SEO Ranking Reports: the WRONG Measure of Success

For over a year now I have been giving business owners one piece of advice that they find startling: stop worrying about where you rank on Google for your favorite keywords!

At first, I would mention it casually in conversations about the effectiveness of SEO but for the past 6 months or this move away from using search rankings as the definition of success has been my primary message. The truth is that search ranking reports are flawed and inaccurate.

“But Herb, how can I know whether my SEO company is actually helping me then???”

Great question and we are not the only SEO provider that is de-emphasizing ranking reports. As a matter of fact, this is such an industry wide movement that Raven Tools, an industry leading SEO tools provider (and the vendor that we use for our ranking reports) announced that they will no longer be providing ranking reports for SEO customers.

Why SEO Ranking Reports are Inaccurate

Ranking Reports rely on data that is “scraped” from Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Search results have become intensely personal and now differ depending on personal preferences, location, device and your sphere of influence among other factors. Most ranking reports use a “generic” location and don’t reflect geographical preferences. This means that you might rank #2 for your favorite keyword but you might not even be on the first page if you aren’t optimized for Google Places and Maps for searches done in your geographical area.
Reporting inaccuracies like this can inflate expectations and cause confusion. As a company focused on helping clients accomplish their BUSINESS goals, we want the data we provide to be trustworthy and properly guide your marketing decisions.

Free Tools to Measure SEO Success Accurately

Google provides plenty of accurate and authorized data for you to measure success for your online marketing efforts. A few tools that we use for our clients and that you should use as well are:

• Google Analytics - a powerful suite of analysis tools to help you understand how visitors are interacting with your website. G.A. lets you measure sales, lead conversions and tells you how people are finding your website and what content interests them the most (among many other insights)
• Google Webmaster Tools - a complimentary service for webmasters and site-owners that helps you increase the visibility of your website and detect and fix problems that search engines might have with your content. In addition, webmaster tools shows you which keyword queries your website shows up for AND what % of those searchers click thru to your website. Google also uses the webmaster tools platform to inform you of site problems, errors or violations of their search policy.

Coming Next: How to Use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to Measure SEO