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Went Hot: January 31, 2008 - 3:17 pm
Posted By: davidrosenberg 521 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
Here's why: Jill Whalen explains
Reason 1. Rankings are constantly fluctuating. You might check rankings one minute then check again a few minutes later and see different results.
20 Comments
Comments
Excellent discussion about what really counts as SEO success.
I have to dissagree with you on this one. Obtaining the desired rankings for the desired keywords is exactly what we're all trying to do here, are we not? Sure, traffic and conversions are important, but if you have no rankings, you'll have no traffic or conversions.
I supposed this could be looked at as "What came first, the chicken or the egg", but that's if you're only doing SEO alone. Traffic and conversions are MUCH more important when you're dealing with PPC, where if you don't have the desired % you lose your shirt (or your client's shirt).
1. Knowing and uderstanding why your results are fluctuating so you can get better rankings is the job of the marketer.
2. Understanding geotargeting so you can get better rankings is the job of the marketer.
3. Understanding personalized search, local search etc. so you can get better rankings is the job of the marketer.
4. If your targeting poor kw's then you probably haven't done your research as a marketer.
5. If you're marketing a site that doesn't convert then you haven't done your research as a marketer.
I'll continue to measure my success by whether I'm 26th, or 6th, and the rest of you can look at your server stats ;-)
I still love this blog, and read it daily! :-)
Common David, some clients fixate on rankings at the expense of everything else - which creates a problem for SEOs who try to make them see the big picture.
Usually, this is what goes down:
1. A client wants higher ranking for terms X,Y, Z.
2. She convinces herself that tweaking on-page factors will magically improve her site's ranking, especially if a competitor's URL has no backlinks, low TBPR, and still managing to outrank everyone else.
3. She doesn't want to bother with PPC, buying adspace, networking, building good will through submitting other people's stuff on social network sites, building links, creating link bait, or making her website stand head and shoulders above her competition. Instead, she is determined to find that "magical" on-page quick-fix.
Ranking, traffic, and revenue - all that is important. But when a client fixates on those things, often times, real marketing and content building flies out the window, because a client believes that he/she doesn't need to build original, unique, compelling content to succeed. Instead, a client believes there's some easy "trick" that will get them to #1 ranking.
Moreover, sometimes, after a client achieves #1 ranking for all her money terms, she may realize those terms don't pull whole lot of traffic and that her revenue hasn't gone up. What then? Sometimes non-money-terms filtered well results in more revenue than 1,000 long tails that convert well but drive little traffic.
Real, long-term SEO is about market dominance. Those who chase short-term solutions and rankings will always be the ones posting on "why did my rankings plummet" threads.
Unfortunately, most SEO firms have placed all their eggs in the rankings basket and can't see the big picture of why now, more than ever, it's simply a useless measurement.
And yes, I see the irony of this coming from the CEO of a company called High Rankings. :D
I really like this article, particularly as I'm not a SEO specialist (although I know my fair deal). For me it's encouraging to see SEO's thinking beyond traffic generation. Bringing organic traffic to a poorly constructed web site that fails to convert is futile, and will not benefit either the SEO or the business they are working for.
I previously worked for a company that preferred to spend marketing dollars on traffic generation as opposed to fixing the various conversion issues associated with the site. An SEO specialist was hired and got a few months to optimise the site. Ultimately, they were fired when the business failed to see a return on investment. I believe it's certainly in the SEO's best interests to look beyond traffic generation, and understand what happens to the traffic after it hits the site.
top rankings are one of the several ways to bring in targeted traffic and should be a part of a traffic increase solution package an SEO offers to their clients.
What i do find true is that top rankings provide the best converting traffic out of all other traffic sources for the vast majority of clients...
Rankings get a bad rap. Yes, they're not the ultimate good measure of success, but they're an excellent measure of progress. Shifts in rankings often reveal positive/negative changes that don't show up in other measures for a while.
Maybe that's the reason why some marketers don't really care about rankings; they care more about sales or the clients/customers that come to them. But of course, the way to start this online is have good ranking and traffic.
Of course high rankings can often lead to more traffic and ultimately more conversions and sales.
But think about it. There's no reason to measure the rankings part. Take a look at your analytics. If you're seeing a slew of traffic for a specific keyword phrase at Google...guess what? You're probably ranking well for that phrase...whooohooo.
But who cares if it's #4 or #8? It's bringing traffic and sales.
Ok, before I end this, I know someone is going to say, well if it's #8 and bringing traffic, then if it's #1 it will bring more traffic. And I certainly don't deny that. As the SEO company, that's your job then to move the positions up SO THAT YOU WILL ULTIMATELY INCREASE THE TRAFFIC AND SALES.
