.” While this is true, it is far less descriptive than it should be. SEO refers to the consistent development of a business’s online presence to increase reach and visibility to a target audience. The development process is based on search engine algorithms that are regularly updated and modified. That being said, there has always been one factor in these algorithms that has stayed true and consistent: Good content. The algorithm updates ultimately work towards determining how well a site meets the needs of the user. With fresh industry related content, users will likely visit more pages, stay on your site longer, interact (comment, like, download, etc), and convert on sales. All of these metrics are reflected positively by search engines and are reflected in the rankings.

Several business owners tend to get tied up in the thought of keywords and rankings. While keywords are important, they don’t mean anything without the right content containing those keywords. Sure, you could rank well for certain areas of interest, but if your web page does not follow SEO best practices and does not have updated relevant content, it will actually have a negative impact on your online presence. Websites with poor or no SEO will have a high bounce rate, when visitors leave after viewing only one page, which will drastically decrease a Business’s positioning in search engines. More importantly, that means a loss of visitors and sales. This means businesses should put less focus in stuffing your website full of keywords and more focus on maximizing the user experience.

The purpose of SEO is to increase visitors to your site and their retention level, increase brand awareness, and most of all increase sales and leads. With effective SEO, all of these will be accomplished which in turn will lead to an increase in rankings.

What can SEO do for my Business?

It’s 2015, business is no longer just walk-in sales. Businesses are seeing a huge percentage if not their majority of visitors and sales via online. Evermerchant reports that e-commerce sales generate more than $1.2 Million every 30 seconds! Without an effective SEO campaign, your business will miss out on a great financial opportunity.

With that being said, more visitors to your site does not directly correlate to an increase in sales or leads. An effective SEO campaign enables your business to target relevant consumers with relevant content or products/services. Good SEO speeds up the process of generating traffic to your webpage and makes it much easier for consumers to find just what they are looking for. Search engines distinguish the most relevant content to match a user’s search query, so the way you create, maintain, and position your website’s content is vital to your business’s success.

A properly optimized site should answer 9/10 questions a visitor has regarding the topic they searched for. This means that the page they land on should have up to date useful content as well as easy to follow navigation that points visitors in the right direction. Let’s say for example you’re searching for a new cell phone. After adding your specifications to your search, you click on a cellphone distributor. If this site has been modified effectively, you would hope to see a list of relative cell phones, content about them, and even comparisons amongst them. The page should also have links to other internal or external pages that provide more information. That is what a site with good SEO looks like. The goal is to help the customer as much as possible and provide them with enough information so they are comfortable enough make a purchase or to interest them enough to generate a lead.

Rankings aren't Everything

“If you ain’t first, you’re last” is the common misconception regarding SEO and search engine rankings. While it is true that ranking higher in search engines leads to more visitors, it does not mean these visitors are the ones you’re targeting. Having an effective SEO campaign is all about quality over quantity.

Years ago the rankings within search engines were a decent method of evaluating a sites performance and relevancy but those days are no more due to several algorithm changes. Now search results are much more personalized with the user’s experience as the top priority. Google, for instance, takes search history, geographic location, social media, as well as the device being used to search all into consideration when a search is conducted. All of these factors take less control out of the website owner’s hands with regards to rankings.

Let’s say for example you own a small plumbing company and you are interested in improving your business’s SEO. You, as many businesses owners do, search Google for “plumbing” or “plumbing services” to evaluate your site’s performance. The problem with this method is that what you see is not what everyone else sees. Google’s search results will adjust its ranking order based upon what sites you have visited already with regards to plumbing. This will more than likely boost your site assuming that you visit it more than other sites. It will also show you local listings of plumbing companies in your area near the top of your results. These local listings are not only tied to your business’ website but also to your business’ profile on Google My Business and other local directories, which do indeed increase relative traffic. Google will also include sites that your Google+ friends or associates have either followed or interacted with.

Google and other search engines are businesses and search results are their product. They want their product to be of the highest quality it can possibly be, so search engines have shifted the focus towards improving the user experience. So what does that mean for your business? It means to worry less about rankings, and more about developing and updating all platforms in use, as well as evaluating your current data to identify your strengths and weaknesses. If your website is seeing an increase in activity but is not necessarily ranking high, do not sound the alarms. You can’t always control your ranking, but you are in control of improving your visitor’s experience. Put your efforts towards providing up to date industry related content and watch the numbers speak for themselves.

