They didn’t report on any converting keywords (even though they had/managed the converting ppc campaign data) because we didn’t rank for those keywords. The agency had been presenting this lame report to the president for several months without providing any actionables to improve converting keywords in the SERPS. They had managed to get the site #1 for the branded company name. At the time, that was good enough for the president.

Somebody has to tell, sell or somebody has to learn something before the proper focus on ROI can be achieved. As long as there is competition, sooner or later, they’ll find out about SEO ROI. Many of the big players are already there because the people making the analytic tools are selling those features - who’s selling to the little shop running Google Analytics (hey, it’s free!). Somebody will get to them eventually… maybe it will be Google.

I have to agree on most points. Fortunately many SEO’s have grown up and have moved beyond rankings, but I have noticed a regression in the past few years.

I’ve noticed a growing “links or bust” mentality, forgetting that there are simple changes that can be done on websites to improve sales and conversions. By consuming themselves with search engine algorithms, pageranks and links, they forget that the biggest ROI can be attained by working on the website itself.

Our feeling is that sooner or later, client’s attitude toward SEO will go from being “yeah we know we have to do it now cuz everyone else is” to “what ROI are we getting on what we’re paying you for SEO”?

This is critical, because if your keywords are targeted based only on KEI and not on KPI’s, you may be SEO’ing your clients away from ROI. Enough TLA’s?

An SEO expert is generally a technologist, though, and will usually have a difficult time with the conversion mindset since it involves more of the ’soft’ skills like design and copywriting. You’re right that, if the page hasn’t changed during the SEO period, it would be great to measure conversion to ensure your SEO efforts are still maintaining a high ‘Relevance’.

Chris

I really wish you were coming to NYC, it would be so great to see you… now that I don’t get to work with you every single day.

Robbin

very interesting post, I think that the market is crying for more advanced SEO measurement techniques. I have been asked about that several times. Maybe if I could come to NY next week I would have the final answer

I have one question.

In Google Analytics, you will always get the last “real” referrer. (Use of a bookmark or directly typing in your URL, for example, won’t overwrite a real referrer like a banner ad click, but every other kind of ad/keyword/reference will”

I think Avinash mentioned in his post Conversion / ROI Attribution that GA will overwrite anything when considering conversions, even when a person types in the URL.

Is it so?

I hope that conferences will help build that bridge by offering more advanced analytics sessions to their attendees. I guess the best thing they can do is attend your conference in June!!