As SEO continues to evolve, the metrics that indicate success continue to change with it. However, many of our client's needs don't seem to be changing as rapidly. With clients focused on specifics like the number of links they're getting and weekly ranking reports, it's tough to move the needle in the right direction for true SEO success.
How do we push other inbound channels (like search, content marketing, and social) forward to offer a more holistic and strategic approach to inbound marketing that our clients can get behind? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about the current broken culture of SEO metrics, and offers advice on what we can do to fix it.
Video Transcription
"Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, I want to share an experience I had with you and then get to our Whiteboard Friday topic, which is going to be all about metrics and how we change this broken culture that we have in the SEO world that's sort of carried over from the past.
I got to go to SMX Sydney, which was an incredible time and an amazing visit, and I spoke there with Dan Petrovic from Dejan SEO, who is a well-known SEO guy in Australia, very, very smart guy, leads an agency down there. He asked me some questions that I think are very important and resonated with me because they're things that I've heard from a lot of people and seen reflected in a lot of the questions that we get all the time.
That was: "Rand, I want to do more of this broader inbound marketing. I want to get more strategic about the way I help people with SEO. I want to get less focused on things like the number of links I send you and your particular ranking report for a week. But these are things that our clients care about. When we talk specifically with clients and we pitch them on SEO, they tell us, 'Hey, look, you're not here for that. You're here to get me more links. I want this many links and I want these rankings. I want my page rank to go up. I want my DAPA to go up.'"
Those kinds of metrics have been ingrained as what SEO is all about, and tragically that's not the way to be successful at our jobs. The way that we really move the needle on search, on social, on content marketing, on any of these inbound channels is to have a holistic and strategic focus on them, not this little tactical, rinky-dink, "I'm going to get 50 links That's going to move this one ranking up." We know this. We've been talking about it for a long time here on Whiteboard Friday and across the SEO world. You can find it on nearly every reputable SEO blog out there.
So Dan and I were chatting and I said, "Well, I think what we have to do is take that conversation a level higher and say, 'What do you want those metrics to accomplish? Why do you want links? Why do you want your rankings higher?'" The answer is often, "Well, we're trying to attract more traffic and expose people to this new branding campaign," or, "We're trying to get more people signed up for this webinar. We're trying to get more people in our salespeople's funnel. We're trying to convert more leads to perform these types of comparison searches and then buy from one of our partners."
Okay, good. That is getting us all the way down from these what I call "leading indicator metrics" down to the business KPIs. Business KPIs, the things that indicate the performance of the business, are where we should take our strategic initiative, our strategic lead, for any sort of online marketing effort, whether that's SEO, whether it's PPC, advertising. I don't care what it is that you're spending money on, it should be focused on this, centered on this, trying to achieve these things, and then, yes, we can use metrics like links and rankings, even something like page rank or crawl depth, as leading indicators, performance indicators that things are maybe going the right way, that they're not going the right way. We can compare them against our competition, and they're fine metrics for that. We just can't focus on them as where we take our strategy.
If the strategy is "go get me more links," I'm probably going to do some gray or black hat SEO because very frankly, that's how you move the needle on that one indicator. If you don't care about potentially getting banned or hurting your brand impression or making a bad impression with the search engines and eventually getting into trouble that kind of way, then, yeah, you're going to do stuff that is non-ideal for your business metrics. So let's have this conversation first.
I'm going to start down here. Business KPIs, things that I think about as being business metrics, and these are just a sample. I don't want you to get the idea that these are the only metrics or that these have to fit in these buckets. But in this purple bucket down here, I have things like conversions. Conversions might even be a marketing KPI for you, depending on what your true business goals are. But transaction value, life time customer value, retention of those customers and recidivism of customers, those are the business KPIs, typically, in most organizations. They're trying to get people to the site, perform some type of action that will lead to revenue, lead to a goal being accomplished.
Marketing KPIs, these are one step up, but not yet at that level of sort of the SEO leading indicators. These are things like visits and traffic, tweets, shares, +1's. Those are signals of engagement and success over social media, so is followers and fans, and these might be in leading indicators, tweets, shares, +1's could easily be in leading indicators rather than marketing KPIs, brand mentions, pre-conversion action. So people, for example, visiting pages that lead to a conversion on your site and following through that funnel that you've got set up on your site, those are the types of marketing KPIs that the marketing team might be reporting and that you particularly, if you're doing any type of consulting working or if you're working in-house and trying to help move the needle, you do want to have a dashboard that's showing you these.
Then those leading indicators, those are much more of a, "Hey, I think this is a signal that we might be on the right path," or, "This is a test. Let's see if moving the needle on links actually moves the needle on these other things that we care about and these business metrics that we care about," or, "Boy, you know, sometimes it seems like it doesn't." Sometimes it seems like other things that we might focus on, perhaps social is really moving the needle, because you're finding that you're having a huge brand impact that's biasing clicks in the search results, that's moving you up in positions through usage and user data types of algorithms, and that's really doing a much better job for you than raw links and raw rankings.
