5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success
Are you still measuring your SEO success by the rankings you obtain? If so, you need to stop—right now!
Here’s why:
1. Rankings are constantly fluctuating. You might check rankings one minute, then check again a few minutes later key12880 and see different results.
2. Search results are sometimes geotargeted. The search engines know where you’re located by your IP address, and if they want they can (and I believe they do) sometimes point you to pages that are closer to where you are searching from, as they assume those results might be more beneficial to you.
3. Personalized search. If you’re logged into your Google or Yahoo account, you may very well be getting search results that are specifically targeted to your own preferences. It’s called personalized search, and it is a reality these days. As people use Gmail, Google Analtyics, Google AdWords, or any other free Google toy, Google learns more about you and may make specific recommendations based on this knowledge. Think about how Amazon is always making personalized recommendations for you. It wouldn’t surprise me if Google and Yahoo become more Amazon-like with their recommendations in the near future. The end result is that no two people will see the same rankings, making them key12874 an even more worthless measurement than they already are.
4. Rankings don’t equal targeted traffic. Heck, rankings don’t always even equal un-targeted traffic! If key12884 you or your SEO company optimizes your pages for keyword phrases that nobody’s searching for, your optimization efforts will all be key12877 wasted. And if you’re measuring success by how you rank for those useless keywords, you may be thinking you’re successful when you’re really not. This is actually one of the oldest tricks in the book for unscrupulous (or incompetent) SEO companies to use. They key12871 fulfill their end of the bargain—get you rankings—and you’re left scratching your head wondering why key12878 your website is still a ghost town.
5. Rankings don’t equal conversions or sales. Along the key12872 same lines of #4, all the high rankings in the world won’t matter if they don’t increase your bottom line key12881 somehow. If you receive lots of untargeted traffic, or no traffic at all, your sales will remain static.
What should you be measuring instead?
The things that matter, of course—the targeted traffic, but even more important than that—the conversions and sales. Yeah, it was nice in the old days when we key12879 could say we did our job by running ranking reports each month and pointing out all the increases to our clients. But that’s simply not going to fly these days. Today, you have to be able to show your clients a positive return on their SEO investment, or you’re just key12883 not doing your job properly.
Get with the program and start measuring key12875 the key12885 things that matter.
Educate your clients or your CEO as much as possible. It can certainly be a difficult concept for some of them to grasp, as rankings are often a vanity thing for them. But once you convince them of the lack of merit in measuring rankings, you’ll be free to throw your rank checking software out the window once and for all and be on your way to true search engine success!
Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings, a search marketing firm outside of Boston, and co-founder of SEMNE, a New England search marketing networking organization, has been performing SEO since 1995. key12882 Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.
Opinions expressed in this article key12876 are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.
Related stories
How to connect with Gen key12873 X, Millennials and Gen Z
Forrester Total Economic Impact study reveals increased efficiency for marketers
Discover the ultimate marketing strategy for increased ROI and lead generation
From clicks to conversions: Drive performance with marketing AI
How AI can recession-proof your business
New on Search Engine Land
Bing Chat available to more users, gains more visual
vr rolex day date mens 118235 36mm watch rose gold tone answers, chat history and third-party developer capabilities
How to connect with Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z
TikTok’s new ad product gives publishers 50% stake
YouTube has a new interface, and not everyone is excited about it
GA4 custom funnel reports are here
About the author
Jill Whalen
Related topics
Analytics & conversionPPCSEO