It’s been a while since I put together a Small Business SEO post. I thought it’s high time I tackled another key issue facing small businesses – deciding whether their SEO activity is progressing or not. SEO, and indeed SEM, is a unique marketing channel. It is quantifiable, responsive and flexible to an extent which I would argue other channels aren’t. However, that is my personal opinion. And the way in which I rate SEM successes is different, not unique certainly, but definitely different.
The first thing clients say to me when requesting SEO is invariably centered around rankings. “I want to be position so and so, for such and such a keyword.” And I am certain that this is a situation familiar to many of you providing SEO services. However, search isn’t always about ranking. And rankings aren’t an overnight success story – they take time to achieve. In the meantime there need to be other indicators of success. There are a range of metrics possible to use to act as such indicators, many of which are key to gauging small business SEM success. Ranking high for “xyz” may deliver huge volume of visitors, but not sales. On the other hand, capturing niche rankings for “uvwxyz” and “abcdefg” may deliver less traffic, but actually better sales, not to mention may be easier to achieve in a shorter lead time.
What I want to do is demonstrate a couple of interim success metrics that I use, that are different, and how I explain them to clients using my current playground, designer watches. Let’s break down some simple metrics that I use as indicators of success (Unique Success Indicators – USIs):
- Keyword Coverage
- Keyword Variance
- Call to Actions
Keyword Variance and Keyword Coverage are slightly interlinked. In a previous post, Keyword Discovery for Small Businesses, I explored a range of keyword development routes, branching from a series of questions. The first part of the section dealt with expanding to long tail keywords from a series of parent keywords, for example:
Parent: Designer Watches
Long Tails: Designer Watches London, Cheap Designer Watches, Designer watches for Sale, Designer Watches bargains in UK. (Not an exact series, but I hope you get the gist.)
The second part of the post covered expanding the root in relation to other phrases, for example in this case: Gucci Designer Watches, Armani Designer Watches, Gucci Men’s Watch, Men’s Rolex Wrist Watches. What I usually start with is splitting these keywords into a series of “roots,” where, although “Designer Watches” is my top level keyword, I have other equally important keyword combinations, which in the example used would be the different watch brands.
So what is Variance and what’s the difference to Coverage? Variance is simply the “variety of root terms,” i.e., what are the most common top level keyword sets that the site attracts traffic for. In this case the Variety would be around the different Brands – Gucci, Armani, etc. Success metric – do I get a sufficient variety of root keywords in my referrer traffic?
Coverage in that case equates to the long tales of these root key phrases. For example, Cheap Gucci Watches UK, Gucci watches for men, Gucci designer watches, etc. Success Metric – do I cover a large proportion of long tail extensions of the roots in my referrer traffic?
The Calls to Actions metric is probably one I don’t like being on this list. This because I feel that it’s the SEM’s job to deliver traffic, and the site's job to guide that traffic in to carrying out an action. However, I still use it as a metric because it IS the SEM’s job to deliver TARGETED traffic. If you deliver an extra 2000 visitors a day who don’t buy, don’t fill in a questionnaire, don’t spend more than a few seconds on the site, don’t make an enquiry, don’t call the business, then you are definitely failing to deliver the right traffic. There is only so much you can blame on a poor site – and to be honest, if you feel that the site just won’t convert, stand up and say so.
Let’s take the example of my site (designer watches). It’s a poor site. The search functionality is rubbish, there isn’t a contact form, the call to action is pretty blunt, and there isn’t a way to shift and filter between offers. But that’s OK. My site's current aim is to target purely long tail traffic delivered via Google’s QDF algorithm. So I expect high bounce rates and low click through rates. However, my success metric for the present is Keyword Variance and Coverage. But that doesn’t mean that I should have no sales!
In this roundabout way, I hope I have demonstrated a different way to look at interim metrics. What I haven’t done is to explain how to relate these to a client's site.
It’s not a simple exercise, unfortunately. However, if you do follow certain processes while working on a client’s site (or even your own), I am assuming you would carry out some sort of an audit. I normally advise on an SEO SWOT analysis. This audit helps in identifying what’s wrong with a site, and what its position is in relation to its competitor and industry. The ideal scenario would be to split the metric indicator decision into two parts:
- What needs to be done on the site? (e.g., link building, site cleanup, increased content, etc)
- What are the client's metrics for success? (e.g., sales, visibility, ad impressions, brand building, enquiries, etc)
Once you have identified the above, you can then proceed to identify the quick wins against the long term goals. Splitting them into the two categories allows you to put together a range of success metrics that are achievable within your predicted timescales, given that the SEO/M work you carry out works for the site.
