SEO: How Do You Measure Success?

peter_d · 08-02-2007, 08:29 PM

Question:

What metrics do you use to determine SEO success?

Or, to put it another way, do you think rankings which don't lead to increased traffic or increased revenue worth anything?

It appears to me that some SEOs still talk in terms of the former (rankings), when what their customer really need is the latter (traffic)

Manish Pandey · 08-02-2007, 09:03 PM

True!

Traffic which is not worth is not the main aim of SEO. After all the end goal of doing SEO should be met i.e. increased ROI.

peter_d · 08-02-2007, 09:14 PM

Here's an interesting article relating to this question: Measuring Search Effectiveness for eCommerce Sites

http://semphonic.blogs.com/semangel/...ing-searc.html

Quote:

If you’re site is a traditional eCommerce site, then finding the right optimization metric may look fairly straightforward. But even in this apparently simple situation, there often lurks considerable complexity. Here are five quite reasonable optimization models for eCommerce sites: optimize to sales per visit, optimize to revenue per visit, optimize to sales per visitor, optimize to revenue per visitor, optimize to lifetime value per visitor.

This goes beyond what many SEOs do, however it's interesting to think in these terms, rather than being focused on getting position x for keyword term y.

The question should be: how (exactly) is a ranking for keyword y really going to benefit me?

Manish Pandey · 08-02-2007, 10:03 PM

Well many modern day SEOs only talk about rankings and all...rather they should talk about the ways to improve the ROI.

I have seen hundreds of web sites that tried to keyword rich their title! Hence making it look odd. An average user who could be your potential buyer may not want to click on that site.

The best way of doing SEO is not to do SEO. I mean just do things naturally and give bots the things they need. A site that is easily crawled not stopped (not using dynamic URLs but now they are reporting that they are developing ways to crawl more web sites that use dynamic URLs) so when Google is trying to help your web site then why shouldn't you help yourself?

Make it for your visitors!

**Rankenstein** · 08-03-2007, 07:20 AM

Rankings which don't lead to increased traffic/revenue are worth nothing.

At the moment we are using cost per conversion as the best metric.

Then again, in my mind SEO and SEM are separate beasts, and I go about things quite differently depending on whether I'm doing one or the other. Manish's point about making keyword rich titles that are 'ugly' is a good one that highlights the tension between the two fields.

Himalayan · 08-03-2007, 07:42 AM

Well, SEO is all about getting position of the targeted keyword in major search engines, which don't lead to increased traffic/revenue because for this the site should be very well constructed and providing services without any problem.

Warez Republics · 08-03-2007, 08:12 AM

Yap!! SEO is a Head ache for the Newbies!

guinanie · 08-03-2007, 09:27 AM

They said that Traffic is determine to SEO success because its generate sales or revenue for a site. The SEO success is not only on traffic but on how important is your site to the user? Is your site gives valuable information to the user? One point also, is the linking strategies done by the SEO is effective to the user.

dee_el07 · 08-03-2007, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guinanie

They said that Traffic is determine to SEO success because its generate sales or revenue for a site. The SEO success is not only on traffic but on how important is your site to the user? Is your site gives valuable information to the user? One point also, is the linking strategies done by the SEO is effective to the user.

I agree to guinanie... Having a desired traffic means you are successful in doing SEO..

toinkzzz · 08-03-2007, 12:37 PM

for me,, there are two things for SEO Success!

return of investment for business sites,, popularity for article writers, bloggers and webmasters..

pinkfluffybunny · 08-03-2007, 12:48 PM

sales or leads - period. The rest is just talk

tdd1984 · 08-04-2007, 05:51 PM

Well I must be doing pretty good my site has not been up no longer then 6 months and I'm ranking for keywords such as website design, and making damn near 1k+ a day. a day and I'm a single person with a few contractors at the moment.

TroyM · 08-06-2007, 12:57 PM

SEO success?

Or, to put it another way, do you think rankings which don't lead to increased traffic or increased revenue worth anything?
------------------------------------------------
Worth nothing....A lot of SEO companies out there target tricky search terms to get easy rankings for their clients w/o any benefit..

Quote:

Originally Posted by peter_d

Question:

What metrics do you use to determine SEO success?

Or, to put it another way, do you think rankings which don't lead to increased traffic or increased revenue worth anything?

It appears to me that some SEOs still talk in terms of the former (rankings), when what their customer really need is the latter (traffic)

MagnaLifeOdin · 08-06-2007, 02:28 PM

as nice as it is to see my site ranking high on Google for competitive keywords, if I'm not getting sign ups or sales then it's all for nothing, so don't let high keyword rankings get to your head

**Cricket** · 08-06-2007, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdd1984

Well I must be doing pretty good my site has not been up no longer then 6 months and I'm ranking for keywords such as website design, and making damn near 1k+ a day. a day and I'm a single person with a few contractors at the moment.

As an SEO specialist, you might want to start evaluating the success of your services based on your clients results rather than you own checkbook. And no, that wasn't an invitation to list all of your successes, but rather just a general idea of a way for you to evaluate your business.

"People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care." (Zig Ziglar)

TroyM · 08-06-2007, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdd1984

Well I must be doing pretty good my site has not been up no longer then 6 months and I'm ranking for keywords such as website design, and making damn near 1k+ a day. a day and I'm a single person with a few contractors at the moment.

1K+ a day.. yeah you do well..
Hmm I must be doing something wrong then ..
I just got top rankings (top5) on Google, Yahoo, etc with very competitive SEO terms like SEO Company, Search Engine Optimization Company, etc.
I hope I will do well too like my SEO clients.....

Thanks