Keyword Ranking Reports
Dave has finally let me out from the dark cellar beneath the Bronco building where over the last couple of days I have been looking at ranking reports for clients.
Keywords are of course one of the main focus areas for websites and whilst it’s easy for SEO’s to understand the logistics behind them client’s are not always certain what all the fuss is about. Anyway, the point I’m getting at is this do we really need to give clients a blow by blow account of their keyword rankings?
Is it not better to show them that their sales have increased and give them true figures on ROI? Perhaps to tell them which products they could target more efficiently? Some SEO companies charge astronomic sums for producing reports which really have very little benefit to anyone. Don’t get me wrong I know how important keywords are for the website to perform.
Don’t you get tired of SEO geeks saying.. We rank no 1 for this we rank no 3 for this we rank no 4 — How about sales? How about the client’s business?
Dan Horton SEO
Richard Hearne 2073 days ago
http://www.redcardinal.ieOne of the most difficult parts of SEO – deriving ROI figures for organic campaigns. Personally I think conversion optimisation (or whatever you want to call it) is far more important, but part of me says that it’s not really an SEO thing. More a marketing area. That’s why working with ecommerce sites is so cool – you can actually get into the conversion areas of web marketing. And if you manage to negotiate yourself a % of the gross… it’s happy days for everyone
Tom 2073 days ago
http://www.distilled.co.uk/blogIt’s a good point. We generate ranking reports here at Distilled but I never send them on to client’s. We use them for internal checking, but send traffic and conversion (and where possible ROI) reports onto clients. They make you look better, they’re nicer and easier to understand (putting a £ in front of numbers always makes things easier to understand!)
James Dunn 2073 days ago
I don’t necessarily want to go solely off of ROI or sales because I can’t control the client’s conversion rate. If they have a lousy product or a poor sales page, that’s not my fault. If I can show them that I am getting them targeted traffic and steadily increasing their rankings, then it’s up to them to fix what’s broken on their site.
Mark 2073 days ago
I totally disagree with this. As an SEO you should know that you’re only really going to get traffic when you’re page 1, realistically in the top 3 places…
So what if you move a tough keyword from position 35 to 14? That’s some great progress there, but the truth is you don’t see the benefit of this work until you hit page 1. So if you report “well, no more business this month mr. client”.
you need to report to them and let them know that you have indeed made progress, and let them know that the ROI really kicks on for that key phrase when you hit the desired positions.
i think reporting on only business/converstions (or just rankings) is misleading. you need to educate your client and report on both to give them a good picture on what’s going on.
Dan Horton 2073 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.uk“Don’t get me wrong I know how important keywords are for the website to perform.”
There is more than one page to Google..
Justin Goldberg 2073 days ago
http://justin-goldberg.blogspot.com/Keyword reports also tend to cultivate hyperfocusing on a few high-traffic keywords that don’t convert* and over-optimization (or is that over-optimisation
.
I get all of my clients to install Hittail on their sites to target the long-tail.
* It also raises bandwidth bills needlessly if they aren’t that relevant, right?
Darren 2073 days ago
I think I am one of them Geeks.
I’m getting traffic to the site, but I am not analysing where the customers are going and if there are finding what they have searched for.
I have no idea if this traffic is wasted or not.
Thanks for the reminder
METAPILOT 2073 days ago
http://www.metapilot.comUltimately, it’s about sales. You know that if you get the client to #1 and there is no increase in sales, the customer ain’t gonna be happy with the whole thing, regardless of their understanding of the service being provided. Maybe it’s that the terms “Search Engine Optimization” and “keyword rankings” have a lot of leftover connotational baggage from Web 1.0, when client knowledge and expectations were lower and somewhat more naive.
While it is still possible to play on those old connotations, the outcome of a project based solely on them isn’t going to benefit everyone involved. Today, with clients being more sophisticated, we can propose projects that deal with the whole funnel–not just a portion of it–like rankings, and that means we can be of greater service to the client and we can make more money doing it. One’s definition of what we provide has a big impact on value we bring to a client and what they are going to pay for it.