The client doesn't need to know about the interim rankings. They care (theoretically) about their bottom line. Keep increasing that. That's what's important.
Yes, rankings (for the right phrases) will boost the bottom line. My problem with rankings as a measurement, however, is that too many shitty companies get rankings for words no one is searching for. Get rid of that middleman (rankings) and we get rid of all the shysters in our world.
Simple, huh? :D
I'm seeing both sides of the debate here. I'm from offline retail [cue voiceover : "in a time before the Internet ruled the earth"] - and we always said that it was no good have high footfall in the stores if folk weren't buying things. Same scenario for rankings. Offline we wanted the folk who were genuine customers for our products to come into our stores - online we want people who will clickthrough the listing on the SERP.
So .... maybe it is all down to the keywords ? Get the high rankings for the *right * keywords and that is the traffic that will buy. Othr keywords might only be appealing to 'window shoppers'?
BTW Jill - I think geotargeting based in IP is [perhaps] more of a problem than we realise - and that is because the SEO cannot replicate the SERP seen by people around the world. As an example; just yesterday I was trying to find cheap flights from Las Vegas to San Francisco [for my holiday in August]. So I typed in "flights Las Vegas to San Francisco", selected 'the web' - but because I am in the UK the first 2 SERPs were .co.uk sites selling flights from the UK to those US cities. Cheapflights.com came in on page 3 - not what they would have hoped [and optimized] for. Oh, and the sponsored ads followed the same routine.
Yup it is all about the keywords. If youre watching rankings or your log reports, it doesnt matter if your keywords are picked poorly.
This thread/story brings two things to mind; one is the fact that there are SEO company sales people out there (big ones) who use the "we rank better for 'seo term' than 'other company we are pitching against'" argument to potential clients.
And it is about traffic and conversion, but it is amazing how many clients find that difficult to grasp.
I'm very agree about this post. It's true, Internet is always changing and the search engines too. There are a lot of possibilities and methods to give a web site visibility. But, SEO and SEM professionals must to work to do a real quality web sites with real interesting content. Internet is global, and help to do a world always more global. Rankings are not a reflect of good results.
Rankings are a poor measure of an SEO worker's success because it's never clear whose failure his failure to get Top rankings really is - his or his client's? Yes, yes, his client who failed to give him the sufficient budget. Especially when the client is stupid enough to ask for price quotes and to choose the cheapest one.
Why Profit Is a Poor Measure Of Success
Are you still measuring your success by the profit you obtain? If so, you need to stop—right now! Here's why:
1. Profit fluctuates. You might be profitable today but not tomorrow.
2. Profit can be geo-targeted. You might be profitable in New York but making a loss in London.
3. Profit is personalized. Not all customers are as profitable as each other. Some even cost you money
4. Profits today don't equal profits tomorrow. If you don't know how you made a profit, how can you be sure you will make a profit tomorrow. And profit doesn't necessarily mean a profit was made because some profits are made up (remember Enron?)
5. Profits don't equal maximum profits. You might have made more if you'd done things differently.
6. Lots of shysters say that making a profit shows how successful they are so if we stop using it, the shysters will, er, go away.
Simple, huh?
Five and half of those points are perfectly true but none of them is a case for not using profit as a metric. They are a case for wisely using profit as a metric and making sure you know about lots of other things too.
Well said! I passed that article onto the CEO of the company I am working for. We are great at getting good search engine rankings and traffic. If we only focused more on conversion rates then we would be 100 Xs beter!
Rankings have value but most legitimate SEO firms that I know of tie in other metrics based on achieving goals as a result of organic traffic. The next question is often "well how much of that would I have gotten from my branded terms?" We are using a pretty cool newer analytics package called Clear Saleing which is helping us to better map the entire purchase cycle.
We still deliver ranking reports alongside traffic and conversion metrcis, but we tweak the list regularly based on targeted terms in order to measure the potential for success. It is unfortunate that a lot of SEO companies provide only rankings, but typically you get what you pay for. :)
waiting on explanation from edward lewis on why this isn't complete horseshit
so "high rankings" are a complete waste of time?
did i just make a funny?
at least this article was... or maybe that was your purpose...
5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success - jill whalen
"Yes, rankings (for the right phrases) will boost the bottom line. " - jill whalen
in 13 years, nothing has changed...
I'm absolutely stunned at the comments here. Why on earth would anyone want to rank for terms that don't convert? And it seems like some of you are downright angry that Jill has suggested it!
it's interesting because all I've seen lately is people complaining that there's nothing new and interesting on sphinn, but here you are clueless about the most basic seo concept.
rankings only matter if they drive sales or branding. there is no debate here.