Where is the Real Value in SEO?
-
Interesting topic and would love to hear some thoughts. How do you justify SEO, measure results, etc etc
-
Measuring SEO effectiveness can be done a number of ways, but it largely depends on the scale of the change that is being targeted. If you are looking for a 5% increase in traffic, it's often hard to attribute such change to a particular SEO effort. However, if you are looking for a 10X increase, it is usually pretty clear whether your efforts hit the mark, or missed it in a big way.
-
John Pring hit the nail square on the head. If you don't increase sales who really cares if you increased rankings. Many SEO companies use Rankings as a measure of success. While it is one factor if that is how they want to be paid......run! An hide!
-
Just answered a similar question on Quora:
SEO is marketing.
SEO is the practice of making things built by humans more accessible and more consumable by other humans and by robots.
As long as search engines exist and are_ the most common way people search for what they want and need_, search engine optimization will absolutely be worth the investment and_ will probably be worth substantially more than the investment._
Measuring the Results
_"The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them." _ http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/social-roi-control.html
Most of the time, I measure everything and only report a small percentage of it to a client (what the client is interested in and should absolutely know about). Reporting is usually relevant to what things make a web site's visitors achieve the goals of the site owner(s); and whether or not campaigns were successful.
-
SEO is simply the process of improving search engine rankings for keyphrases related to a business - ranking a site well for strong keyphrases will almost certainly increase relevant traffic to a website, but if you're only focused on rankings then you're not necessarily going to improve sales and conversions, which is the ultimate goal.
The real value lies in complete internet marketing campaigns, which encompasses a more holistic approach to growing a business online. If you're only focused on rankings (which far too many SEO companies are), then you're missing the bigger picture, and not only that but if you're focusing all your business solely on referrals from Google, then you can quickly find yourself losing your entire business overnight on the basis of an algorithm update.
The value should come from the combination of lots of internet marketing disciplines, including search engine optimisation, branding, conversion rate optimisation, analytics and insight, usability testing, web design, high quality linkbuilding, social media marketing, online customer services and brand management. A high quality company will look to improve your rankings, increase your referral traffic and improve online brand awareness and consideration amongst online shoppers. Then once the number of people to your website is consistently increasing, the focus will shift to ensuring usability and customer services are of a high quality and utilising CRO (conversion rate optimisation) to improve sales and profit.
Success should be measured ultimately by ROI (return on investment) and sales, but other metrics including traffic, links, domain authority, number of referring sites, bounce rate, conversion rates and search engine rankings will be tracked in order to inform campaign progress and impact, as well as informing future decisions.
-
This is a good question.
Before answering, I would be good to know which perspective your are thinking of.
That of the SEO business/person or that of the customer?
-
winning......
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do bulk 301 redirects hurt seo value?
We are working with a content based startup that needs to 301 redirect a lot of its pages to other websites. Will give you an example to help you understand. If we assume this is the startups domain and URL structure www.ourcompany.com/brand1/article What they want to do is do a 301 redirect of www.ourcompany.com/brand1/ to www.brand1.com I have never seen 301 as a problem to SEO or link juice. But in this case where all the major URLs are getting redirected to other sites i was wondering if it would have a negative effect. Right now they have just 20-30 brands but they are planning to hit a couple of hundreds this year.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aaronfernandez0 -
Which is the best SEO plugin for joomla
Hey there, can any one please tell me the Best plugin i can choose For joomla?? I am going use sh404ref & 2nd one i am thinking is EFSEO. If besides This do u know any Good One, Please Help to choose Best Thanx in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojaverify060 -
Are pop-unders bad for SEO?
Hi all, I run a travel site that specializes in hotel bookings. We're working with a third-party advertiser to launch a pop-under unit when someone searches for hotels on our site. (This unit is of the "also try your search on these competing sites" variety.) I'm worried, however, that this might affect our SEO, especially in light of this on their site: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721313?hl=en Would Google even see these pop-unders? (Are pop-unders treated the same as pop-overs?) And, if so, would G see them as unwanted and treat them as a nuisance? Could it lead to negative SEO consequences? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Cookieless subdomains Vs SEO
We have one .com that has all our unique content and then 25 other ccltd sites that are translated versions of the .com for each country we operate in. They are not linked together but we have href lang'd it all together. We now want to serve up all static content of our global website (26 local country sites, .com, .co.uk, .se, etc) from one cookie-less subdomain. Benefit is speed improvement. The question is whether from an SEO perspective, can all static content come from static.domain.com or should we do one for each ccltd where it would come form static.domain.xx (where xx is localised to the domain in question)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aires-fb770 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Need Guidance On SEO Campaign
Hello, my website is www.mybluedish.com and I am launching an SEO campaign to increase our rankings, especially for the keyword 'satellite internet'. We used to be ranked #5 for this keyword and Google made some changes about 9 months ago that dropped us way back. We have recovered a lot back to #18 now, but have been stuck here for a while. I want to step up our SEO campaign and have come up with the following campaign. Could any SEO's please tell me if you think the following is the make up of a solid SEO campaign or if it should be adjusted? Thank you. 12 new blog articles/month 24 Articles submitted to 10 different directories each (total of 200 article directory submissions)/month 1 basic Press Release from PR.com/month 200 do follow blog comments/month 10 paid blog posts (on other people’s blogs of PR 1-5)/month
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Your Biggest SEO Jobs Explained
What have been your most proudest moments in SEO ? What would you consider as being you best achieved job and in what industry was it achieved it. What are the reasons you have this down as your biggest achievement ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0