If your business is running a search engine optimization campaign then I am sure that you are overwhelmed with keyword ranking reports. Many SEO agencies are beginning to go away from keyword ranking reports. A big reason has to do with some of the recent changes to Google but an even bigger reason is due to the issues that keyword ranking reports have always had. Keyword ranking reports misses out on 50% – 80% of the traffic for example it doesn’t track the long tail. SEO agencies are beginning to track different reports that show more accurate results.
- Keyword Index – What is keyword index you may be asking? Well keyword index is a keyword group. So for example rather than looking at specific keywords such as Web Design in Phoenix it will now show you if your moving up or down for all keywords that contains the term Web Design. This will include the longtail keywords that you don’t see in other reports. If you are seeing improvements for web design it will meant that you are seeing improvements for your longtail keywords as well.
- Referral Traffic – This is something that hasn’t been being reported but it should be. If you are preforming a good search engine optimization camapaign then you are gaining links from other sites. This should be included in the metrics that you are looking at. At the end of the day what you care about is how much traffic you are getting to your website.
- Endorsements – Is what Google is actually looking for. You want to report on things like mentions, local citations, press mentions etc.
When running a search engine optimziation campaign of any sort you need reports to measure how well your doing and these reports are evolving into something that will more accurately show you how you are doing. With the old way of reporting it caused people to narrow in and not see the big picture. People would get so tied up in to looking at 1 keyword they wouldn’t even notice that overall they were driving traffic and increasing their business. This would cause some people to discontinue their campaign even though it was actually successful .