In my case above, I have given first priority to Coverage and Variance, which will then move on to rankings in the long run. In order to achieve rankings, I need links and content – so for the metric of High Rankings, I have two identifiable and quantifiable actions. Which highlights another point – short term metrics vary significantly to long term metrics.
Let me end with examples of other interim metrics I have used:
- Quantity of indexed pages
- Increase in backlinks
- Universal search visibility
- Local search visibility
- Increase in indexing frequency
- Ranking for targeted landing pages
- Cross search engine visibility
I do have to apologise in the circular nature of this post - I felt that it’s strange ground to cover unless I put the whole thing together in a conversational tone in order to explain myself better.
If you would like to know more about Small Business SEM processes that I use, please feel free to read my take on SEO Swot Analysis, as well as:
- Small Business SEO: Content Strategies
- Small Business Link Building: Part B - Grabbing the Bull By the Horns
- Small Business Link Building: Part A - Analysing Opportunities
- Building Bricks: Keyword Discovery Process for Small Businesses
- Small Business SEO: It's About Education and Empowerment
If you enjoyed my writing, I invite you to follow me on Twitter.
Rishil - as always, I really enjoy the way you think about the job we all do and the effort you put into these posts. Great, great stuff.
A few metrics that I think about from a website success perspective:
Can't wait to see more stuff from you!
Is that why you don't promote via Twitter? In a recent post you pointed out how crappy that traffic is from a conversion standpoint.
Thanks for the compliments Rand. Just trying to add to the community that gave me much back. Many of my SEO friends and contact have risen from Moz :)
The metrics you have highlighted, are interesting certainly. Especially if indexing and conversion by channel are taken together.
One of my clients gets better conversion via Yahoo with lower traffic - so we work solely on a Yahoo basis, which sometimes means sacrificing Google traffic - some Yahoo ranking factors are weird in my opinion - also its much easier to spam...
Rishil,
Very nice and informative approach to quantifying the marketing objectives of a test case. Clearly there is alot going on and for that the tone and referral to previous posts were indeed necessary.
In addition to conducting the SEO audit, a competitor analysis and also good tracking for both inbound links and "critical" terms would help tie the ends together for this. Keeping a weekly tally on what has been done and what is being seen with regard to keyword coverage, conversions and the longtail/keyword variation can definately help to guide priorities/efforts for long-term and short-term gains.
Great job explaining your process and look forward to seeing more.
Thanks for the post, ill shortly be stepping into this arena myself so its good to know some of the stepping stones that dont often get a mention.
Love the numbering ^^. Cause its all importnat. m'kay
Thumbed up before I read the comment coz of the last line! :D
This is a wall I've come up against many times. On the one hand, I agree that the job of an SEM is to deliver relevant search traffic. On the other hand, at what point do you draw that line with the client? They're expecting honest council - if you don't tell them the site isn't likely to convert because their pricing is way off or it's just ugly/unusable, no matter what they're not going to be pleased - whoever is rightfully responsible for driving conversions.
I've had plenty of prospective clients come to me asking about SEM services who I've wanted to just sit down with and say, "I'm sorry, but your website sucks."
It's part of managing expectations - but I've found that a trusting relationship needs to be built before you start with the tough love. Sometimes it's just not going to be worth that investment of time on the SEM's part, unfortunately. Especially if the client's business model is just not a good one (i.e. newspapers).
Great post (as usual).
Hi Mike - I totally feel your pain. And there isnt a straight forward way of telling someone that their site sucks. BUT there are small indicators you can play with over time.
Take for example crazyegg - an excellent piece of software - you can run this over a site to see behaviour by channel. There are others in the market too.
On the other hand, you should lay down expectations from day one - before the site came to you, what was historic conversion? Figure that data out first before setting sales targets. You know then that you have to drive X visitors for Y sales figures.
At the same time, experiment with landing pages - Googles Weboptimizer has some really cool PPC applications. Suggest PPC tests on diff pages - successful tests are an easier way of encouraging change.
No doubt - CrazyEgg is great, as is Google's website optimizer.
I think the sticky part, at least in my experience, is moving from the conversation about SEM to the conversation about the website / landing page's ability to convert.
When you start asking conversion questions often the business model / tactics come into question in addition to usability / testable elements. It's always an organic process working with clients on these points so there's no perfect solution.
When doing my initial audit I always include a bit of a usability & accessibility review. It's more qualitative than anything, but helps clients realize that ranking higher and getting more traffic won't automatically solve all their problems. And by introducing the ideas early, it makes future suggestions of a site redesign a little easier ;)
[my comment above was becoming an essay, so I split it into 2!]
Other metrics we use:
Hope those are useful additions!
Thanks for the Yoast, "SEO reports for Google Analytics." I somehow missed that one!
