Sphinn - Search engine rankings are NOT useless

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: September 17, 2008 - 3:02 pm
Posted By: annie7 75 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://seogadget.co.uk)
Category: SEO

There’s been lots of buzz about the worth of search engine rankings recently. Problem is, rankings checkers (or at least the process of collecting rankings data on a regular basis) are not useless.

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from iBrian 75 days ago #

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Rankings themselves are meaningless, though, unless they can communication a clear sales process at work - namely, how much it costs, and how much it benefits.

As the credit crunch has built up, search volume in certain sectors has significantly decreased, so even a top ranking position now has to justify itself more directly through use of analytics to calculate Cost Per Lead and Cost Per Sale metrics.

Position 1 means little these days unless it's backed by clear sales data.

2c.

from robots 75 days ago #

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Yeah, I think the point of the article was that rankings that generate revenue should be worked on. A lot. Loved your opening sentence, by the way!

from richardbaxterseo 74 days ago #

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Hi Guys! All very interesting and useful comments. Just to clarify, rankings are obviously not the only KPI, which is why I referenced Eduard Blacquière's latest post on Joost's blog. Thanks!

from JeffMHoward 74 days ago #

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I think it completly depends on the make up of you online search campaign and type of client. If your a company using video, blogs, press releases and social media for traffic, kinda like a newspaper or magazine then rankings are not as improtant. But for small sites possibly ones in a smaller competitive space rankings are probably going to be the only online lead generator.

from Jill 74 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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Most people (like me) who believe that search engine rankings are no longer a viable measure of success, have not and do not say that they are useless. Just that they are not what you should be measuring.

These are 2 completely different things.

from rhcerff 74 days ago #

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I've run a check on the same site twice in the same day and gotten two different results. Okay, so the differences were small, but across the entire world that's a lot of change constantly going on. Rankings are not useless, but an easy way to guage if your directed efforts showing results. Those that say they are useless are really saying that it's results and not rankings that one should consider, if nobody searches for that phrase it is pretty useless. But then again, we all knew that?

from eduardblacquiere 74 days ago #

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Good discussion here! Richard, thanks for mentioning my article at Yoast.com. I didn’t say rankings are worthless

from richardbaxterseo 73 days ago #

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Hey Eduard - as we discussed I liked your article, and it provided heaps of useful reading. Just one, small thing; the article title...
Measuring SEO: why rankings are worthless

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