Alan Bleiweiss 2073 days ago
http://www.search-marketing-answers.com/blogFor most clients, I don’t bother with position reports. The only think they care about is final conversions and me helping them understand Google Analytics. For my higher end clients though, I completely agree with Mark. With one client in particular, when I took over the account last year they were buried in the SERPs – their best place was on the 4th or 5th page, and for some of their most important phrases, they were on the 17th page at Google.
While I was able to get several phrases in the 1/2/3 position, they’re in a phenomenally competitive field with most competitors using black hat methods. So to show them how they’ve steadily moved up from the 17th page to now be on the 3rd or 4th page helps them to see that where they’ve already seen conversion success that the potential exists over time for even more…
If all we relied on to communicate were conversion numbers they very well may have cut back on their SEO spending, and would then also miss out on tremendous growth potential.
Dan Horton 2073 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukThanks for your thoughts guys,I guess each client is unique in what reports they need. Ive looked at a few software packages to give extensive reports, including the obvious online Google offerings. None quite hit the mark for me?
I’m not saying just be reliant on conversions and sales but I do think some SEO companies continually harp on about their own rankings a little too much.
Heapseo 2073 days ago
http://www.heapseo.com/blogI think it’s important to use all stats available to essentially tell a story of key activity over time. For example, “On day 1 we did this. You will see from report x, that many rankings increased in Google on day 10. This correlates with the increase in traffic, and revenue generated as shown in report y over the same timeframe.”
This sort of approach ties all your efforts together, providing reasons for increases in traffic and revenue at a particular time. Having said that, as Mark said if you see a major keyword jump to second page for example, it’s unlikely to translate into any extra traffic or revenue, but is still a major development of an SEO campaign and should be reported accordingly.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that ranking reporting needs to play a part in an SEO campaign, and is useful in building an overall picture, but should by no means be the be all and end all when it comes to the focus and aims of an SEOer.
New Orleans Web Design 2072 days ago
http://www.goatsmilktavern.com/seo-search-engine-optimization.htmlSome clients want to see that what you are doing is moving them up in the SERPs, and some are just happy with increased sales. There are two different kinds of clients, one is the kind that likes SERP results, which is the basis for SEO, and the other is the kind that likes quality links on good referring sites which is , in my opinion, a by product of god SEO.
Vladimir 2072 days ago
http://www.vladimirpetkovic.com/blog/For an SEO it’s important to keep track of keyword ranking because it’s a core indicator of performance, aside from a visible increase in conversions, although keyword reports are mostly internal data for the SEO. A client shouldn’t be bothered with detailed keyword ranking reports, but should be shown and made aware of power keywords for their site once they are identified. They have to know about these keywords since they are what brings them most revenue or conversion in general. This in turn helps a lot with proposing further work on securing long term ranking for these keywords, as well long tail research around these keywords.
In any case, a client has to be at least made aware of the significance of keywords for their site, and if coupled with revenue amounts, it makes for a very persuasive argument. Although I agree that an increase in ranking from page 5 to page 2 is an indicator of progress, it really won’t represent real progress unless you manage to achieve page 1 at some point (which is what almost every client will expect). If page 1 competition is too strong for particular keywords, chances are page 1 will never be reached (or at least in a significantly short amount of time), and the client should also be made aware of this. Efforts are better employed for reachable goals that will bring more conversions for the client’s site.
David wilson 2072 days ago
http://www.braveheartdesign.comWe have found that ultimately clients don’t care about keyword rankings. All they care about is whether the phone is ringing more often or whether more orders/enquiries are coming in via email. A ranking report that shows that they are in position X in Google will not get the client to renew unless they have seen an increase in business as a result of the SEO efforts.
Friday’s Fun 2070 days ago
[...] Naylor about Keywords Ranking Reports that’s exactly my point on my post About Page [...]