Great addition to your excellent Small Biz SEO series Rishi.
Although I take your point about not being obsessed with rankings and looking at targeted traffic, I do think it can be a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Monitoring rankings can tell you:
So I still find it valuable to use rankings as a success metric!
Great detailed post. I always love to see how other SEO professionals report on metrics and so forth.
Just wanted to add another way I measure success:
Organic Keyword traffic increases.
I research keywords for what seems to be a decade and come back with a report that measures search volume, competition analysis, difficulty, and procedures for getting ranked for these keywords. I then do ongoing SEO work until these keywords are ranking (which of course can take FOREVER). Each month I go into GA traffic sources section and look up keyword traffic visits. I measure on a month to month how many more visits have hit the site due to my SEO efforts for that keyword. I also go into more depth and measure bounce rate, pageviews, TOSAS, and landing page to assure the keyword is relevant to the searcher. I then follow through to the path of conversion. Additionally I analyze how much "open" traffic is left to be obtained in regards to that keyword (i.e. searchers who used that query, but didn't go to the site).
That is my main SEO metric I use when measuring the success of my efforts. Of course, it's certainly not the only one! Again,great post.
Designer watches .. are you sure you're not a spamme? ;0)>
Who is buying all these watches?
Anyway, quite interested in what you're doing with the ebay links presumably to build fresh content and demonstrate links through to relevant material.
Not really. Am just publishing the feed on a platform that auto optimises for certain elements. No really valuable content yet.
People still buy :P
Edit: For the record I dont think that comment needed a thumb down - I think pbhj was just joking...
Thanks for your edit rishil, I always get a thumb-down.
Perhaps they were confused by my begoateed smiley?
"Anyway, quite interested in what you're doing with the ebay links presumably to build fresh content and demonstrate links through to relevant material."
Check out PHPBay + Ebay Partner Network to see what he's doing.
PHPbay is ok, but I am using wordpress. Thats another post ;)
rishil,
firstly, great post.
one of the hardest things for myself, is showing success metrics.
being of a design background primarily and the only one to step up to the plate and work in the seo world at our firm [i'm actually going back to school now in the fall for marketing so that i can develop a good... foundation [not sure if that's what i would call it anymore seeing as how i'm doing this backwards]] it's a bit more difficult for me to put the data together to show our clients what works.
we've done a great job, for the few clients who go beyond on-site optimization, helping clients receive top 10 rankings, but to get further in depth with success metrics [beyond rankings and traffic] is taking just a little bit of time.
your post will help push me in the right direction for figuring out what will be good indicators of our work for our clients [i've read other posts of yours as well, with great liking - props].
anyway, thanks and keep up the great work.
cheers.
I had similar problems when I started out. I knew I am making a difference, but also knew SEO isnt an instant success channel. So over time I was forced to respect other metrics of success, which led me to my USI theory of dealing with clients.
If explained correctly, interim metrics are an excellent way of demonstrating progress in my experience so far.
Keep at it :) And good luck.
Really good post Rishil, It is useful for following the seo process, planning as well as showing the small business owner client during the work update meetings.
Thanks a lot
rishil great post, you need to do this more often, it doesnt cover the area of when the client has saturated a market and there are only so many more sales that are possible through conversion optimisation.
Ive also noticed that other search engines like Live, Ask or Yahoo do give higher conversion rates, but much less traffic.
Other metrics, i would have to say do they use forms so you can measure conversion funnels and also broken links. Removal of multiple broken links within a site has shown again and again to provide a boost in rankings and traffic. Google seem to reward the site next time they index it if you have no broken links.
I try to look at the Exit page metrics but these can be difficult if you are using a paypal gateway or an iframe to an ebay store.
it doesnt cover the area of when the client has saturated a market and there are only so many more sales that are possible through conversion optimisation.
That post is on the horizon :)
@TLA
Do you have any practical examples of a website where the market is saturated or the conversion is saturated? I couldnt make out which scenario you were refering to (or both), but Id love to see some examples.
I cant imagine a saturated market (but maybe theres the market where the cost/benefit ratio is against you and its not worth the effort to optimise any more).
Saturation exists in a few niches - where a set of competitors have established themselves so well, that neither can easily steal traffic / sales from one another despite a range of conversion studies being put into play - there arent many, but they do exist.
On the other hand, you may have a single client in that niche that actually owns all no1. postions, maybe even indented listings for majority of target terms. In this scenario, only conversion can help improve volume of sale - or most people would think so.
I've really enjoyed this "series", Rishi - it's too easy to neglect the little guys, and they collectively need a lot of SEO help.