Maybe you're expanding your portfolio of content, and that's what's moving the needle for you. You could easily put things like content production in here. You could put that in a leading indicator, or you could put it in a marketing KPI. You could put content engagement, things like comments or registrations. Those could fit into marketing KPIs. It's okay to have different things in these different buckets. Just know what they are and make sure if you're working with someone, that you're getting the right answers here so that you can make the right decisions here.
Don't focus on these. If you focus on these from a strategic point of view, your tactics are probably going to lead you in the wrong direction, and, by the way, those of you who might be buying consulting services or hiring an in-house SEO or an in-house marketing team and having them focus on this stuff, you're really going to be misleading your marketers, and they're going to be focused on the wrong kinds of things that aren't going to move the needle for the business. They need to be up here.
Let me show you in a more precise fashion how I love to see this visualized and illustrated, how I love to see this done. We actually do this right now at Moz. We've got an internal tool that does some of this stuff, and then we have a big Google docs spreadsheet that I would love to make more sophisticated, and we probably will after we release some of the big, new things we're working on here. But basically, there are three categories up in this leading indicators column that I pay attention to, and those are things like I want to look at the leading indicators, whatever they are, and compare them versus my budget and my goals.
So I might have, okay, this was our goal, and we are +x over that goal. This is our goal and we're -y over this goal, and this is our other goal, we've got +c over here, compared to last year this time, Q1 2012. Q1, January 1st to April 1st of 2013, here's what we've done so far, and here's how far ahead we are of where we were this time last year, what we performed in Q1 of last year. I like doing this because seasonality plays a big role in many, many businesses, not every one but many, many businesses. So comparing year over year is really healthy for this.
Then compare versus the competition. The wonderful thing about leading indicators, and often one of the big reasons why a lot of folks use them is because we can compare. We can see where our competitors are ranking. We can see what sort of links they're getting. We can see their DA and PA. Maybe we can't see their crawl rate and depth, but those other sorts of leading indicators, even things like tweets and shares and +1's, followers and fans, those indicators we can put in here, and we can compare against our competition.
Once we get down a layer, and I would encourage you to have the top layer, which we care about and it's interesting, but it's not the focus. It's just a leading indicator. When we get to the marketing KPIs, we've got, again, budget year over year and competition. Then when we go to the business KPIs, we almost never can get competition, the data on what the competition's doing. So we just have budgeting year over year. But being able to see this, being able to visualize this, it doesn't necessarily have to be in this funnel view, but being able to see this and compare and then to show your clients, your managers, your team members what you're doing and how that stacks up against what the business is trying to accomplish, this is incredibly powerful. It's so much more powerful than saying, "I want links and rankings."
If you're hearing from folks, "I want links and rankings," please have them watch this whiteboard video, have them leave comments, have them e-mail me. My goodness, I don't think that this is going to be how successful SEO gets done in the future. This is how tactical SEO was done in the past, and, unfortunately, it's how a lot of black and gray hat SEO became the norm – well, I don't want to say "the norm" – but became very popular in our world. By focusing on bigger things, we can be smarter. We can accomplish a lot more.
All right everyone, look forward to your comments, and we will see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday."
Great WBF Rand,
Sometimes it's so hard to move a client away from the idea that SEO is about rankings alone. We once doubled a client's conversion rate on their site by improving their top organic landing pages (both in terms of the content and the keywords they were targeting) and increased non-brand traffic to the site at the same time, but because they were so focused on rankings for their big broad keywords, we eventually lost them.
Now, before we start any campaign we sit down with the client and ask them why they are doing SEO and explain how rankings aren't always as important as they seem on the surface. Our main performance indicators now tend to be conversions and non-brand organic traffic, which is beneficial for us and our clients.
I'd rather be #3 and converting 60% then #1 and converting 20%...
@Charles - HashtagSEO- Your statement is probably closer to true for small brands in small search volume markets, but definitely not categorically true.
It obviously depends on the numbers because one of those doesn't necessarily make more money than the other. I'd rather be making money, and analytics is NOT the end of the story. Converting at X now, but also assisting conversions, brand exposure etc. can positively affect business long term. #1 rankings mean something to customers.
I wouldn't agree.I've seen my site get around 40% of the search volume being in 2nd then 1st as my title is better related, the main competition at the moment for sites is Wikipedia, they have a ridiculous amount of pages, good domain authority and a scary amount of content on their pages.The good part though is that people don't necessarily want to read that massive scientific speak Wiki page, they want to read a page from professionals and then buy from them. Same goes for Amazon, eBay etc.. Some people just don't want to buy from these huge outlets or have had bad experiences with them (A number of my clients refuse to use them because their eBay account got hacked before or they've used Amazon and it's taken longer then the shipping)It's all dependent on the consumer not the rank.Ofcourse being rank #1 with 60% would be great, but sometimes its not achievable.
I would rather be #1 and convert well. They are seldom related so suggesting that there need be a trade off generally means one doesnt understand how to accomplish both.
