Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

I’m a pretty analytical guy. In fact, if I could break a good sweat using MSExcel, it would likely replace my treadmill. I like to measure my measurements just before and after I measure things to make sure my measurements are accurately measured. Sad I know… but true nonetheless.

Let’s talk keyword rankings for a minute, shall we? There are plenty of software applications on the Internet that can scrape the engines and tell you where you rank for as many keywords you would like (my personal favorite is IBP by Axandra). For obvious reasons, the engines frown on this. In case it’s not obvious, it’s because it skews their search statistics and eats up unnecessary bandwidth. I’m sure there are other reasons, but let’s leave it at that.

So, despite my sometimes obsessive need to measure, I’m really not a big fan of checking rankings all the time and using that as a proxy to determine the overall effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign. Don’t get me wrong, ranking matter. It’s just that you shouldn’t be obsessed with a ranking to the point that you have a melt down when you go from #2 to #6 for a period of time for a “high value” keyword term. There are literally hundreds of variables to consider as to why that might be the case. Keep in mind Google alone has more than a hundred data centers that display results to different users. It’s quite possible for Mary to see a #2 ranking for keyword X in Maryland while Jim Bob in Texas sees #5 on Google for the same term at exactly the same point in time. Why? Different data centers are displaying results. Or perhaps Jim Bob is logged into his Google account and is seeing personalized search results based on his perceived search preferences.

So, the moral of the story is… just chill man. Slow and steady wins the SEO race. OK, so if I’m saying don’t be so anal on rankings then what would I suggest you focus on to measure the success of your SEO campaign? How about tracking the number of referring search terms that generated traffic to your site on a month to month and year over year basis? How about analyzing trends in organic search engine referrals?

If I had a nickel for every time a client or colleague has come to me with, “Hey man… my rankings are slipping! What should we do about it?” I’d well… I’d still be working, but I’d drive a nicer car. In many of those same instances, I would ask the inquiring mind questions like… “Well, how if your overall overall search engine traffic? Are you seeing any alarming downward trends in overall organic search traffic? How many keywords have referred traffic to your site recently? Any alarming trends there?”

All that said, below is an abbreviated list of things I think you should monitor on a semi-regular basis to make sure your SEO initiatives are on track. Items listed in descending order of importance.

1. Overall Organic Search Engine Traffic (Weekly, Monthly, YoY)
2. Number of Keywords Referring Search Engine Traffic ((Weekly, Monthly, YoY)
3. Number of Pages indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN (site:mydomain.com) (track monthly)
4. Number of Backlinks according to Yahoo (linkdomain:mydomain.com)
5. Headaches averted by not running daily ranking checks on your top-level keyword targets.
6. If you must, run ranking reports on a monthly basis, but keep in mind that search engines are fluid and dynamic and ranking reports are a snapshot in time.

Tags: keyword rankings, SEO

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Web Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.