I'm curious how you specifically measure the keyword coverage and variance. For instance, I've got a client where the long-tail keywords are essentially the product names. Once we really opened that up to the engines, we went from dozens of different long-tail queries to thousands. In a broad sense, it's a great thing, but there are so many now (and each one yields so little traffic, in typical long-tail fashon) that measurement in anything but broad strokes is tricky.
Good question Dr.Pete. Let me start by emphasising that this is an "interim metric" where lets say the first few steps of SEO have just been implemented, for example site clean up, better internal linking etc, basically simple stuff.
This in itself is not enough to rank for major terms, but a solid begining to stable rankings. However clients want visibility from day one. SO I set the variance and coverage metrics for firts targets, if applicable to such projects. As you can see, about 30%+ traffic comes from Gucci Long tails, identified from a keyword discovery - mostly model searches.
I push about 7 brands on my site, and have an idea of what volume of content makes up %share from Gucci. This is in line with the content, which means I shouldnt be too woried.
So pretty similarly in your case - I look at the broad stroke - total share of site content vs total share of traffic per subset of keywords. This is the first indicator of any unbalances in Coverage, once I have identified the necessary Variance.
In my specific case I can then match that broad stroke of share of traffic vs share of income, (i.e does Gucci bring in 30% of my revenue in very simplistic terms). This may further help me to identify where the site is good at converting certain subsets, and where its poor. In my case it would be highend keywords such as Cartier, which brings me 15% traffic, but is yet to generate a sale. I will probably bin those keywords in favour of another, more profitable set in the short term as a focus.
Not sure if this makes sense? Like I said, its a strange subject discussing interim metrics and USIs, and I end up waffling sometimes.
So much I want to say, but much of it has been expressed.
Thank you! AWESOME!!
I LOVE Rishi!
I <3 you too Dana!
Guys let me know what other metrics you look at while commenting - interesting to see what others do.
What needs to be done on the site? (e.g., link building, site cleanup, increased content, etc)
I think a site audit should be done frequently to ensure that you're not missing anything, you know? I tend to go back and try to optimize certain links every few months, and of course there's content audits - what do we NEED to add that we haven't already? In a way, I do a site audit daily - if I find new content that should go up on the site for example.
Good post - saw that Rebecca alerted you via Twitter when it went up. How convenient ha!
In my opinion there are stages for audits, begining from a SWOT, to a daily eyeball audit, to target specific audits. SO in a way you are right, audits need to be regular, but should be planned in at intervals with specifics in mind - sometimes, especially for small businesses, its easy to get hung up on a small issue.
When time=money, and Small businesses dont have much of either, focus energies on larger goals and earmark smaller issues for quiter timeframes.
I'd just add that it's important to ensure you're not spending time re-auditing things you already looked at. Having worked for several agencies managing SEO campaigns for 50+ clients at a time I can say from experience there's a real need for keeping records of what you've looked at, what's in good shape, what the needs are moving forward, etc.
Also for most small business websites some tactics, such as PageRank sculpting, are just not going to yield results - especially for new websites. Will it hurt to nofollow a few internal links to unimportant pages? Probably not, but to reiterate Rishi's point above: most small businesses need more bang for their buck.
so if these staurated companies exist, are there any real examples people are willing to give?
I could give you a couple, but that would be giving out my clients :(
Try big brand searches for an idea.
love the post we cater to mostly small business (we are network support company) so this stuff is great cant wait to see your other work
i have 100 points woohoo!
Good post. Another important metric is internal site search. Watching what people are searching for internally on your site and analyzing that data to make sure you are providing quality search results and the right product mix.
I wouldnt count internal site search as a success metric - more of an analytical tool for development and strategy.
Infact, the higher the use of site search, the worse off I would count a sites success to drive people to the right content from the first instance.
Very Interesting Blog, and has given me some new ideas for when I optimise a website. If I do any optimisation for an existing company I will always insist on a complete redesign and build rather that just looking at it to see what needs doing. I suppose if the site was built well in CSS to start with then maybe I could just look at optimising it.
@Rishil
Great post. I love to hear insights from other SEO's on success measurements and Keyword Coverage & Variance are interesting USI's. I might have to work those into my monthly client reports:-)
Congrats on the bump-up! :)
Is it rishi or rishil? I'm confused. That's what she said.
Its either :)
Rishi is my actual name, but I append the L which is an acknowledgement to my surname :)
On most networks I go by rishil...
Great post, and perfect timing.
I am currently coding an admin to write SEO reports for my clients, and this give some great ideas to bring into it.
thank you so much
Thanks for such an interesting article RishiL. I deal with alot of smaller businesses and recognise how they want to be position X for certain keywords. I'm a bit of a newbee so articles like this are very useful!
Nice post.