COMMENTS
Thanks for sharing! I didn't realise that email open rate was measured like that. I've heard before that it is a misleading metric, but didn't really know why.
I always place emphasis on measuring click thoughs and then conversion. Afterall it's conversions we are after - it doesn't really matter how many people opened your email if no one made the desired action.
How do you discover what search terms are driving traffic to your site? I'm still learning about keywords, SEO and inbound marketing. While I sometimes feel like the expert in the room, there are still gaping holes in my understanding of all this stuff. (I love it anyway!)
Can anyone tell me how to track what keywords people are using to find me? Also, what keywords people are using in my field in general. Of course I mean: how are they finding my competitors?
Leanne
@Leanne - Check out our SEO marketing Hub for additional info on keyword identification
http://www.hubspot.com/search-engine-optimization-marketing-hub/
Leanne, much of the information you're looking for is available in the wonderful world of web analytics. Check out Google Analytics for a free tool that will get you started and up the learning curve. It will not however tell you what topics people search on to get to your competitors' sites.
Beth, I have to disagree about Open Rate. This can be a valid statistic, depending on how the email in question is put together. If an email is image-heavy and most of the message is in the images, people will download images if they are interested in the content. Of course, this means "Open Rate" is not a correct label for this statistic. Called "Open and download images rate" or maybe even "saw the actual content rate" it can be reliable in showing whether people were interested enough to look at the content. It just adds another step to the email recipient's process of taking a closer look after reading the subject line.
I use Emma for email and have found the open rate to be very accurate. I am not sure how they track opens. I test messages in as many different types of webmail and email clients as I can get access to. Some display images, some don't. All register as opens.
You really do want to go beyond rankings and look at referrals, conversions and revenue (closed loop).
You want to paint a complete picture and get a clear overview of your sales funnel – the traffic from your website and what campaign it came from, the leads that resulted, and the number of customers you acquired.
Beth, I notice that your last two highlighted phrases have links leading back to this same post, and I hope you will correct that because I'd like to see pointers to relevent Keyword Rank posts from HubSpot.
Regarding the impact of personalization (previous searches, geographic location) on keyword ranks, I think there's some hope. I recently started using the online version of WebPosition and it appears (to me) as if they have done their homework regarding keeping this bias out of their results, unlike the previous two keyword rank tracking products I've used. Of course, some unknown percentage of searchers will see different (personalized) results, but it does give me a trustworthy benchmark that I can rate myself against in my improvement efforts.
At the same time, I have been using Google's recently added organic rank URL parameter that shows me what the rank was for site visitor XYZ at the time he/she clicked to visit my site. The variability is not as great as I would have thought if every visitor saw highly personalized search results. That makes me a little more confident about using the Keyword Rank that is being given to me by the WebPosition tool.
We do not use email, so I cannot respond to the email point, however, you are wrong on the other two points. Although PageRank is not like it used to be, it is still a metric to consider. The keyword point is ridiculously off base.
Very interesting, especially in regards to the email open rates, which we closely monitor. I'd like to see a follow up post indicating what we should be tracking, now that you have told us what not to track.
I'm going to have to disagree with the assumption that PageRank is meaningless. In fact,
my research on PageRank indicates that a domain's homepage PR is a fairly useful metric. I'm not making the case that we should "worry about PageRank," any more than we should worry about any other single measure, but it definitely has its uses.
To stay on top of your game, being updated is a must. Being able to adapt to a rapidly changing marketing environment is very crucial and should be given the proper attention, thanks for sharing this information.
I've long known that Pagerank is dead and that Keyword Rank doesn't matter. Thanks for pointing out the facts about Email Open Rates. Didn't realise that part about images not opening making a diff.
Intereseting article about PR and Open email, very interesting indeed.
One more I'd add: Average bounce rate. It's one of the first numbers you see on the Google Analytics dashboard, yet it's basically useless. I'm much more interested in the bounce rate of specific landing pages, contact forms and other pages where I'm most concerned about conversion.
