Why Rankings Are A Poor Way To Measure Your SEO Campaign Success Rate

When it comes to working with an SEO company and measuring their success, or trying to see just how effective your DIY optimisation efforts are, too many people still rely on the tracking of keywords to rate their campaign, which as we go onto discuss, is not the best way of judging the success and effectiveness of your campaign.

Years ago, you would sit down with your proposed SEO agency and come up with a few keywords you would want to rank for. The good ones would make sure these were the right ones for you, the bad ones would either nod their heads and not care, or would push you into much easier keywords to rank for. You would then receive a report every month, with a green arrow if you were lucky, red if you were not and a little blue line if there was no movement at all.

But, as we explain below, judging success on rankings is simply flawed in so many ways.

Vanity Counts For Nothing

Rankings, at the end of the day, are vanity measurements, because you could be top of Google for a keyword that delivers no traffic, and whilst it is nice to have the feeling of high rankings, if you are ranking for things that no one is searching for it is a waste of time. A bit like owning a brand new speedboat but living 400 miles from the sea, it means nothing other than something to look at out of your window on a sunny day. Make sure the keywords you want to rank for are actually going to drive traffic to your website, otherwise, once again, you are just wasting time and effort on keywords that will not deliver traffic and therefore business. Always check the volumes of the keywords you “think” you want to rank for (you can do this via the Google AdWords Keyword Planner) and then make sure your final list is actually going to get you somewhere, as how you think your customers search for you is not always how they do search for you.

Traffic Does Not Mean Conversions

Moving on from the above point, you might end up ranking for some great keywords that send you a load of traffic, but these people do not turn into customers, meaning all of that time, effort and hard work only to increase traffic but have little to no effect on business. Following the same point we mention above, you need to know the keywords that yes, have traffic, but that are also relevant to what you are offering, otherwise you are just bringing in customers looking for something that you simply do not offer. Imagine running an offline marketing campaign for Blue Ford Cars, but you are actually a Peugeot dealership and you do not sell blue cars, you will end up getting a load of people heading down to your garage on a Saturday afternoon, but 95% will turn around and head off. Relevant traffic is vital, so make sure when you check your keywords and identify what you are looking to rank for you, they are actually going to stand a chance of getting the extra sales and business.

Fluctuations

Rankings fluctuate. The keyword ranking you see at 6 today could be 4 tomorrow or even later on today, so you need to bear in mind that just because you are top 5 this morning does not mean you are top 5 throughout the day. These minor fluctuations are perfectly normal but if you live your life and your company by the red and green arrows, this is going to have an impact on your wellbeing, as you will just be constantly worried about these movements. If you are going to monitor rankings, limit yourself to checking them weekly and use an independent tool like SERanking or SEO Profiler to make sure your rankings are accurately and consistently checked, because as we mention later, the results you see at home on your own PC are not going to be massively accurate.

Local Results (GEO Targeting)

Over the past couple of years, you may have noticed that Google now delivers more local results when you search for something, which means that the results you see are going to de different to someone in a nearby county, even for the same search. For example, if I search for Accountants and I am working from Gloucester, my results will be different if I search for Accountants from my office in Bristol. This means that you cannot really judge your SEO campaign on rankings, as these are likely to change from place to place, so the results you see in one location will probably be quite different in another. This is why more and more people no longer search Keyword + Location, as they are so used to getting the most local results as Google continues to really improve their results based on the users location.

Personalised Search

Although it is pretty obvious when you are signed into Google that your results are often very different to when you are signed out, even when you are not signed in, you will find your results can often be based on your browser history, which once again, will alter the rankings you see. Many people assume this will only happen when signed in, but do not forget your browser stores your search history regardless, so quite often this will still have an impact on where your site is ranking, especially if you visit it quite a lot or test your search results frequently.

To Conclude –

I am not saying you should not be tracking keywords, as I and most other SEO / Online Marketing companies still will, as they can be a good indication of the domain authority and page authority growing due to the high quality links that are being built. Tracking can still be worthwhile for many other reasons, as if you notice a huge drop across the board you are probably looking at a penalty issue, which can allow you to deal with things much quicker if you see the drop immediately. It can also mean site issues as well, which again, if you see a large drop across the majority of your rankings would indicate a major problem somewhere.