Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers #SESSJ

This Search Engine Strategies session was a great discussion about which metrics are meaningful in evaluating the results and success of SEO.

An 18 million person study last year and a 20 million person follow-up study this year resulted in this finding: Paid Search was bringing the most valuable visitor, not SEO.

Most C-suites have difficulty tying back SEO to returns – it’s about how to best measure the value of the organic search.  But it’s not because they can’t, they just aren’t.  And of course, they won’t invest in what they don’t measure. 

Is the value of a sale from organic worth as much as a sale from paid search?  Usually, the challenge is not tying the SEO visitor referral to a lead form, but to a sale that requires integration with CRM.  This is of course true with other referred visitors as well.

When asked: what percent of fortune 500 companies are tracking all the way through?  No one answered with a number, but it’s a low number, one panelist said.  WebsiteBiz was able to help a Fortune 100 company successfully scale an end-to-end Search campaign over 4 years ago.  At the time, this was the first and only online campaign in the company that had accomplished this objective.

The issue is that Fortune 500 companies are not looking at SEO from an ROI perspective.  And they’re challenged with trying to move a huge ship.

One panelist said, we must continually evaluate terms that are new and circular.  In fact, 25% of all queries that Google sees are new.

BusinessOnline’s approach to SEO is 2 legged:

1. Foundational phase
2. Continuous phase (of search cycle– measuring data points all along the way)

Remediation takes time and effort to track; especially when it comes to customer intent.

Ray Comstock filters keywords by brand and non-brand– they first used Excel, and now Python to determine long tail non-brand keywords and trend over time to determine what is relevant and producing results.

For C-suite, it’s more important to talk about business objectives and results, not clicks, bounces, etc.  A recommended approach is to use % change as a way to show improvement.

Lastly, it’s important to segment your keywords by buying cycle, determining the value of each segment, and tying to conversion value.  The value of visitors that are researching requires marketers to track funnel toward a sale.

• Moderator:
  Jim Sterne, Chairman, Web Analytics Association

• Speakers:
  Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite
  Jeff Ferguson, SES Advisory Board & Senior Director, Online Marketing, Local.com
  Marc Engelsman, VP, Client Programs and Services, Digital Brand Expressions
  Jamie Smith, CEO, Engine Ready
  Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Senior Search Strategist, BusinessOnLine
  

Tagged as: Search Engine Strategies, seo metrics, ses san jose, ses san jose 2009