@Shannon: For our email campaigns, we typically try to look at numbers that indicate that the recipient is actually reading the email - metrics like click-throughs and shares/forwards are usually good places to start. Hope that helps.
What is the importance of page rank anyway? Will it pull more visitors to the site?
As long as the key measurement indicates, or directly contributes to, an actually measurable outcome you want . . . then it is a useful measurement that can be used to manage your progress to that success.
I had no idea that "open rate" doesn't always indicate the true open rate. So, far, however, it's worked for me as I have used the measurement to increase my open rate, and sales went up proportionately. Therefore, I am happy.
I'll keep my eye on it however.
WOW - confirmation that what I thought and what we were writing about is not just our opinion but someone with even more experience in the areas has just confirmed. THANK you so much
I agree with you about keyword rank, as do many others. But my CEO has given me a goal of "Top 10 keywords on first page of SERPs" so I can't ignore it. We have excellent analytics so I do measure search terms that drive traffic and revenue, but the challenge is convincing the CEO to focus on these instead of rankings.
I would have to agree with the CEO here. If you ignore rank you are missing out on some really important knowledge. Rank is valuable when analyzed in the context of other variables.
If you are getting a lot of traffic from keyword X and very little from keyword Y, AMD you know that both are on the first page of results, AND you know they have approximately the same number of impressions, THEN you have a red flag. You need to be further investigating keyword Y because something is underperforming and it may not be the keyword itself. It's likely that your listing has problems - the heading is unappealing (CTR is low), the blurb doesn't contain key visitor-centric information (CTR is low), or the listing is pointing to an inappropriate or crummy page on your site (conversion is low). Without knowing the rank (and impressions), you won't be alerted to the possibility of tweaking your SEO so keyword Y is as productive as keyword X.
Judging keywords by their traffic and revenue performance is oversimplifying. Putting rank and SERP page in the picture is adding the right kind of complexity.
Only two things matter to us:
1.) ROI
2.) Does the customer care?
I have blogged on Google's affect on Internet marketing before and I have to say ignoring Pagerank would be disastrous to any SEO effort. Google by far isn't perfect, and I have discussed how it favors established businesses whether they are more appropriate for the searcher than a newer or under marketed company website or not. But Google does account for more inbound traffic to any website than any other source. It might not be the fairest system, but with a giant like Google, sometimes you have to play by their rules.
Email marketing is pretty simple to analyze. How much did you spend on your email campaign vs how much money did you make? That's the only true measurement of success. However, the "Email Open Rate" metric is still definitely a valid metric for optimization. Sure, it may not count every time someone reads the email, but if a reader got to the bottom and saw the image, you know at least that many bothered to read the whole email. Just like the number of people collecting unemployment is not a true count of the number of unemployed, it is still not a number to be ignored.
"Keyword Rank" is best measured by SERP's. If your website is showing in the top 10 on major search engines for keywords important to your marketing effort, than you know your website is optimized well for search engines. PPC campaigns can be a great way to find which keywords bring the most customers to your business. If a keyword brings a lot of customers, but is very expensive or even not profitable in a pay per click campaign, than that keyword is an excellent candidate for organic SEO. If a keyword is making good money in a paid search campaign, than who cares what your organic rank is? Buy your way to the top and keep selling using PPC conversions.
I'm not really sure there are any metrics that should be completely ignored in any marketing campaign. Every metric has some useful application, it's really just a matter of learning how to optimize based on individual marketing goals. If you know your target audience or have defined goals for your marketing campaign, then you should know which metrics are important for optimization of your marketing efforts.
There is no blanket metric that is a priority for every campaign other than ROI. At
Custom Business Marketing & Sales Consulting, Inc., that's the key metric we focus on like a laser, making sure every campaign produces more profit than spend, and I believe every professional marketer should be doing the same. Otherwise, you're just an expense in a tough economy and a good candidate from being cut from any client company's budget.
Chris has it dead on! The best metric is sales :)
It does pay to know what is getting you the most bang for your buck though. Keyword rank is dangerous to use a metric because as the article points out many results are personalized to the users search behavior. If overall volume is up such as visits, pageviews, etc you're probably doing something right.