Enlarge Your Metrics!!!
This is not a funny post. It’s one born out of frustration!
One day out of the blue a client of mine wrote me an angry email!
He was actually threatening to end our cooperation. Why?
My client was apparently looking at the wrong metrics.
He was not just any client, a client who has been with me for years.
It was completely unexpected. I was like: whoa! What the heck!?!
The sad story of metrics failure in the early days of SEO
Let’s recapitulate the sad story of my failure to communicate the right metrics.
You know, I am preaching revolutionary social SEO here!
Yet most of the time I work as an old school SEO 1.0 for clients, doing
- keyword research
- SEO writing
- link building
predominantly for the German market.
Yeah, business in Germany is mostly boring and old school.
They rarely risk something around here.
Traffic, rankings are up yet…
As I read the email I wondered whether I am in a parallel universe.
Why? He claimed that our traffic was down for the last 6 months.
Google Analytics clearly showed that it grew continuously over the past half year.
When I read on, I realized what the problem was. It was long ago so bear with me!
Half a year earlier the client’s toolbar PageRank was at 5!
Then it fell to 4 some months later and finally it got a 3 in the PageRank lottery.
Remember that we are talking about the ancient times of visible PageRank here.
Yet the other vanity metrics – traffic and the rankings – were fine.
He ranked mostly at #1, 2 and 3 for the most important terms.
They either went up or remained stable all of the time.
Only neglected keywords suffered – or where Google tweaked something.
they performed less well yet still with no traffic problems at large.
So what happened? Miscommunications!
Everything’s fine or is it?
So what happens when you measure traffic?
Even in December it remained somewhat stable – when most people do not need what the client is selling.
It’s used for office work and thus is not needed during holidays. The traffic was only down by 10%.
In fact, just the other day the site hit a six months high!
A traffic record, mostly due to organic search rankings and thus my work.
- Then I checked the bounce rate: between 20 and 30% here.
- And pages per visit: around 5. Not bad either!
- I checked the keywords, most of them really really targeted!
he had many long tails keys with an exact match for what the client offers.
So when all these somewhat advanced metrics were fine, why was my client so angry?
He looked at an obvious third party metric that showed him that his site sucked.
In those days it was PageRank. Later we had metrics like Domain Authority.
We had website speed reports where you could reach 100%.
Nowadays we have “website health reports” on WordPress.
We have automated “website audits” that show irrelevant errors!
Of course you can enlarge those metrics for improved vanity!
Third party vanity numbers are the problem
What the hell is the problem here?
It’s random third party metrics tools check for you.
The toolbar PageRank clients could see with ease was just the beginning!
For many clients you still have to enlarge your metrics! Just like designers have to “make the logo bigger!”
This is the only part of SEO they can actually see.
They will ignore your thorough reports with analysis of
- rankings
- traffic
- bounce rates
- pages per visit
- keyword visibility etc.
Clients will look at some tool output and be either happy or angry.
Unless of course you choose the metrics upfront as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and agree on them.
Then of course you ideally set up a dashboard where you can look them in up in real time.
Over the years I used Databox for showing a few important metrics at once!
Otherwise you basically do not need to optimize the pages.
Just start [insert obvious metric here] optimization and people will be satisfied!
On a more professional level: What could this client do?
He payed for the lowest possible SEO maintenance plan.
A plan that basically only allows you to stay where you are after initial optimization and gaining some rankings.
Actually useful metrics to look at
Nonetheless the rankings improved in this particular case.
With only a few hours for analytics checking and link building a month!
With a basic plan you really can’t take a look at more refined metrics though.
Sadly often the clients who pay the least complain the most and act entitled.
Over the years I learned to shun such individuals or companies yet from time to time it happened again.
What to check when you don’t know why your ecommerce SEO does not perform as expected?
Last time that client complained about poor sales I proposed to him that he should check his “shopping cart abandonment rate“.