Chris Boswell 2069 days ago
I’ve found it best to explain to customers well before they lay out any money that the objective of an organic SEO service is to move up the rankings and get those top places. How long people stay on their website or how many sales that converts into is not part of our responsibility unless they ask us to look at this as a separate service. Usually, its very much the case that getting those high search engine results gets the phone ringing and if it doesn’t the cause is also often patently obvious (e.g. improving navigation and usability, removing music or Flash files, getting individual product pages spidered etc etc – you can usually tell)
I agree that analytics are important and that often its hard for customers to interpret the information they get or even assess how credible it is. However, the amounts charged for this are surely disproportional to the scope of the service itself. I’ve known companies to be quoted 9K GBP just for a bit of onsite work, search engine submission (only to Yahoo and DMOZ) and prelim keyword research, and that’s without any link building even or analytics when the campaign is live – of course you have to know the scope of the website and the size of the companies and their market to really appreciate how excessive this was. I’m sure this isn’t acceptable, when as SEOs we can charge as much as we do for search engine results themselves.
This said, what is even more dangerous, to my mind, is offering predictive analytics – i.e. forecasting for the customer what getting high results for certain keywords might equate to in terms of ROI, cost benefit, break even point etc. There are far too many factors beyond the control of the SEO consultant for this ever to be a wise move, and I’ve also seen a few highly dissapointed companies who had paid a lot of money for such forecasts only to find that the predictions were wildly over-optimistic. This goes for PPC forecasts as well.
I’ve just noticed what a prophet of doom I sound like on just about every post I’ve made on here – promise to contribute to something more jolly next time.
The Old Vic 2048 days ago
http://www.sharescity.comAs a relative beginner to all this I wish someone would just tell me which keywords to use and where to use them to get my PR up from 0 !
ady berry 1992 days ago
http://www.rankedhigher.comOld Vic you need to use paid and free keyword research tools such as adwords, Keyworddiscovery and wordtracker to find the right keywords plus a little bit of your own nouse. What would you search for if you were looking for something. It’s as much about getting in the mindset of the searcher as anything.
Page Rank – I wouldn’t worry too much about that – it will come with time and good content
Dara 1988 days ago
http://www.tarait.com/blog/seoI think to do SEO properly, it’s best to write your own tools …
Cazare Brasov 1876 days ago
http://www.romania-turistica.roMore than useless SEO reports, I am tired of the whole SEO idea, wich I think that at this point has become a big strugle for air bubles.
What I mean is that I remember how, few year ago, I was working hard on websites to make them easy to use, USER friendly not search engine friendly.
Now days, only a very small amount of work is focused on the user, the rest is concentrated on keywords density, google friendly programing, mod_rewrite links, and, the most stupid and useless work is the run for backlinks, wich no matter how good a website is, can not be left to the chance.
What I am saying is that if I we would wait for our site to get that good so people link naturaly to it, we would be out of business long before we had the chance to make any money out of that website.
More at the point, this whole Google sistem of ranking and search ranking has no point since once can generate hundreds of backlinks or just simply buy them, so who cares about how the site is made, or how valuable the information in it is.
Ok, I am done. I am getting back doing SEO instead of web design.
Brisbane SEO consultant 1792 days ago
http://www.searchtempo.comI guess an SEO firm can only be responsible for so much. Once a visitor clicks on the link in the SERPS then it becomes a marketing issue. Is it a good offer? Do I trust the business? What are their trading terms and so on.
Aspects like ROI are often out of the SEO’s control.
Paola Wolowitz 1769 days ago
http://mentaltoys.comThis is a greeeat point.
I have found that more of my clients are interested in “quality” hits instead of quantity hits. Who really fills out that form? Who buys that utter balm cream?
At that point, the solution seems pretty simple to me… That is if the client is willing to do some open minded PPC based keyword research (and not just Google).
Then of course you tie in keywords with a high ROI into your SEO…
Kris 1584 days ago
If you are not paying attention to keyword reports you are flying blind. You need to use keyword reports to check your rankings for your Money Keywords, also you want to see what you don’t rank for so you can put the effort in and begin to rank for it. Each keyword should be treated like its own marketing campaign.
Ian L 1565 days ago
isn’t your new strap line ‘you cant beat a good rank’?
rankrobbers 1530 days ago
http://www.rankrobbers.comDan,
I must agree with you that ROI must be only focus for SEO campaigns BUT clients often have ego regarding some of his/her favourite keywords (most of time they are generic and low converting ones), in such situations its become tough for both SEO company and Client Business, because when client see high rankings but less sales he then realise but its too late for him.
tiffanys 1447 days ago
http://www.tiffanyfree.co.ukhow can see Keyword ranking