Most people are only focused on getting to the number one rank, what they need to know is that the number one rank doesn't always get picked first by people. I always look over the first few and click on the one that grabs my attention, many times which is not the number one ranking on the page.
Totally agree - It's more about how your listing looks then where it is, Google+ Places is a great example
It is not just because of that (still a big % of CTR is on the first result), but because that 1st rank can change due to many factors related to SERPs personalization and geolocalization.
I manage the SEO efforts inhouse and if I'm honest, I was guilty of focusing on these metrics. I had my finance director get involved to help me develop some reports over the last couple of months to track the profitability of our effort. We made sure that it wasn't as black and white as "advertising spend vs revenue"; we drilled down deep to make sure we knew the profitability. Needless to say everyone's happy now as they can see its benefits. Once we've finished getting it perfect I'll share the report (obviously without the data).
Jasarrow, I agree with your new way.
It is true with my experience also. Most of the clients will try to hire seo by seeing their business competitors. And simply they select some keywords which will be highly competitive and very hard to list. But when the site list for those keywords, will be less in conversion rates. But it may be easy to bring the website for other less competitive 5 to 10 related keywords, then the website may get 3-5 double business deals when compared to high competitive keyword.
First of what what need to do is conduct a meeting before starting the SEO process. Some time they may need to bring their website just for their brand name. It is true with my experience. Recently, I got a call from a roasted chicken center. In the discussion what they needed was just to list their website when searched with their brand name. I simply keep mum and signed the contract. Later I understand that their brand name was too famous in our city, and people used to search with their brand name for getting their phone number and for giving online parcel order. So understanding the actual need of the client may reduce our work load also.
Yes jasarrow, I totally agreed with you that we should discuss these things with our client before starting any campagin. Every client is doing marketing to raise his/her business but dying to get top ranking.
That's also a reason of why Black Hat Techniques are still surviving in the market.
Nice effort Rand, Keep it up :)
Yousuf
Do you know Rand?
If SEOmoz will add the function to build that Funnel as a "Metrics Indicators Health" in the Moz Campaign, then I will start doing the Happy Dance straight from Valencia to Seattle.
p.s.: in another occasion we have to talk about your shirt...
It's a long term work in progress, but we'll get there :-)
This is what SEO should be about. It takes the business or marketing strategy and uses the tools of search, social and content to achieve the goals. So glad to see SEO culture moving away from 'lets face it' grunt work link building. This is when SEO's start to work with clients at the very beginning of a marketing project or new website development. Thanks Rand!
I think a big problem of many companies shopping around for SEO right now is... their budget and expectations. Things used to "work" for much less than they do now. Many business owners don't understand the change and decide to work with the agencies that offer services the old way. The latter agencies win the work for now and make it much harder for agencies that try to go down the 'strategic inbound' way.
I think you make a great point George. If you haven't "kept up" with SEO over the last few years you are expecting things to work a certain way, which just isn't how the whole game works these days. Site owners go looking for agencies that meet their expectations (for better or worse), making it harder for the rest of us to make our case stick.
Those less reputable agencies make life harder for whoever is expected to revive their site down the road.
This post makes me more excited for moz.com. Hoping this is the prequel. Good stuff.
Shhh... We're not supposed to talk about that.
(but you should definitely get on that email list) :-)
Great post Rand.
I thought you may like to hear the following true story regarding the tracking of competitors’ business KPIs…
The CEO of a major UK online retailer placed anonymous orders with several of his competitors to test the quality of their service. He noticed that each time he ordered an item, either the order number or the invoice number would increment by one digit. By placing multiple timed orders to coincide with competitor’s key marketing drives he was immediately able to make an assessment of how this marketing activity impacted on their sales.
If you know where to look, even those KPIs can be there for the taking! J
Very cool! That's some great competitive intel.
That is awesome. We did the same just to see how much a competitor was selling over a period of time, but to time it with their key marketing drives is a great idea!
Very interesting way to look at competitors, although a bit of luck is required that their invoicing would be incremental like that :)
Rand, I LOVE this.
Quick (and maybe silly) question. I know ideally you want to be able to show year-over-year, but for companies who are just starting out, certainly there's no previous year to compare to. Would you recommend that you start with month/month, quarter/quarter until you get there? Seems like that's all you can do, just thought you may have some other suggestions for showing value in your metrics when you're just getting started with a client.
Hi Mackenzie,
We try to use a mix of metrics to give the fullest picture. We start with WoW to see at a really micro level what we are doing right and wrong, while MoM shows overall growth. We use quarter over quarter because it can balance out the shorter months or holiday seasons (often).
+1 Caroline. Use what you've got. If you're an agency, the one thing you can do is anonymize previous clients' data but at least be able to tell your just-starting-out clients that you've seen historical traffic/search volume/conversion drops at certain times. For example, at Moz, late December is slower than usual, and traffic dips slightly on holidays and consistently on weekends. For some e-commerce sites, it's precisely the reverse.