Conclusion:

As a business owner, understanding and utilizing SEO is vital for both financial growth and brand awareness. Years ago, evaluating rankings were a clear depiction of how well your SEO campaign has been but not any longer. Now business owners should look past the misleading rankings and focus more of their attention on the analytics. The process of SEO is not a sprint, it’s an ongoing marathon. If you’re seeing a steady increase in traffic, mentions, leads and sales, keep doing what you’re doing and let the rankings take care of themselves.

By: David McDowell

Your Guide to Measuring SEO in 2015

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Danny Laws, Principal Owner and resident “Sharp Dressed Man” here at DMG takes to our big whiteboard wall to cover the top considerations for measuring SEO in 2015.

Learn the tactics and metrics your team should look to measure, what’s coming down the pipeline, and what you can leave at the door.

Hi, I’m Danny Laws, Principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group, a full service digital marketing agency in Reading, PA. I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about measuring SEO in 2015 and some of the things that I believe are going to come down the pipeline and have a little bit more of an emphasis.

What we have here is our digital analytics framework: Strategy, Implement, Measure, Optimize. With that being said, when we talk about measurement of anything, we talk about the goals and objectives, the execution of the measurement plan as it pertains to the measurement of all things related to your business, but in the case of this particular scenario, we’re talking about the measurement of SEO. We want to gauge progress, and we want to make improvements as it relates to organic search traffic coming to your site.

Now, in the past we’ve talked about the “ABCs” of measurement, of digital analytics, of web analytics, however you want to define it, and we’ve talked about the Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions. In my opinion, in 2015 when it comes to measuring SEO, we’re going to have a little bit more of a focus on the measurement of the Audience, the SEO-related Audience. From a measurement of the SEO-related Audience, we want to talk about the demographics, the interest information. We also want to talk about the location, the localization of keywords and phrases. Is that the same audience we’re talking about within this strategy, that we’ve identified with KPIs, that we’re concerned with? You want to keep that in consideration.

Also when talking about the measurement of SEO, of organic search traffic, you want to tie this back to Acquisition. When we talk about Acquisition, we’re talking about the search engines (Google vs. the Yahoo/Bing Network). Typically, we see roughly 90% of that traffic within the US coming from those areas. Is that trend holding true? Are we looking at those components consistently? At the same time, we’re talking about the Acquisition via keywords, phrases, themes of keywords. Are we getting users and visitors coming from organic search traffic when we measure Acquisition via SEO? Are we getting what we need or what we thought we were going to get from those keywords and phrases, as well as the appropriate search engines?

The next component when we start talking about the measurement of SEO in 2015 is the Behavior component. For us, we do a lot of creating of content, whether it be video, whether it be infographs, whether it be blog content, those types of components. Is the information, those URLs that we look to do some link earning with, are we seeing traffic coming to those specific URLs that we’ve targeted for people, that we’ve leveraged our relationships for? Are we seeing what we expected to happen from a link targeting, link bait, link earning, however you define it, in this particular area? At the same time, when we’re talking about measurement of SEO, where is SEO in the events that are coming from SEO? Are we seeing a difference there, and what kind of user behavior is happening on the site from a pageview perspective, from a depth of visit, from returning visits, those types of behaviors as well, looking at that information. And my favorite part here within the behavior, is looking at it from a testing perspective. So, when we run tests, have we sliced and diced the data to look at how SEO or organic-related traffic is being impacted from a behavioral perspective here.

The last piece of this is Conversions. When we talk about the micro/macro conversions, measuring conversions from SEO, we want to specifically look at the measurement of keywords, phrases, themed keywords, a group or cluster of keywords specifically, are we seeing organic search conversions coming from that particular area?

What I would recommend at this point when you’re talking about measuring SEO in 2015 is making sure we revisit the strategy to account for the appropriate KPIs associated with SEO in itself. We want to update the implementation, i.e. the configuration, making sure that the configuration is appropriate to capture this audience-related information because of the updates that have happened, a number of systems around collecting audience information. Also the privacy policies, don’t forget about this particular component when we talk about the audience.

The other piece here is to validate that the data as it pertains to SEO, as well as the overarching goals and objectives, is being collected according to what you’re trying to capture within the KPIs in general. And then, you want to create hypotheses around SEO. Whether it be checking out themed approaches, keywords, different landing pages, those types of things. Content ideas. Create hypotheses, test these components. Within the framework of measuring SEO in 2015, I wish you the best of luck in taking these items into consideration. The audience, the acquisition, the behavior, and the conversions.

Good hunting, and let us know if you have any questions. Have a good day!