How to Measure the Value of a Search Engine Ranking

About The Author:

Stoney deGeyter is CEO of pole position Marketing ( www.Pole-PositionMarketing.com ) and has been helping businesses succeed online since 1998. Stoey posts his SEO and business insights of at the E-Marketing Performance blog ( www.emarketingsperformance.com where you can also find his e-books; E-Marketing performance: Effective Strategies for Building Optimizing and Marketing your Website Online and Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Storing and Organizing your Keywords into a High-Performance SEO Campaign.

Since the web was in its infancy, and search engines just started to appear on the scene, website exposure was often measured in search engine rankings. Over the years, avenues for online exposure have grown even while the number of mainstream search engines has dwindled. Despite that, the de facto measurement of exposure for many business owners is still rankings.

In recent years, the SEO and SEM industry has tried to move away from using rankings as a measurement. Social media sites provide new avenues for exposure that were unavailable several years ago, often driving more traffic than any top ranked keyword. Analytics are playing an increasingly important role in helping determine converting traffic sources, improving site usability and increasing website conversion rates. Still, for many business owners, the number one question continues to be, “where do I rank?”

A ranking itself holds almost no value without considering several other tightly integrated components. Many other fluid factors have to be considered before the value of any particular search engine ranking can be determined.

The Value of a Search Engine

The value of a top ranking on Google is very different from one on Yahoo or MSN. Every engine holds a varying percentage of search market share, produces a differing range in quality of results, and attracts a different base demographic of searchers who have unique levels of intensity. Each of these factors play a role in determining the value that any top ranking will provide.

Market share

Market share is the most common measure of the value of a search engine. Google is by far the most popular search engine, receiving almost 60% of all searches performed according to ComScore and NetRatings. That’s a pretty hefty chunk considering the next biggest player, Yahoo, hovers around 20%.

Usually, when someone is talking about where they want to rank, they are talking about Google. That’s where the bulk of the searches are, so naturally that’s where everyone wants to be found. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value in other search engines, as we’ll discuss next.

Quality of results

Along with being the most popular search engine, Google is also considered the engine with the best quality of search results. But quality is often in the eyes of the beholder. Essentially, quality is determined by how closely the search engine returns results that match the searcher’s intent. Two people searching for “apple” can want two very different things; a computer or a fruit.

Another important component is how well the engines weed out junk pages. Google has the most advanced anti-spam algorithm, but it’s also known to throw out non-spammy sites that somehow trip the spam filters. Loyalists to other engines declare that their favorite engine produces better results.

What really matters  is the quality of the results that appear along with your site for any keyword ranking. If the results are not meeting the intent of the searcher, then he or she is likely to perform a new search in order to get “better” results, or switch to a different search engine all together.

Searcher intensity

Different search engines produce different levels of searcher intensity. Demographics play a role as some searchers use different engines depending on what they are looking for. Other engines attract users that are researchers, as opposed to shoppers, and vice versa.

Engine popularity can also be a factor here. Just today I performed about a hundred searches on Google, performing keyword ranking checks. That’s just me, in one day. Think of how many business owners and SEO consultants who are doing the same kind of vanity searches on their favorite engine each day. That can dilute searcher intensity pretty heavily.

This intensity can make the difference between a quality hit to your site or a mere "Sunday driver" taking a leisurely stroll through the web. If you’re an e-tailer, you want traffic coming from those that are looking to buy your products. If you operate an informational site, you want visitors that are more interested in learning. Both of these can be intense searchers, but the intensity is focused in a different area, and maybe from a different search engine.

The Value of a Keyword

All keywords are not created equal. There are three components to understanding the value of a keyword. One has to do with the volume of searches performed for any given keyword, another with the searcher’s intent and the results provided, and the third with the particular profit margin of any sale resulting from the search.  A top ranking for any one keyword is likely to produce varying degrees of results based on these factors.

Search volume

When it comes to volume, getting good rankings for a keyword that is searched twice a month isn’t nearly as valuable as for a keyword that is searched several hundred, or even several thousand times each month. Many people find themselves looking for top rankings for keywords that there is little or no search volume.

I recently had a client ask why they weren’t ranked for a particular keyword. I had to tell them that we had not optimized for that keyword. When doing our keyword research we found that that particular keyword didn’t get any searches. He had pulled a keyword out of his industry terminology that he thought was important, but in reality it was useless from an optimization perspective.

That’s not to suggest that long-tail keywords are unimportant. Many times low-volume keywords will produce significant sums of collective traffic. Just make sure that you’re not investing hours of valuable time going after terms that don’t produce the return on investment you need.

Searcher intent

While high-volume keywords are attractive by the sheer numbers of searchers they can send to your site, they often produce a very low conversion rate. Whereas more specific, lower volume keywords that more accurately represent the intent of what the searcher was looking for, usually produce a much higher conversion rate, if not more sales altogether.

Let’s take the word ‘golf,’ for example. This keyword is searched around 5000 times a day, depending on the time of year. Alternatively, the phrase ‘golf clubs’ is searched less than 2000 times per day. Yet, if you sell golf supplies the relevance of the second term is far higher and more likely to produce a higher percentage of sales. Add in the time and/or monetary investment necessary to achieve a top ranking for these terms, and you’ll find that the ROI is in the lesser searched phrase.

Profit margin

People often assume that two keywords that are equal in traffic volume and relevance deserve the same attention in time or money investment. This isn’t necessarily the case. Every product or service you sell can often deliver varying margins in overall profit.

While both keywords can, and likely should, be targeted, there is something to be said about spending more of your marketing efforts on the keywords that are driving the bulk of your profits. By paying particular attention to this metric you may also find that some keywords have such a low profit margin, once you factor in the investment time and costs, they simply are not worth the effort.

The Value of a Good Title

Title tags are known as some of the most valuable real estate when it comes to on-page keyword optimization. But there is value in the title tag that, in some cases, is far more important than what the search engine sees. Because a page’s title tag is used as the clickable link in the search results, it must be able to get the attention of the searcher and entice them to click into your page.

In many cases, an expertly written title tag will trump the position the link falls in the search results. While there are many impulse clickers that click on the first page in the results without consideration, many searchers scan the results looking for the link that appears to be the best match for the information they seek. A compellingly written title tag will often get clicked far more than a higher ranked page.

Many times a change in a title tag has resulted in both a drop in rankings and an increase in clicks. This is important to remember and consider. Sometimes it will be impossible to rank as highly as you want with the best written title tag. But sacrificing a good title for rankings will often reduce, rather than increase, traffic to the page.

It’s not so easy to put a blanket value on a top search engine ranking. Using rankings to measure your online marketing efforts will not give you a true indication your success. In truth, there are far more important measurements available. Finding those measurements and utilizing them will put you in a much better position to not only succeed online, but to deliver more profits at a higher return.