Where is the Real Value in SEO?

[imageworks-261290]

Interesting topic and would love to hear some thoughts. How do you justify SEO, measure results, etc etc

[goodlegaladvice]

winning......

[APICDA]

This is a good question.

Before answering, I would be good to know which perspective your are thinking of.

That of the SEO business/person or that of the customer?

[DesignbysoapLtd]

SEO is simply the process of improving search engine rankings for keyphrases related to a business - ranking a site well for strong keyphrases will almost certainly increase relevant traffic to a website, but if you're only focused on rankings then you're not necessarily going to improve sales and conversions, which is the ultimate goal.

The real value lies in complete internet marketing campaigns, which encompasses a more holistic approach to growing a business online. If you're only focused on rankings (which far too many SEO companies are), then you're missing the bigger picture, and not only that but if you're focusing all your business solely on referrals from Google, then you can quickly find yourself losing your entire business overnight on the basis of an algorithm update.

The value should come from the combination of lots of internet marketing disciplines, including search engine optimisation, branding, conversion rate optimisation, analytics and insight, usability testing, web design, high quality linkbuilding, social media marketing, online customer services and brand management. A high quality company will look to improve your rankings, increase your referral traffic and improve online brand awareness and consideration amongst online shoppers. Then once the number of people to your website is consistently increasing, the focus will shift to ensuring usability and customer services are of a high quality and utilising CRO (conversion rate optimisation) to improve sales and profit.

Success should be measured ultimately by ROI (return on investment) and sales, but other metrics including traffic, links, domain authority, number of referring sites, bounce rate, conversion rates and search engine rankings will be tracked in order to inform campaign progress and impact, as well as informing future decisions.

[glennfriesen]

Just answered a similar question on Quora:

SEO is marketing.

SEO is the practice of making things built by humans more accessible and more consumable by other humans and by robots.

As long as search engines exist and are_ the most common way people search for what they want and need_, search engine optimization will absolutely be worth the investment and_ will probably be worth substantially more than the investment._

Measuring the Results

_"The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them." _ http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/social-roi-control.html

Most of the time, I measure everything and only report a small percentage of it to a client (what the client is interested in and should absolutely know about). Reporting is usually relevant to what things make a web site's visitors achieve the goals of the site owner(s); and whether or not campaigns were successful.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/agent-seo-reporting-maam

[freestone]

John Pring hit the nail square on the head.  If you don't increase sales who really cares if you increased rankings.  Many SEO companies use Rankings as a measure of success.  While it is one factor if that is how they want to be paid......run!  An hide!

[CustomMade]

Measuring SEO effectiveness can be done a number of ways, but it largely depends on the scale of the change that is being targeted.  If you are looking for a 5% increase in traffic, it's often hard to attribute such change to a particular SEO effort.  However, if you are looking for a 10X increase, it is usually pretty clear whether your efforts hit the mark, or missed it in a big way.