OfficSession description:

1. ESSENTIAL SEO METRICS:
The Performance Metrics
That Truly Count
SMX West 2013
@Rhea @outspokenmedia

2. “Welcome to the new age.”
Lyric/album credit: Imagine Dragons

3. It used to be so easy to
demonstrate SEO value.

5. Today it’s much more
complicated and difficult to
track (the old way)

6. Why?

13. It isn’t impossible to track
performance, but we have to
evolve.

14. Every campaign must
include these 3 things:

15. 1
2
3
http://slidesha.re/VMP9L4

16. Metrics guidelines to follow:
1. Get leaders involved.
2. Visually represent your metrics.
3. Metrics must respond quickly.
4. Metrics must be simple.
5. Metrics should drive only important
activities.
6. Limit the number of metrics.
7. Take corrective action.
University of Delaware:
http://www.buec.udel.edu/kmetzj/business_consulting/Business_Metrics.doc

17. Putting those metrics to work:
Business Objective Business Metric SEO Metric
Grow online 20% increase in 16,667 annual increase in traffic
revenue conversions from from organic search (~1,389 more
organic search visits per month)
1,000 annual Current organic search conversion
conversions rate is 1.2%
1,200 goal
83,333 annual search traffic
100,000 desired search traffic
Not the best at calculating percent and amounts?
Check out: http://www.percentagecalculator.net/

18. Closed Loop Marketing Cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_loop_marketing

19. Now we have context and our
metrics aren’t arbitrary.

20. Why is this important?

21. Operating in a vacuum
will harm your business.

22. How we usually measure results:
• Rankings
• Link quantity

23. Dangers:
• Loses sight of the business objective
• Focus is on the wrong metrics
• Motivates team with risky methods

24. What you need:
Increase Increase
online online
sales by sales by
20% 20%
SEO SOCIAL

25. What happens in 6 months:
Google Penguin Manual penalty
for YOU! for YOU!
SEO SOCIAL
Photo credit: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-lessons-through-cutts-picture

26. Because what they heard
was:
More links! More mentions!
SEO SOCIAL

27. And what they did was:
Link building: 40 sponsored
100 PR3+ links posts on mom
blogs
SEO SOCIAL

28. When they needed to:
Communicate Communicate
with social with SEO
Don’t
forget
us!
SEO EXECS SOCIAL

29. Integrated marketing campaign:
QUALITY METRICS: PERFORMANCE
• Link quality METRICS:
• Relevance to brand • Outreach quantity
• Social factors • Response rate
• Social engagement

30. How do we use metrics to
demonstrate value?

31. Link building
SUCCESS story:

32. We were asked to measure
results by link quality.

33. Relevance
Backlinks Engagement

34. Blogger Outreach Quality Matrix
Developed a combination of:
1. Backlinks – Citation Flow from Majestic SEO
2. Engagement – Avg of Engagement Per Post (EPP) w/3
posts
3. Relevance – 3 tiers affect minimum thresholds for CF and
EPP
@Rhea | #searchfest

35. Benefits:
• Builds relevance and trust long-term
• No footprints, because it’s natural
• Doesn’t invite risk approaches
• Drives social media success, which
helps with SERPs and personalization
• Motivates team to achieve the right
metrics
• Forces open communication between
vendors/departments

36. Problems:
• Process overlapped w/other depts.
• Asked us to just target mom blogs
(We said NO!)
• Couple week hiatus for internal
education and process development
• Outreach list to avoid

37. Results:
• Helped define internal process
• Educated team on dangers
• Exceeded link quantity goal
• Drove brand awareness
• Positive reputation management
• Community development
• Attribution difficult to track

38. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE MET:
Grow organic search
performance without risk.
Learn more about Google updates at
1:30pm in SEO Track.

40. Client

41. What do you need to see
similar success?

42. Internal champion
X
We

43. Stand your ground
NO!
I won’t build links
from crappy
mom blogs.

44. Reactive organization

45. Metrics only matter if
you do something with
them.

46. Here are my favorite 4
metrics you can do
something with
(with a twist):

47. 1. ORGANIC TRAFFIC
By: search engine, category, season,
persona
Why? Locate problems/opportunities with:
 Analytics
 Google updates
 Technical changes

48. 2. CONVERSIONS
By: search
engine, category, season, persona
Why? Locate problems/opportunities with:
 Usability concerns
 Product stock
 Technical issues

49. 3. BACKLINKS
By: quantity, quality, relevance, location,
anchor text distribution, domain authority
Why? Locate problems/opportunities with:
 Negative SEO
 Agency accountability
 Enterprise-level accountability

50. 4. INDEXED PAGES
By: site-wide, subdomains, main
templates/categories
Why? Locate problems/opportunities with:
 Manual penalties
 Algorithmic updates
 Technical issues
 Duplicate content

51. “Welcome to the new age.”
Lyric/album credit: Imagine Dragons

52. Metrics must be informed
by business objectives.

53. Metrics can’t be
defined in a vacuum.

54. Metrics need to
demonstrate value.

55. Metrics only matter if we
do something with them.

56. Get the deck:
http://www.slideshare.net/rdrysdale
Say hello!
rhea@outspokenmedia.com
t: @Rhea | @outspokenmedia