Essential SEO Analytics: The Performance Metrics That Truly Count

ESSENTIAL SEO METRICS: The Performance Metrics That Truly CountSMX West 2013@Rhea @outspokenmedia

“Welcome to the new age.”

Lyric/album credit: Imagine Dragons

It used to be so easy to demonstrate SEO value.

Today it’s much more complicated and difficult to track (the old way)

Why?

It isn’t impossible to track performance, but we have to evolve.

Every campaign must

include these 3 things:

http://slidesha.re/VMP9L4

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Metrics guidelines to follow:

1. Get leaders involved. 2. Visually represent your metrics. 3. Metrics must respond quickly.4. Metrics must be simple. 5. Metrics should drive only

important activities.6. Limit the number of metrics. 7. Take corrective action.

University of Delaware:http://www.buec.udel.edu/kmetzj/business_consulting/Business_Metrics.doc

Putting those metrics to work:

Business Objective Business Metric SEO Metric

Grow online revenue

20% increase in conversions from organic search

1,000 annual conversions1,200 goal

16,667 annual increase in traffic from organic search (~1,389 more visits per month)

Current organic search conversion rate is 1.2%

83,333 annual search traffic100,000 desired search traffic

Not the best at calculating percent and amounts? Check out: http://www.percentagecalculator.net/

Closed Loop Marketing Cycle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_loop_marketing

Now we have context and our metrics aren’t

arbitrary.

Why is this important?

Operating in a vacuum will harm your business.

How we usually measure results:

• Rankings • Link quantity

Dangers:

• Loses sight of the business objective

• Focus is on the wrong metrics• Motivates team with risky

methods

What you need:

Increase online

sales by 20%

SEO SOCIAL

Increase online

sales by 20%

What happens in 6 months:

SEO SOCIAL

Google Penguinfor YOU!

Manual penalty for YOU!

Photo credit: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-lessons-through-cutts-picture

Because what they heard was:

More links! More mentions!

SEO SOCIAL

And what they did was:

Link building:100 PR3+ links

40 sponsoredposts on mom

blogs

SEO SOCIAL

When they needed to:

Communicatewith social

Communicatewith SEO

SEO SOCIALEXECS

Don’t forget

us!

Integrated marketing campaign:

QUALITY METRICS:• Link quality• Relevance to

brand• Social factors

PERFORMANCE METRICS:• Outreach

quantity• Response rate• Social

engagement

How do we use metrics to

demonstrate value?

Link building SUCCESS story:

We were asked to measure results by link

quality.

Relevance

EngagementBacklinks

Blogger Outreach Quality Matrix

Developed a combination of:1. Backlinks – Citation Flow from Majestic SEO2. Engagement – Avg of Engagement Per Post (EPP)

w/3 posts3. Relevance – 3 tiers affect minimum thresholds for

CF and EPP

@Rhea | #searchfest

Benefits:• Builds relevance and trust long-term• No footprints, because it’s natural • Doesn’t invite risk approaches• Drives social media success, which

helps with SERPs and personalization• Motivates team to achieve the right

metrics • Forces open communication between

vendors/departments

Problems:

• Process overlapped w/other depts.

• Asked us to just target mom blogs (We said NO!)

• Couple week hiatus for internal education and process development

• Outreach list to avoid

Results:

• Helped define internal process• Educated team on dangers

• Exceeded link quantity goal• Drove brand awareness• Positive reputation management• Community development• Attribution difficult to track

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE MET:

Grow organic search performance without

risk.

Learn more about Google updates at 1:30pm in SEO Track.

Client

What do you need to see similar success?

Internal champion

We

X

Stand your ground

NO! I won’t build linksfrom crappymom blogs.

Reactive organization

Metrics only matter if you do something with them.

Here are my favorite 4 metrics you can do

something with (with a twist):

1. ORGANIC TRAFFIC

By: search engine, category, season, persona

Why? Locate problems/opportunities with: Analytics Google updates Technical changes

2. CONVERSIONS

By: search engine, category, season, persona

Why? Locate problems/opportunities with: Usability concerns Product stock Technical issues

3. BACKLINKS

By: quantity, quality, relevance, location, anchor text distribution, domain authority

Why? Locate problems/opportunities with: Negative SEO Agency accountability Enterprise-level accountability

4. INDEXED PAGES

By: site-wide, subdomains, main templates/categories

Why? Locate problems/opportunities with: Manual penalties Algorithmic updates Technical issues Duplicate content

“Welcome to the new age.”

Lyric/album credit: Imagine Dragons

Metrics must be informed by business objectives.

Metrics can’t be defined in a vacuum.

Metrics need to demonstrate value.

Metrics only matter if we do something with

them.

Get the deck:http://www.slideshare.net/rdrysdale

Say hello!rhea@outspokenmedia.comt: @Rhea | @outspokenmedia