Comments on: Measuring SEO Success: Solve Personalized Search Misperceptions

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:01:48 +0000

@Andy Beard: You know who to call for beta testing pal! It’s nice to see you in these threads.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:34:39 +0000

There are too many conversion metrics I can’t yet measure, but I am working on it

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:54:27 +0000

@Jordan Kasteler: I like #2.

By: Anup Batra

Anup Batra — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:18:20 +0000

We need to tailormake the deliverables based on the client requirements.
Analytics are crucial but for small businesses, rankings are important. Specially when you are rising from not in 200 results to the top of page 1. I think, having done that analytics, conversions and goals become more important

By: Jordan Kasteler

Jordan Kasteler — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:17:33 +0000

Marty, at the end of the day the CEO is still obsessed with his vanity rankings. Just like his fancy Range Rover, he wants to show it off to his adversaries and rub it in their faces.

Then there are wise business owners who don’t give a crap where they rank as long as they’re getting lead flow but surprisingly those type of business owners are a bit more scarce IMO.

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:17:41 +0000

@Derek: Well said friend. We have a solution we’re working on which I believe you’ll find handles the appeasement of ego. It’s not really ego…it’s delivering the new metrics in an analogy that our clients can understand. I think it’s easy actually.

@Todd Mintz: Thank you Todd. I’ll take this moment to soft-launch that Todd will be blogging SES San Jose 2008 for aimClear. Welcome to our conference coverage team TM.

By: Derek

Derek — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:38:52 +0000

I can’t disagree with a single point in this post but would offer this thought (perhaps best drafted in a separate blog post to be honest): I feel that clients need some element of keyword ranking as a component for benchmarking a search marketer’s success in the long run.

You are absolutely right that expectations, understanding and training have to come first and the keyword rank check to appease the ego is the worst - but if you target a select group of keywords to rank (maybe not #1 but at least first page SERP), because you know historical traffic and conversion rates are solid, doesn’t that make sense a bit?

I may be one of the few who would state this, but I just think it makes sense. Of course, I’m probably inferring a fairly mature SEM campaign, with analytics, PPC, and SEO keyword strategy in place and some history to go with.

By: Todd Mintz

Todd Mintz — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:26:12 +0000

Smart folks like Marty talk to clients in the language of business instead of the language of search. Sales / Leads is all that matters, not rankings. This shows a maturation in our industry. Personalized search is forcing SEO’s to do what they should have done along all along.

By: Marty Weintraub

Marty Weintraub — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:10:17 +0000

@MikeMarshall: Thank you Mike. glad to get ya’ thinking. Reciprocally, now you have made MY day.

By: MikeMarshall

MikeMarshall — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:55:23 +0000

You’ve got such a great grasp on the big picture, I love it when you write articles like this - you’ve got my mind racing to start off the day.