One of the best Whiteboard Fridays in a while. Particularly poignant as SEOs are dividing their attention among more and more and more things to try and make a dent - and as many of us are trying to diversify our eggs away from Google's basket and reduce our reliance on just one key source - we have to have a more holistic view of the entire ecosystem of marketing efforts we're working with -- but we also need to balance that with knowing what's really important, what really matters.
Very happy to see you address this situation that has long been an issue, not only in SEO, but across the entirety of internet marketing.
I think the issue is two fold where, we're dealing with not only the classic split between diagnostic metrics vs. business metrics (KPIs) as you adress in your discussion; but also plenty of instances where some metrics were tracked purely because we could track them at all.
I've been around long enough to recall when "hits" were still a metric that was used as a measure of success. Unfortunately, I still hear the occasional executive use this in meetings and it takes everything I have not to cringe.
Nice work.
Reminds me the RCS(real company stuff) that every big company is doing and thats where real success is.
Great WBF Rand, creating reports is awesome and most clients love maths but getting things precise is a pain at times..
The video seems to be lightly pitting Leading Indicators against Marketing KPIs and Business KPIs. My view is they're more dynamic: They've always synchronized with each other for businesses online and offline. If they didn't, clients wouldn't have asked for Leading Indicators from the SEO of yesteryear. They must have been meeting or exceeding their Business KPIs for the fact they're still in business.
Our responsibility now is to give clients "funnel vision."
You're right - I don't mean to be antagonistic toward leading indicators. They're important, worth collecting, and can help show why things happen. And I like the term "funnel vision" :-)
Excellent WBF, as always. I've definitely been looking for a way to better demonstrate how ranking and links are not the most important indicators of success on our site. It's nice to see this chart and how to tie those aspects/indicators back into the overall marketing and business goals. Thanks for the great post!
Rand,
Great presentation and one that I plan to show to my clients in the future. You are right that too often they are only focused on the leading indicators and need to take a more strategic view. Thanks again.
When I'm looking at my rankings, it's always from the perspective of "how will the ranking impact revenues" and I track back using webmaster tools to see the click through rate of our listings at various rankings for various key words.
At the end of the day it's about how many people I get from a search over to my site to go through the conversion funnel and those funnels are different (research vs. transactional).
I agree that focusing on just links, or shares, isn't going to necessarily lead the business to more revenue. Those are one part of the tactical side but each business has to figure out the right balance for those tactical indicators.
Yet another great White Board Friday. It was fantastic watching you talk about how SEO efforts should lead to sales and conversions as opposed to just getting rankings up. You really drove home the idea that marketers should be focusing on what really matters.
Thanks for a great post!
Damn Rand you should start an SEO Psychiatric clinic because these WBF are starting to be therapy sessions and I hope my bill does not go up ;-). This is so timely for me because some of my clients have me looking and feeling like John Burns from the Simpsons because how much they stress rankings and usually it is just for 1 or 2 keywords. This is even after we perform miracles for sites like hockey sticking their traffic and ranking them strongly for very tough keywords, which are even more relevant than the ones they stress about.
I think part of the issue is that Basic SEO works so well for major brands because their sites usually have authority and a ton of back links. So you do the basics and they see their ranking jump from postion 12 to 3 in the SERP they form this keyword driven obsession.
I've found this to be the case even if you start off talking about business KPI's from the beginning because of two reasons:
Thanks for the advice and i'm going to weave it into the way we sell and on board clients and figure out a way to drill it into their heads. Much appreciated.
Spread Love,
Lavall
Great Whiteboard Friday!!!
SEO is not all about Links and Rankings its about engaging your potential visitors to customers. Real Marketers care about Conversions instead of links and rankings. As Matt Cutt said now SEO is stand for Search Experience Optimization instead of Search Engine Optimization.
So we all should start focusing on User Engagements to be successful.
Hi Rand,
Yes, Really SEO is not all about the Links and Rank but its is the engagement of the peoples through the use of online social media marketing.
In the future, only healthy content and and web application would be boost in ranking with the help of Intuitive information.
Thanks,
Great video Rand!
What we do is set our clients on this mindset from the beginning. We explain to them what links and all the other metrics can do, but we don't sell our services solely on those metrics. We make sure to explain to clients all that stuff is great but even if you have all these things if your content, UX and website aren't great then it wont lead to conversions. I guess what I'm saying is we always push our clients with engaging audiences, be influential, and create a great web experience.
"SEO continues to evolve..." - well said ;)
Heh, figures you'd like that bit. ;-)
Hey Rand,
Thank you so much for wrapping this whole idea so eloquently into a real resource that everyone can use.
Giving people real examples of how to apply a new philosophy is so much more valuable than just espousing it!
Sha
Thanks I really liked it. I could not agree more! Knowing our Leading Indicators is still good but definitely not the most important things to focus on.
Thank you very much Rand,
This is really an informative white board friday. I completely agreed with you. Now in todays SEO Quality of links is much more important than then quantity. We had to see the Domain authority, PR, indexing in google and alot more before linking to our site.
