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How i can get Page Rank? (In: Google)
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SportsGuy
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Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-May-19 19:17
OK, a recent article sent via e-mail by Jill Whalen got me thinking of this. I saw some stats which actually backed this up earlier today for some of our own sites and wanted to post up.
Does where you rank really matter any more?
I can hear you all right now - "Duane's off his nut - OF COURSE where you rank matters!" (...or, "He's been asleep for the last year..."
Well, I'm not so sure - and not just because of Jill's article - she just managed to put into words something I'm sure many of us have been thinking of for a while.
Let's get down to brass tacks.
Q: Why do you have a website?
A: It's a business and I want it to make money.
Fine - with any business, you need to know how you're doing, right? Is there cash in the till, customers in the store, eyeballs on the content and surrounding ads?
I'm not going to go into a long post on the various aspects you should track for your business, but let's say that setting realistic goals and choosing which items to track are very important.
KPIs (key performance indicators) are the benchmarks you will measure your success (or failure) against. So, what's a useful KPI?
Well the answer to that varies depending on your site and focus.
Here's a list of some of the items I'll say ARE worth including as KPIs - not all of them for everyone, but you get the idea:
~ Page Views
~ Visits
~ Unique Visitors
~ Traffic Pathways through your site
~ Entry Pages
~ Exit Pages
~ Content groups accessed
~ Sales
~ Sign-ups (newsletters, posting forum registrations, etc.)
~ Started v. completed purchases
~ ...and anything else you can actually track which matters to you individually.
One thing which doesn't matter is HITS - it means nothing as a valid KPI and is incomparable to anyone else's stats.
Notice how "rankings" doesn't make my list?
And there's a reason for it, too.
Lots of sites compete to rank well for a phrase. It's no secret that the top spots can deliver MORE traffic. But, if we read some of the studies on WHY folks search and where they are in their "purchase cycle" when searching, we can see that lots of traffic doesn't necessarily mean users which will convert for us - whether that's a sale, newsletter sign-up, etc.).
If your sole purpose is page views - you don't sell anything, nor do you offer newsletter subscriptions, then this traffic volume might just be the thing you need - but be VERY careful that the advertisers are actually seeing clicks from you. I mean, you are trying to make money somehow, and if you're offering free content, you're likely showing ads.
Just churning traffic in and out might not make for happy, long-term advertisers.
Anyway, back on topic here.
Should we be viewing rank as the be-all-to-end-all of metrics?
I say it's a qualified, "not really".
Optically it's great to be "seen" ranking well for phrases. By and large these phrases SHOULD give you more traffic - but monitor your metrics and see if that traffic is actually converting. Chances are good that folks searching on the higher volume phrases are not as far into their "purchase funnel" as folks searching on niche phrases. What's that mean for you?
Lots of traffic, fewer conversions. 
So, not that this is news, but start looking to those niche phrases for conversion increases.
Stop fretting over where you rank (and in the process ease up on hitting the engines for rank requests so often).
Start watching your metrics and tracking THAT data to see if you're moving forward or back as a business.
You don't need high-dollar analytics like Webtrends to do this stuff either. Google's Analytics will allow you to see pretty much everything I mentioned above (and then some), and even the free stats packages you get with shared hosting or VDS (vitual dedicated server) hosting solutions will show you this data.
If you're using a "Hit" counter - ignore it. If you're using one of those free "Visits" counter, ignore it - call your host and ask how to get your included stats packages set up.
Or, invest a few bucks to get a package they might offer. If you are paying for hosting, though, and not seeing the basic stuff like Page Views, Visits and Unique Visitors, I think it's time to look for a new host - you're entitled to this data and it's useful.
Now, I don't give a rat's a$$ WHERE you ranked last week, how many visits did Google send you way last week? ...and Yahoo? ...how about MSN?
Dig into those stats folks and find the success that's waiting for you - I promise you'll learn more about what you should do to improve things by reviewing your stats than tracking rankings - heck, your stats might even give you more data that that old magic 8 ball...
Duane
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-May-20 01:28
Great ideas to get people thinking - and I'd take it even further. What matters most is profitability, ROI, and conversions and that is what I track.
Just as being busy or doing a lot of work does not equal getting results, having traffic doesn't equate to making money.
There have been some perceptive writers pointing out that improving your online sales process to increase conversion percentages and revenue per sale makes more sense than focusing on driving more traffic to a less effective site.
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etechsupport
Joined: Nov 22, 2005
# Posts: 10
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Posted: 2006-Jun-16 13:02
Some research shows the ROI of online advertising is significantly much higher than the actual tracked software, how you track those untracked sales?
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jun-16 14:20
Can't answer the question immediately above this post as I'm not following the logic in it.
I can say, though, that I am officially moving my company AWAY from tracking rankings. It's not an actual metric, so we're going to measure organic search success by tracking week-on-week results and year-on-year results of inbound visits from organic sources.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jun-17 06:49
Currently we don't track all conversions so you are correct that ROI is better than our statistics currently show. When I have manually spot checked actual sales against tracked conversions I have found that about 17% of sales were not tracked.
Unfortunately at the time I did that we did not have revenue tracking implemented so that 17% is numbers of sales, not 18% of revenue. Because buyers are more likely to phone when placing larger orders it is likely that the tracked percentage of revenue missed is actually higher than percentage of total sales not tracked.
The percentages and amounts can vary greatly depending upon what is being sold and the company's business model. For example, some advertisers emphasize getting visitors to phone but are not yet tracking the source of those calls/leads/sales.
Others offer printed catalogs prominently on their sites and that can make sales made to online visitors get attributed to direct mail instead. And for multi-channel businesses (those with both brick and mortar stores and e-commerce sites) there is a very large percentage of buyers who research online and buy in the store. Very few advertisers are currently tracking back to the original source.
For large ticket items or products with many choices or decisions to be made buyers are more likely to phone than buy online, so those are also much less likely to be tracked.
As more and more Internet users install programs that delete cookies or become aware of privacy concerns and reject at least third party cookies and possibly all cookies that 17% number I mentioned could increase greatly.
Statistics are only one tool to be applied wisely. The more variables that can be identified, controlled for, or at least be taken into consideration, the more effectively that data can be acted upon.
On top of the above there is also the lifetime value of a new customer or lead. How effectively a business can capture each visitor, use autoresponders and newsletters to create a relationship, and use back-end offers to increase repeat sales, the more valuable that new visitor becomes and the better the ROI.
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