Shopping cart abandonment rate is a metric showing how many people try to buy something and fail during the process.
What I also suspected was that the market he served was saturated. So you have to extend your scope to other similar niches.
The less the people pay though, the more they will assume that you, the SEO is responsible for their failure.
Some clients expect you to perform magic tricks for a few bucks. SEO is not about magic though!
Yet in this case the numbers were exactly the opposite of what he claimed.
Only the third party vanity metric fell.
At least 7 metrics you should make the client aware of instead:
- rankings, are you at the top or not, if yes you should check
- traffic, to determine how many people find you
- bounce rate, to determine if the right people find the right product or service on your site
- conversion rate, how many visitors reach the goal you want them to, here to buy something?
- shopping cart abandonment rate, how many people fail to end a transaction?
- sales, this is obvious, isn’t it?
- ROI or Return on Investment – the hard core business metric
This client for instance spent the same amount of money for Google Ads while getting 5 to 10 times more visitors via organic search results.
The Return On Investment is at least a few times as high with SEO than with PPC here.
I can’t ascribe all visitors to my SEO efforts yet most of the organic visitors came due to it.
Sadly I don’t how many actually bought something to make this a real money metric though.
I don’t even have access to that data as it’s confidential.
For some clients sadly just one metric counts: vanity.
Enlarge your metrics now!
You ideally enlarge your metrics and make people happy.
Unless you want to quit SEO and start vanity optimization.
It’s less work and it offers instant gratification!
Why bother with difficult to follow metrics?
Yet as an ethical SEO you offer KPIs that are both easy to track and meaningful!
[Update: Luckily Google has stopped updating public (toolbar) PageRank many years ago.]
Btw. several years later the same client wanted to work with me again but I refused.
There is a new technology for bloggers, which is supposed to be more fair than google’s pagerank.
izearank it is called.
Don’t give up! Clients will learn. If not, we’ll teach them!
I have found that many of those who pay the least expect the most. Greedy in every way and frequently not very appreciative.
LOL that pump is priceless. You had me on the floor
Tad, I am sure someone somewhere is making a fortune out of PageRank pumps.
robo: I never give up, I’m the master of failing. Even if i fail 100 times I know that success is nearer and nearer.
Terry: Exactly, it makes me sad each and every time though.
Vlad: It’s not priceless, I can sell it to you cheaply, money back guarantee ;-)
Andy: You think this would be a good business model?
Tad, did you explain this to them? I find alot of people are too fascinated with page rank. I don’t give a damn about page rank. I do care about rankings and the traffic as a result of those rankings. If page rank was from -10 to +10, give me -10 page rank and top rankings with plenty of traffic any day!
Page Rank Lottery. LOL!!!
That’s exactly what it is. As an owner of about 22 sites, blogs and Squidoo lenses, I’ve been greatly effected by Google’s ewar. As a mom of 7, I’m upset due to the impact it’s had on my income. Ya, think?
Ultimately, I believe what you say. Page rank is overrated.
We’ve given Google too much control of the internet. It’s time we take drastic measures to take it back…
Gave you a stumble…
:)
david: I tried, but I get desperate when after years of working together I experience such a regression.
supermom: 7, indeed you’re supermom. the folks at Google do not really grasp that they ruin people’s lives by not allowing them to sell text links and such.
You also might want to read this here:
http://collective-thoughts.com/2008/01/19/top-12-reasons-to-distrust-google/
Pagerank is really invaluable! we have page rank 5 but were in the top of Webdesign den haag on google with pageranks 6 and 7vens around us
Google is now a days in control of the web.
We all want to hit high in the search results. But why? Is this the only angle for ROI?
Keep the Code of Ethics intact and eventually you will grow larger.
[…] PageRank. They still behave like years ago when it was really important but even more so. They fetishize PageRank. It’s not only PR though. It might be the ranking in the SERPS or it might be the silly […]
Anyone tried this?