How Does One Measure SEO/SEM Success?

PAPABEAR1126 · 01-30-2006, 01:29 AM

This might appear to be a ridiculous question on the surface but,
how does one measure success with seo/sem?

We often measure things such as rankings for particular terms.
Amounts of various types of traffic.
Conversion ratios of visitors.

But really, what ultimately defines success for a site your working on?

Online is one thing, you can see the sales, but what about sites that are not direct selling online?

For example, say you have a regional site that sells home improvement products, selling only from their store, to a defined area of say a 100 mile radius.
So at what point have you succeeded for that client?

If you dominate a competitive product term coupled with a regional term (Widgets California) then one might say you have succeeded in that respect in serps.

Does one try to determine the # of potential buyers of said product in a given regions market place and you measure captured share, if you even could begin to measure such a thing? should you try?

Does one try to determine the number of possible visitors to a regional site and figure "success" from your efforts based on some percentage? Based on what?

If the site previously had a few hundred visitors per month and your now getting the site a few thousand, then is that success? Obviously from a rankings standpoint, but does it translate into actual success for the business if they are not selling online but are a retail location, have you succeeded?

At this point, for my regional sales only client's, I measure rankings for term/region and site traffic stats, but ultimately, if you are talking about working on a site that does not directly sell online but it's goal is to get people to call and or come into their regional store, how do you measure success?

Your really at the mercy of the customer's reporting to you increases in phone inquires, walk-ins, And,,, you have to count on the staff remembering to ask the proverbial "How did you hear of us" right?

How do you tell if your efforts are a success?
If your delivering more and more customer's and sales in the client's regional retail store how does one gauge if you should charge more when services are up for renewal?

I just never saw anyone define success in this instance, for non-online sales client's and I would appreciate what you folks have to say on the subject.
Maybe someone could word this better and make a poll out of it?

Thanks
Frank

John Scott · 01-30-2006, 01:38 AM

SEO has nothing to do with sales, profitability or anything other than search engine rankings.

The only metric for success in SEO is rankings.

If you are targetting a small market, such as many regional markets are, there are only going to be so many searches, and only so many clicks. That's the nature of the game.

Don't ever talk about sales when you're talking about SEO. SEO isn't marketing.

Think of it this way. SEO is like a newspaper - clients want people to see their ad, so they buy space in the newspaper. Now it's the newspaper's job to ensure that people see the ad, but it's not a guarantee that anybody will buy the damn product or service.

PAPABEAR1126 · 01-30-2006, 01:55 AM

Point taken,

I am just trying to figure out how to measure if I am doing a good job for a client with a local home improvement products retail store?
Many of my clients are businesses that are limited to regional sales that are not selling a shippable item or service and do not have an online store.
How would one determine if your efforts are successful?

Thanks
Frank

John Scott · 01-30-2006, 02:01 AM

With regional sites, especially sites with a brick and mortar location, it's almost impossible to say how much you're affecting sales. People may see the website and then go to the store and buy stuff without ever mentioning to the client that the website got them there.

I'd say, base it entirely on traffic and rankings.

PAPABEAR1126 · 01-30-2006, 02:05 AM

"there are only going to be so many searches, and only so many clicks. That's the nature of the game."

Exactly, thats what I am getting at, we can sort of research how often a term is searched but when you add a regional term to that searched product term you cut that number.

So how do you figure how many, "so many searches" is?
That is what appears to be the determining factor right?

Once we get a handle on how many searches is, "so many" is, we can then begin to determine, based on stats etc. what percentages of the available regional market we are capturing can't we?

So what this comes down to is determining available regional search market numbers right?

Thanks for your patience,
Frank

John Scott · 01-30-2006, 02:17 AM

Because of Top Rank Disapointment, the number of actual click through's is NOT going to be anywhere near the number of searches that Overture reports.

One thing to do would be to research the market size and click though possibilities using an Adwords campaign. Set up a campaign with the regional keywords but with broad match variations.

See what it results in, what kind of click through's are possible, and go from there.