It is clear that any business cares about leads, sales, profit. But demanding this from SEO is like asking a cleaning lady… sorry, a cleaning manager for sales growth in a supermarket. Yes, the top positions of a site in search results affect to Choose KPIs to Measure the ultimate goals of a business. But making a site generate leads from traffic is already the task of a web analyst, and converting them into purchases is the job of a sales manager. Two main KPIs are use in SEO : positions and traffic.

The choice of indicator for an SEO campaign buy phone number list depends on the features of the site and its current positions in search results. For example, the target queries of the resource are in the top 5, work is being done on it, but the traffic is stagnating. This is a normal situation, such a site is considered successful. But even if the positions grow by a point or two, there will be no dramatic to Choose KPIs to Measure increase in traffic.

If you choose traffic as a KPI for such a site, it is difficult to say how effectively the SEO specialist earns his salary. If you take positions as a KPI, then their dynamics will show that the work produces results – improving the visibility of the resource in the search results.

 

Positions

 

Positions — the site pages strive to occupy / already occupy the first 10 lines (top) of search results for target queries. This KPI is suitable for small to Choose KPIs to Measure online stores and service sites of any subject. An important performance marketing: how to create results-focused campaigns condition is that the main demand is distributed over a finite number of queries.

Pros:

 

• Any result is achieved through positions: if target queries are at the top of the search results, the site receives target traffic. Here, for forecasting, we focus on specific queries, so at any moment we can understand what is happening to them and whether there is any dynamics in the positions.
• The indicator indirectly influences the increase in brand/company recognition: if the request is in the top positions and is in demand, the number of users who see the site increases.

Cons:

 

• Randomization of search results. Search engines (SEs) periodically fluctuate search results to show users sites they have not yet seen (pages outside the top 10 for target queries). In this way, search engines insure themselves and their algorithms, which often do not allow high-quality sites to reach the top. In the case of randomization, such sites can accidentally get into the coveted top ten. It is impossible to predict randomization and, moreover, to influence its results; all that remains is to work on the quality of the site.

This fact forces marketers and business owners to agree in advance which query will be successful and how many days it should  in the target top to be consider successful (usually more than 15 days/month).

• Personalization of search results . Yandex adjusts the search results to the personal preferences of users. The algorithm is based on the analysis of user behavior, the history of their search queries and visited sites. For example, if you often search for recipes or places to eat, then when you type “Caesar”, the bulk lead first thing you will see is a salad recipe, not a biography of the ancient Roman emperor.

Thus, the same query can be in the eighth position for one user and in the tenth for another. In both cases, the query is at the top, but the higher the position of the resource, the more likely it is to be visite.

• Position does not mean transition. Yes, the first positions significantly increase the probability of user transition, but no one can guarantee this: neither the search engine, nor the SEO specialist.

Traffic

 

Traffic — attracting users to the site in certain volumes. Suitable for sites with a large number of directions: large online stores, marketplaces, portals. Yes, for such resources, positions can be take as KPI, but there can be more than 10,000 promot queries — just to track the dynamics of positions for them, a separate specialist will be need. In such cases, tracking the effectiveness of SEO by traffic is more convenient and visual.

Pros:

 

• Transparent performance assessment: no uncontrolled fluctuations in positions and no difficulties with collecting statistics.
• The work is carry out on the entire site: the specialist works out landing pages for the entire pool of requests for promotion (it is not so important which of these pages the users go to, the main thing is that they do it). Of course, the marginal sections of the resource are a priority, but in any case, the site will be work out as a whole.

Cons:

 

• Not suitable for sites with a small amount of information, categories, products/services: there are few promoted queries and landing pages, so the positive dynamics will not be so obvious.
• The results are not record for specific requests, and the contractor is not oblig to collect statistics on them within the framework of this KPI (if necessary, the client will have to collect statistical data independently).