Thanks again.
Great WBF, understanding the business objectives and KPIs is certainly a critical step prior to working out the SEO strategy.
This is a great WBF further supporting the notion that being No. 1 for your targeted keyword isn't everything. Sometimes the first step in SEO is educating clients that SEO is all about the conversion and the ROI, and not about how much traffic/rankings are up. Who cares if no one is buying?
I, as a marketer, knew that I needed to change my marketing style from "Leading Indicators" to "Business KPIs". But I didn't know how. All I knew was that Google Analytics was that answer. I think if people start REALLY learning how to use GA (or any good analytics program), that they will see a very different picture than the lame "Leading Indicators" Rand is talking about.
Great WBF,
Every industry goes in cycles and I do think that digital marketing is going to be one of the most exciting industries to work in for the next 5-10. Ranking and links are the buzzwords of this period but now I am happy to the see that most of the people are now starting to remember the "O" in "SEO". Optimisation is the future and optimising the full digital marketing channels to all work side in side to give clients the maximum amount of benefits.
It really is an exciting time to be a digital marketer as the amount of knowledge inside the different community is amazing and for someone who has only been involved 4 years now I can see a major difference from the way this industry was when I first started working to where I am now.
Yes, Business Goals highly ranks from "is the phone ringing?" to this quarter we're ahead of last year quarter. From what I've seen from my experiences doing RCS will naturally get you the SEO KPI's like DA/PA/LRD etc...Again great stuff Rand.
Cheers!
Changing the metrics is another way of saying we're changing the expectations. I'm reading the subtitle of this article as 'how the industry is moving away from focus on Google.' By diversifying traffic strategies, and the expectations for digital marketing, we can offer a service which clients meet with gratitude and a sense of success, rather than the eternal frustrations of not being no 1 on Google.
I agree wholeheartedly and advocate this model entirely, however do note that suppliers can be reticent to such performance models tied to the purple stack when those business KPI's are subject to variation by factors outside of their control. Meaning, that fluctuations in business conversions, (for example staff churn affects sales conversions) can put a spanner in the works and mask increases in other parts of the funnel. So you really can't bottom line obsess with the data, you have to look at multiple data points to assess marketing success. (Oh, I might add, that social ROI is in effect the same mindset, you can measure it, instead of obsess over vanity metrics alone)
We have got another good post by Rand, getting rank is not all things; it may be upright. Before loss a good deal be aware about it, if you don’t fixing your site then try to do it.
great idea and nice tip :)
Hi rand, yeah i think it's time to tackle this misconceptions with seo metrics among clients. Traffic or links may not be the right indicators for a business, you cen still get more traffic but generate less sales/leads.
I had this case lately with one of my clients. There were getting more than 2.5k organic traffic/daily but generating X amount daily. They were getting traffic from junky unrelevant keywords or informational, non buying keywords + 80% Bounce rate. I got hired to increase traffic to 5k daily. The only metrics that matters for this client is traffic (They have just 1 thing in mind: "Get me more traffic from Google !")
It was really hard to convince them about the importance of targeting the right keywords, offering the right content, user experience, reducing bounce rate etc ... So, i did what should be done, without asking for client permission (deindexed empty posts (30 wrds per post), wrote new rich posts, implemented semantic internal linking, enhanced navigation and TARGETED THE RIGHT KEYWORDS.
Now after 6 weeks, we got rid of many of those junky keywords generating traffic, and traffic went down to 1.5k daily, but revenues doubled. Yes, we were making $XXX daily with 2.5k visits/day, now we are making 2x $XXX with just 1.5k daily, and bounce rate got down to 60%. There is still lot to do on the website, but i estimate it will get to 8 x $XXX daily revenues with 5k visists/day soon.
This gives a real proof for what Rand just said on this WBF. betw (): i'm a serious SEOMoz student and a big fan of Rand Fishkin. I check the site everyday, and i learn a lot from this comunity. Thanks to the usefull info i get here, i'm becoming a better SEO consultant.
I LOVE SEOMOZ
great Video Sample and good Tips.
Thx
Great WBF Rand,
Love the analogy of this, but I always have a hard time explaining this way of (SEO) to clients. Because they are not trained or know what's happening with the ever changing industry they ALWAYS assume that getting X amounts of links weather spamming or not will get them top rankings :).
Never knowing the consequences of there actions.
Will get our clients to watch this video, see who they are dealing with :)))
Cheers Rand,
The best Whiteboard friday ever rand discussed. Absolutely loved it...Its too late to come out of that outraged metrics and we all should start thinking about how we can achieve the marketing goals.
OK now this is just getting weird. I don't blog as often as I should and it seems like every time I do, it ends up being on the same day as a WBF or other awesome Moz post on a closely related topic.
One thing I have been doing when dealing with clients who say things like "I want all #1 rankings" is ask them why. Some will say because they want the better traffic which leads to sales etc. Others just want to outrank competitors, but have not really thought beyond that. So this can open up that conversation about better metrics like traffic conversions, people in the door or whatever really means something.
