Search Engine Strategies – SEO Metrics Session
Search Engine Strategies – SEO Metrics Session
Search Engine Strategies is back in town and Miles Bennett (me) has been asked to speak alongside Brian Clifton (Omega Digital and Google Analytics know-it-all) and Jeff Ferguson of Local.com. Richard Zwicky couldn’t make it from San Francisco.
Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers
As knowledge of SEO practices moves from the offices of the optimisers to the board room, the standard metrics used by the practitioners of this former dark art are straining under the weight of the all powerful bottom line. The days when upper management was impressed by subtle changes in Page Rank have been replaced by questions of LTV and ROI. As more resources are being dedicated to creating the perfectly optimized and keyword rich landing page, C-level executives are demanding proof of the return they are receiving from these resources.
Jeff Ferguson (@countzero) spoke first and emphasised the importance of demonstrating return on investment (ROI) in your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts. If your SEO dashboards are too details and don’t add the context then don’t bother going into the C-SUITE offices or your job may just depend on it.
Brian Clifton (@brianclifton) emphasised his presentation on the onsite metrics and gave a detailed understanding of brand engagement. Brian, if you didn’t know, is the ex Head of Google Analytics for EMEA and gave some very useful examples of monetisation and segmentation.
Miles Bennett (@targetstone)’s presentation (shortly to be uploaded to slideshare) tried to show how SEO is as important in determining onsite content as delivering ROI metrics. Editorial staff can be essential in your business (depending on what your business is) but, if you’re not trained for writing for the web or writing articles which include ‘x’ keywords can be harder than it seems.
Understanding your customers and their interaction with the site is a key factor for success. Understand the behaviour of your customers too – are your customers the type who come to your site via multi-word search terms or single branded terms.
Don’t be afraid to use Excel to its fullest potential. Creating a fancy dashboard is great but, what insight is it delivering? Are you giving any context? If you’re running an SEO programme can you demonstrate the improvement in conversion / engagement to when you weren’t running a programme. What other factors are influencers? Are you running PPC at the same time? What about the halo effect of offline marketing?
Probably the most important take away from our panel was don’t bullshit management. Give them effective reporting, show them the benefit of ‘free marketing’. We all know that SEO isn’t free but, used effectively it can give a helluva lot smaller cost per acquisition and for a more sustained period.
[...] Target Stone: "The days when upper management was impressed by subtle changes in Page Rank have been replaced by questions of LTV and ROI." [...]