How you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working
Search engine optimization is far from being a mindless process. Most people have a plan and most people have some sort of metric for judging success. In our internal SEO training class, I have pointed out that more than one metric can be contrived for measuring success or failure in a search optimization campaign. Here are a few examples: Not every metric has to be directly tied to search optimization success. You can work with derivative metrics and collateral metrics. And conversions are defined by the type of site you’re working with. Some sites are informational. Some sites are subscription-driven. Some sites are order-driven. Some sites are seeking multiple types of conversions (such as filling out a survey after a purchase has been made or abandoned).
As Google has become more demanding about the quality of the links it will allow to pass value, many savvy SEOs have refined their link acquisition methods. They work really hard to obtain those hard-to-find value-passing links — the “trusted links”, the “authority links”, the “relevant high-quality links”. This type of link building brings in far fewer links than the typical mass submission/request/buying approach but generally helps achieve tremendous results.
I’ve seen many SEOs post claims in forums and on blogs about propelling sites from page 3 or 4, or deeper, to the first page of Google’s search results for competitive expressions using far fewer links than their competitors use. I’ve done this quite often myself.
And then you sort of hit a brick wall. BAM! You’re there, on the front page, maybe down around 8 or 10, maybe just teetering on the edge of the 5th position. You can see the top slot from where you are and it looks delicious.
But no matter what you do, you cannot move your site any further into the search results. Months pass as you obtain link after link. Your site drifts down, it drifts up, and you wonder what is going on.
There are, of course, several possible explanations. But unravelling the mystery of why a site cannot hit the number 1 position distracts you from the job at hand: determining whether you achieved SEO success. It’s important to understand how much it cost you to get to the first page, and how much it may cost you to reach the top position. Achieving number 1 for your pet expression may not be worth it.
So when the site hits the front page of the search results, stop and evaluate where you are. How much did it cost to get there? How much time? How many resources did you use? How much money did you spend? Are you now profitable?
Hitting the link wall is not a bad thing. It’s a moment worth celebrating. It means your site has arrived. You’ve moved out of the Supplemental Results Index and into the Main Web Index. Your site is now trusted. It’s time to show that your site is worthy of trust, and that you can optimize for search even in the most competitive query space.
At the beginning of your campaign, you should record baseline values for as many metrics as you can: search referrals, search rankings, monthly traffic, monthly conversions, etc. Capture every piece of data you can. Ideally you should monitor all these metrics on a weekly basis but you really only need to worry about capturing the data a second time when you hit the front page of Google.
Remember, however, that any sudden change in results may be due to something other than your on-page optimization and link building. Look for stability in the SERPs before you claim any advancement. I like to wait 7 days before I conclude something has worked. That’s just me. Some people like to celebrate the moment they find a front-page ranking.
When you’re ready to take that second metric snapshot, you want to see how many areas you were able to improve upon. Look closely at your visits-to-conversions ratio(s). If you see a decline in quality of traffic you need to re-evaluate everything: content, choice of keywords, calls to action, etc. Before you hit the top of a competitive query you may only get one or two opportunities to prepare for the onslaught of traffic you’re looking for.
If you need to make adjustments, do it now. Don’t agonize over whether you’re about to lose rankings. Just fix whatever problems you need to fix. If you hit the front page of Ask, Google, Live, or Yahoo! and your conversions drop you’re in seriously deep pudu.
When you’ve stabilized or improved your conversions you can start expanding your site’s visibility in the query space. A query space consists of ALL the related queries for a given topic AND the content that is relevant to those queries. So your campaign may have started out targeting one or a few expressions but now it needs to start going after similar expressions (and I don’t mean “long-tail low-hanging fruit”). If you can compete for expression A, you can compete for expression B.
And when you’ve proven to yourself that you can compete for both expression A and expression B, you need to compete for both at the same time. The sooner you expand your visibility in relatively similar and active queries, the more search traffic you’ll bring in. Follow the fundamental steps. Don’t cheat yourself by simply trying to get more links with new anchor text. Do your research, add or modify content, and provide sufficient repetition and emphasis to show people you really do have the content they want to find.
BUT FIRST TAKE ANOTHER METRIC SNAPSHOT. When you expand into new queries, set a baseline. You need to be able to grow a site from query to query, measuring success, by determining how much your performance improves.
The day of “one page, one query” SEO should have died years ago. The philosophy of “my site, my brand, and my competitive query” should be left in the hands of brute-force, primitive SEO technicians who know nothing about efficiency and productivity.
In other words, when you hit the link wall, you know it’s time to grow your search optimization laterally — to develop this valuable asset you’ve built into a multi-query competitive SEO juggernaut. You can measure your success by seeing how you improve upon your baseline metrics for a growing number of queries.
You’ll find that getting to number 1 is not all it’s cracked up to be. But you’ll eventually find that getting to number 1 becomes less painful if you focus on the achievable victories through a systematic, methodical approach to providing good content for people who want to find it.
Every page has the potential to rank for 1,000 queries. It’s up to you to determine how many of those queries your page will actually conquer.
www.seo-theory.com
published @ October 1, 2008