Site Ranking

Often people wonder why their new website isn’t ranking.  Unfortunately SEO often isn’t built into website design.  Without it, website’s who are in competitive markets stand little chance of capturing any organic search traffic when the website goes live.

Search Engine Rankings

Your site is going to compete for site rankings in the major search engines unless you are in a non-competitive market (and those are becoming increasing more rare).  Search engine rankings are one of the most common metrics measured in SEO (search engine optimization). Search engine rankings are simply where your site is showing up in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing when someone types in a keyword relevant to your business.  Sadly, this metric alone is not the best indicator of online success.  However, it does get talked about quite a bit.

Site Rankings Aren’t Everything

While improving your site ranking is an important component of SEO, it isn’t everything.  Showing up for the wrong keywords won’t do your business any good.   For example your site could be ranking for keywords that don’t have anything to do with your business or  keywords that don’t drive any traffic (because people aren’t searching for that term).

A common complaint we hear from prospective clients is, “I’m paying this other SEO company and I’m on page 1 of Google for all my keywords…but I’m not getting any traffic.”  This is generally because the site is ranking for keywords that don’t have any traffic(no one is searching for that term) and therefore has little competition. Generally it’s quite easy to rank for these keywords but, unfortunately it’s not doing the business owner any good.

Another potential issue is the accuracy with which we can measure search engine rankings.  If you use your own computer to see how you rank, you are unfortunately getting a biased answer from the search engines, who monitor your online search activity and display the results they think are most relevant for you.  Even if you are logged out of your account and have your area (city) turned off, Google recognizes your IP address and uses that to bias your search results.  There are independent third party search engine ranking tools, but test any two tools next to each other, and you’ll most likely get different results.

A better way to track online success is through measuring site traffic, engagement and conversions.

Website Traffic

When business owners claim they want to improve their site ranking in the search engines, what they usually want is more traffic to their site.  While ranking on page one of the major search engines is absolutely important, ranking for the right keywords that drive relevant traffic to your site is the real key.  Ranking for relevant traffic that actually drives business is much more difficult (because more businesses are fighting for it) and some lazy SEO’s don’t want to work that hard.  So be sure you ask about the average search volume (per month usually) and competition levels for the keywords that your SEO provider is working for.

Engagement

Beyond website traffic, more detailed metrics like visitor engagement can deliver important information to business owners.  For some, it may be time on site, for others, it may be visiting certain pages or visiting pages in a certain order.  All of these things can be tracked an monitored by your SEO provider as well.

Conversions

The real gold for SEO providers and business owners alike is establishing Conversion Goals and assigning a value per conversion.  With these goals in place, your SEO provider can actually track which traffic sources are delivering the most real value to your company.  An example of a conversion could be an online purchase worth an exact amount, or a form completed by a lead which has a relative value for the owner.  When business owners see this level of tracking, they are able to put a real ROI on their monthly SEO budget and see real results.  It’s a win for the SEO company and win for the business owner.

If you are interested in learning more about how SEO works to improve your site ranking and drive more quality traffic to your website, you can download our free resource guide, Identifying Ethical SEO.  If you’d like to schedule a free consultation, you can call us at 804-482-1576 or submit a request on our Contact Page.