What a lot of people don't realize is that when you get too hung up on a relatively small batch of keywords and your content revolves around those and not much else, you can end up missing out on organic traffic from a whole lot of other phrases that may even be more productive than those trophy keywords.
Please excuse the link drop, in case anyone is interested: https://kercommunications.com/seo/wasting-time-worrying-about-keywords/
i've heard some people say seo specialist are not moral correct. I don't think so, in my opinion people can be ethical or not, but this doesn't depend on the job you do. we have to reach the perfect metrics and carry on with research. Great post!
Really enjoyed this WBF. This post highlights the real importance of user experience and carefully looking at the wider picture.
The idea of a simple cause and effect model just doesn't apply anymore. Link don't equal traffic, traffic doesn't equal conversions, conversions doesn't equal long-term customer satisfaction.
Nick, your mention of trophy keywords made me laugh. I bet some people would love to screengrab and frame their #1 rankings on a wall.
Great WBF Rand, makes perfect sense in a move towards much more healthy SEO with the potential of robust and sustained growth.
Great video,
a lot of valuable information.
I have watched full video with SEO team on Saturday. We have enjoyed it lot and specially last statement which you have given at end of session.
If you're hearing from folks, "I want links and rankings," please have them watch this whiteboard video, have them leave comments, have them e-mail me.
Honestly, I am 100% agree with you & It's perfect start to fix the broken culture of SEO metrics. Now, All SEOmoz reader have to marked as fix... :)
We are working with big eCommerce websites & getting good traffic from referral websites like Houzz.com, Flickr.com, Pinterest.com, Facebook.com, Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com & many more. We're not focusing on keywords but trying to move campaign in right direction which help us to sustain our performance in algorithm changes.
By the way, I have enjoyed it lot and quite excited for next!!
Another great Whiteboard Friday, Rand. I believe that most people are only focused to be on top of search engines; what they should know is that the number one rank doesn't always get picked first by some people. That's a reality that we need to consider also.
nice article, good information
I really like your point of view that creating links etc. is 'just' the input to start a conversation about exactly that it is the Website or Blog-Owner wants to achieve. I believe that going after KPIs, like increase conversions etc. should be the main focus point of every Business Onwer who maintains a website. If it's clear which goal should be achieved, it easier to define which next steps should be taken. After all, a website or a blog is 'just' 1 more Sales Channel that an On- or Offline Business uses to create added value for its customers. Great post!
I have been in the SEO community for the past 2 years. I have had some pretty cool opportunities, but my latest one has put me at the bottom of the totem pole. Unfortunately a previous person was an excellent sales person at the top down approach as you are mentioning. i am a much bigger fan of the bottom up approach. Do you have any recommendation on ways to "sell" the idea of this new type of approach? I feel like I am running at a brick wall. Everyone wants to "rank" even though their site and business don't really reflect what should be first. Any suggestions would be awesome.
Great post Rand- this is exactly what we are moving toward and trying to educate all of our clients on. I really like how you broke it down into 3 buckets- this makes sense and easier to explain to staff and customers. The leading indicators are definitely important because they are the 'seeds' we are planting to ultimately get our clients more traffic and then more business- but the main conversation should NOT focus on the leading indicators- they are just a means to the end goal..
Those were some good metrics discussed by Rand which i think our clients must see. I guess this WBF should be seen by our clients rather than the SEO's ;) who always keep on talking about keyword rankings and PA/DA lolz.
One request for seomoz.org is that please add a go to top button on each blog post since we have to scroll a lot to reach the blog post :D
A good balance between the ranking factors and ROI, this method will outline what works and does not so you could focus more on what works for better ROI.
Super post, providing best and most need stuff through quality content is todays seo.
As a fan of Whiteboard Fridays, this was my favourite topic yet.
The takeaway screenshot will be especially useful in reporting my SEO success up the hierarchy.
Rand, I believe an SEO blog written with an expanded and more detailed version of Business KPI vs Marketing KPIs vs Leading Indicators would be especially helpful. Can SEOmoz fans expect such content published in the near future? An expanded version of this WBF would be valuable.
Thanks!
Rand, great job removing the "???" from "Phase 2: ??? > Phase 3: Profit". Sharing this with the team right away.
It's possible that clients aren't resistant to the idea of their SEO agency working toward business KPI's like Retention and LTV - but simply aren't looking for that service or measurement from an SEO vendor.
If you hire someone to paint your office building, the ultimate goal to a nicer looking building is more new customers - but you don't measure or target that goal with your painter. The painter is simply measured on number and quality of boards painted in a given amount of time. Get my drift?
The business owner will handle tracking the ultimate effects of the quantified service. In the painter scenario, this would be increased foot traffic in the door, and ultimately sales/retention, etc.
Tremendously helpful video post for me as a CEO of a leading PR Agency. The challenge remains metrics vs. reports. It is very hard to do the work, and report without a clear path to success. This "holistic" approach is of course one we have always encouraged clients to understand across all marketing disciplines - from PR to SEO, ads to PPC - and together hopefully it all makes sense and works.
