Often, during meetings with potential clients they ask me “How do you measure the success of an SEO campaign?  This is a good question and I am always glad to answer it.

There are three main elements of measuring SEO that should be analysed.

1. Search Engine Rankings

Everybody thinks of this one when attempting to figure out the success of an SEO campaign. Technically, if you are ranking in the top ten of the search engines for your keyword, your campaign is successful.  However, that is not all there is to it. While ranking in Google is a great accomplishment, the only real test of your SEO campaign’s success is whether you are making any money. If you aren’t, then nothing else matters. The next two elements of SEO success will determine that.

2.  Traffic, Targeted Keywords, and Titles

Ranking alone won’t guarantee you a large number of visitors. If you have targeted a low search volume keyword, or you don’t have an attention grabbing title, you probably aren’t getting much traffic. If you aren’t getting the traffic you expected when you planned your keyword strategy but you are ranking well, then your traffic objective hasn’t been met and you need to do a little more SEO work.

3.  Conversion Rates and Money Keywords

This is really where your success is measured. While conversions rates are technically not related to SEO, conversions (sales or leads) are what determines how much money you will make from the visitors to your website. Getting all the traffic in the world  means nothing if they aren’t buying your product, using your service, or subscribing to your list.

This is why keyword research is imperative in the development stage of planning your marketing strategy. Choose the wrong keywords, and you won’t make money.

Generally speaking, you want to go after “money keywords”.  A “money keyword” is one that has the potential to bring a sale. For example, “Tailor-made golf clubs” would be a money keyword, because somebody is looking for  to buy a custom set of clubs. However, “golf pictures” is not, because the searcher isn’t looking to purchase anything but rather just looking for information.

How can you tell if it’s a money keyword?

There are actually a couple of different ways to approach this.  One way is to look at the bid price for that keyword in Googles AdWords campaigns. The higher the number, the better indication that it’s a money keyword. This is because you can be sure that if there are advertisers willing to pay money to show up for that term, there is money to be made by ranking for the keyword or keyword phrase. Businesses wouldn’t be going after these words if they weren’t profitable.

Another way to tell if a keyword is a money keyword is to check the keyword modifiers.  For example, if your product is a bird house, check the keyword research for words like  buy bird houses,  red bird house or find bird houses.  These modifying keywords will let you know that someone is probably looking to buy a bird house.  On the other hand, words like bird house tips, bird house pictures, and bird house guides are informational keywords.  The people searching this terms are looking for information.

That’s all there is to it. These are really the only three things you need to look at when determining the success of your SEO campaign.  There are those who will tell you that “bounce rate” and “average visit time” are important indicators in your tracking analysis.  However, those variables are no where near as critical as visitor value.  Does it really matter how much time your visitor is spending on your website, as long as they are buying your product, using your service or signing up to your email marketing list?   Just keep it simple and  just analyse visitor value.

The bottom line is this.  Your SEO success is not just determined by ranking.  Ranking is just the first step to online profits.   The formula for online profits is ranking + traffic + conversion. Getting ranked is just the first step to the latter two. This formula will ultimately determine the success or failure of your online business.

Cheers to conversions!

P.S.  If you are interested in learning more about developing or improving the search engine rankings of your small business, help is available.  We specialize in helping businesses get found on the internet by the people who are already looking for their products and services.  I can help you with the tools and techniques that will help you attract online customers and keep them coming back.  For more information, contact us today buy choosing a location below or in other U.S. Cities by calling toll free: 866-945-9707

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