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Should SEO Agencies Be Accountable In The Evaluation Of Campaigns
By Marta Turek
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-07-28
Most SEO companies still talk about rankings as the first measure of SEO success, but is this really the best measure of their clients' success?
Surely, clients would rather receive a monthly report that highlights the ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) of the SEO investment, instead of a ranking report with arrows pointing out whether organic rankings have dropped or increased?
According to a 2007 iProspect and JupiterResearch study, 58% of search marketers' job performance was evaluated on the amount of traffic driven to a client website. This was the leading metric used to evaluate how successfully search marketers were doing their job, on the traffic generated to a site. Similarly, in 2005 the same metric was the lead indicator of success.
Two years later, it would be interesting to see comparative figures for 2009, but even without this, it still appears that many SEO agencies shy away from solid monetary business metrics in the evaluation of SEO campaigns. Perhaps this trend would be more prevalent among smaller businesses and agencies targeting the SME market, because the top tier agencies have bigger client budgets, larger campaigns and more demanding corporate metrics on which to deliver, but it remains a serious problem.
Poor measurement and reporting of key metrics is a concern because the majority of businesses fall into the SME category, which means that apart from multinationals that have the budgets to commission top tier agencies, most businesses are being fed these non-monetary metrics, that do not offer any accountability, as measures of SEO success.
A ranking report and traffic volume chart do not tell a meaningful story unless they are backed up by conversion metrics, sales figures, customer acquisition costs, return on ad spend calculations and ROI percentages from the search marketing efforts.
Keeping the Waters Murky
It would appear that most companies are reluctant to make web traffic and search engine ranking secondary measures of success because this would make them far more accountable for the work they do. The SERP positioning for a particular keyword does not actually mean anything. A keyword's positioning only begins to have meaning when incorporating further metrics relative to this positioning.
A number one ranking in the SERPs that does not deliver traffic because the keyword is not searched, is like no ranking at all. The same goes for a keyword that receives traffic but does not convert - whether this is because the page to which searchers are taken does not satisfy search criteria or because of the questionable credibility of the page to which traffic is driven.
By focusing on monetary metrics, companies could more easily justify a higher spend on SEO to their clients, especially if clients could see positive ROAS figures. In this way, SEO agencies could grow client spend from the existing client base rather than aggressively hunting new sales.
Unfortunately, a certain stigma appears to linger in the SEO industry, that the lowest hanging fruit is the easy money. It's not the smoke and mirrors of the past, in which anxious clients were stalled by the mystical ‘sandbox' but the SEO relationship still seems to be built on a ‘need to know basis'. This usually translates to keeping the client in the dark because from the reporting that is done, it does not seem that the client needs to know much!
If the client knew how little value those rankings were actually driving, well, that would create more accountability and work for the company, wouldn't it?
Ironic though that companies choose this path because this creates agencies that become like factory lines, doing the same thing for every client, not pushing the status quo, bringing in more clients but generating minimal growth in the existing client base. The great companies will always rise to the top, but unfortunately, not every business has the budget to work with the top agencies. What this means is that clients need to become more educated and accountable for the types of SEO agencies with which they choose to work.
Next time you receive your monthly SEO reporting, ask yourself what it's really telling you. Does it share ANY valuable data? If not, it is up to you to do demand the monetary metrics that speak to your business bottom line.
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About the Author:
Marta Turek has been involved in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry since 2007. She spent her first 2 years working at an SEM agency in Melbourne, Australia. It was in that time, working closely with clients that her passion developed for educating people and helping them gain a broader understanding of SEM. An advocate of SEO standards, she shares her perspective on her blog: http://semstreetcred.com.
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