Shared this video with our entire agency.
Ronn Torossian
5WPR
One topic I'd like to comment on is Link Building as a lead indicator and it scares me.
In my opinion, a link building consultant has one goal: to point links to a domain no matter what the quality and no matter where they came from. There is no telling what tactics are used to harvest the links, it is difficult to monitor their work, and there is no relationship being forged between a company and the linking site.
Great information, Rand. I think this is a subject that needs to be discussed, and a conversation that needs to happen on a consistent basis. Initially, this has always been a point of contention between new clients and me, but after some discussion, and after expectations have been reset, clients usually see the benefits of tracking KPIs rather than leading indicators, as you point out.
Great topic, valuable information and thanks for posting the transcript as well.
Hey Rand, great WBF! SEO's and consultants should be using the 'leading indicators' to achieve the marketing and business objectives! Instead of selling just links, focusing on the bigger picture is what makes a marketing strategy successful!
One of the better WBF this year
I'd echo others' comments to this point - I think for most people/agencies we've moved beyond the "links/rankings" focus due to algo changes. The challenge, in house or agency, is to educate and get buy in from client/boss that metrics like these are the things that really matter. A proper understanding and subsequent goals will reduce pressure to revert to the links/rankings paradigm and crappy online marketing tactics vs. a holistic strategy that drives revenue and grows the business/brand.
Hi Rand, i have a doubt about it.
Are you suggesting that the better thing to do is to forget those "old metrics" or that those metrics have come together with other ones, to get us a more holistic approach?
I thing that from a specific perspective, it is still important to know that your concurrent receives 5 links more than you and that he have 500 thumbs up on +1 button over you. I agree that it is just a data between a lot of others, but it can help you to predict something in quantitative terms. Isn't it?
Yeah, as I mentioned above, I don't mean to discount the value of leading indicators - they're important and can answer lots of good questions. The whole funnel is worth recording and analyzing.
....the future this way!
Thanks, Rand. It's tempting to focus on the weeds but as Wil Reynolds said, it's all about RCS. The Why comes first; the What and How should always feed the Why. Thanks again for yet another WBF hit!
Each day I come across 2 types of people -
Clients who typically ask - I want to rank #1 for my keyword XYZ for $$.
Agencies who say - Get Guaranteed #1 ranking for your keyword just for $$!
#LOL, #RCS and #KISS
-KAS
Good WBF Rand. I really agree with the view on a proper business model. We also are often too focused at a tactical level, instead of focusing on the broader strategic level.
I often see this with our clients, who come up to me and ask me if I could make an improved Facebook (or new) page, so that they can get more likes. They never wonder why they need the likes, they "just do".
My advice is always, that a strategic plan is the first thing to get focused on, and later comes the various tactical elements which supports the overall plan.
Really refreshing to hear this analysis. I think there's a learning curve agencies need to address when bringing on new clients to help them understand on a "bigger picture" level of what that agency's strategy should be.
We have a big monthly scorecard we use with clients, going to look next week how to implement more of these business KPI's into the scorecard.
Thanks Rand!
It's so much more powerful than saying, "I want links and rankings."
Well said, Rand. A client/boss/whoever who says this should instead be saying "I want more enquiries and sales," and to echo Jason (jasarrow) above, they need to understand why and how SEO can help with this. No point having all the links/rankings in the world if enquiries/sales don't increase...
Great presentation Rand!
Probably this could be the first one that can bring change in the clients approach. It true that SEO are having hard time in gaining links. So, dear client, focus on total culture rather than leading indicators...Thank you,
Hai Rand thanks for your valuable sharing. Everyone focus on their PR and back link. We want to think something different to get keyword ranking. Social activity we get more traffic. But i want to change to organic traffic too.
I want to do something different and want to make good resulth. I'm searching for ..... !!!!!!!!! still Searching .........
Brilliant WBF, Rand.All I hear is talk of the various ways of creating links etc. It's really refreshing to see an overview in order to work out what you need to do, then work out the tactics to achieve the strategy. Targeted, high quality traffic to our site is much more preferable. Very insightful. Thanks again. Paul
Great WBF. This highlighted one of the main points I took away from the recent Brighton SEO conference.
SEO need to start looking at the big picture and not just the leading indicators and companies need to start bringing in SEO right from the start of campaign planning.
It will be slow change but it is starting to happen. Thank you
Rand - totally agree with you - the future of SEO is covering so much more than just old school tactics.
Wonderful post bud!
Have a great weekend MOZZERS!
your pal,
Chenzo
Great stuff Rand. It's far too easy for people to lose sight of the fact that it is traffic and not rankings that should be the main goal.
Hey Rand. Great WBF. Brooke and I just got done watching it. From my perspective, back in the day (of naughtiness) a lot of companies didn't have the know how or resolve to measure important business KPIs, and the ones that did charged 10x more than Mr. Black Hat freelancer, so that left this unfortunate impression in the SEO industry. The focus was LINKS (yes, I did all caps) unfortunately, but I feel positive about the SEO community in general shifting their focus from that to what is important.
It is unfortunate that we get from time to time someone wanting links, or just focusing on some metric. The great question, and you alluded to it, is why? Now, I can talk to them until I'm blue in the face, but I'm sure now I'll use a link to this page once or twice to backup what I'm talking about. Thanks Rand, you've made my job a bit easier :) Happy Friday,
Hi Rand, Im a bit confused about the first box "compared budget/goals"...
What exactly are we looking at in that box? Budget spent on certain activities this year compared to last? Where we are in terms of certain goals like "increase website traffic by 15%"?
Clarification would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
Really useful Whiteboard Friday Rand.
From Panda in 2011 through to today, there have been two major struggles for SEO agencies that I've witnessed:
- Tactically adapting to the changes in digital marketing
- Strategically adapting to the changes in digital marketing
Unfortunately until clients are re-educated and KPIs become more of a two way street, the guys doing the work on a day to day basis are left in a completely grey area.
Having third party videos like this from a trusted, reputable source can be incredibly useful to freelancers and agencies who have likely been trying to get these points across for months, even years.
Sometimes it just needs someone impartial to say it.
Mmm, I do understand your point Rand, and I totally agree with this WBF... with the knowledge of an SEO. There is a huge difference between what we people that know about the SEO world know, and our clients. Rankings are mesurable, links are mesurable, so its an easy way for giving results. I mean, conversions are mesurable too, yes, but if I was a person that had no idea of the SEO world, then I could easily assume that if I´m doing this well at number 4 - 5 top position of Google, I can do much better at number 2 or 1 top position, and there's no easy way for you to change my mind about it. When I go to the doctor I don't expect them to teach me medicine or biology, I expect them to cure me. I think this is the same for SEO, clients do care about PR, DA, PA, rankings, likes, etc. maybe we can star changing our old SEO minds, but our customers may do so?
Great stuff as always Rand, but precisely because of the issues you discuss here (the impact of content marketing and social on search, the need for different metrics, the importance of strategic thinking), we talk to clients about moving beyond SEO to WPO - web presence optimization. It's not just about a company website anymore, but about a company's total online visibility: their social presence, prominence in their industry, news and influence mentions, etc. It takes the coordinated efforts of PR, SEO, online advertising, content development, social media and marketing communications professionals to really do right. And in terms of measure, this approach fits neatly with your comments about the importance of looking at metrics over time and benchmarked against competitors.
Fantastic Read!!!
More like fantastic watch :)
I read "The Marketing Agency Blueprint" and Paul Roetzer talks about a great concept that could help with changing what metrics we use to define success. I think it's called "this is how we do it here", meaning that you create a process that brings clients success and then say this is how we do it and if you're not into that then maybe we aren't the agency for you.
Great post Rand. Unfortunately, seoMoz tools have also contributed to the same broken culture of SEO metrics you're talking about. Hopefully, you'll integrate more of your latest ideas into your seoMoz.
Hi Rand,
Thanks for this very informative SEO video! You are absolutely right. A Gray Hat SEO may create tons of links but they usually do not care much about code or content. I saw websites with 80,000 Links that had 280 html errors on their Homepage of less than 400 words.
On the short run tons of trash links may still produce a boost but on the medium term will get a site banned or severely penalized.
I think a clean and lean code and site architecture will make it easier for the search engines to read a site, and you are right quality content is still king.
I'm going to send this out as part of my May 1 newsletter. Clients need to watch this. Thanks!
New tools?! What kind of new tools, Rand :) Argh... you lost me after you said you have new tools in your moz pockets!
What is DA/PA?
DA stands for Domain Authority and PA stands for Page Authority, swirleigh. These are aggregate scores that Moz's tools create to assess and compare how strong a domain (website) and individual pages are. They're especially useful for making comparisons with other sites.
This is, by far, the best WBF in a while. My crystal ball tells me that SEO agencies are going to have to start partnering (or at least becoming experts at finding) small/ninja content creation groups (especially photographers, videographers, and graphic designers) to produce really high quality content quickly and affordably for clients because good ranking reports will only keep them on for as long as it takes them to realize they're not really selling more than they were.
Awesome WBF! There are a lot of changes on the horizon for SEO and marketing as a whole. However, I think these changes will make a lot of opportunity for SEO'ers and businesses who focus on their marketing and business KPIs rather than just the number of links or ranking. This will be the key differentiator for the foreseeable future.
@ddimitroff Dido! I got all excited at the mention of new tools. What else could there be?
Very informative WBF, I hope to hear more about the big SEOmoz projects in the future.
This is a really great WBF and it has definitely given me a lot of good things to be thinking about. I'm still somewhat new to SEO, so getting a better understanding of which metrics are most important to focus on is immensely helpful.
What I find to be difficult isn't highlighting the importance of business KPIs, but actually getting the framework in place to actually measure all of this information. Especially when you talk about Year over Year data.