Measuring SEO 'harder than building a single graph'

13:30 8th June 2010

Digital marketing professionals have been advised that simply building a solitary graph will not be a good enough method of measuring the impact of their search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns.

John Greer of Search Engine Watch stated that many different tactics need to be employed in order to build up a picture of whether or not an SEO campaign is successful.

One of these, he said, is to examine the rankings in search engine results page for each keyword being targeted as part of the SEO tactic.

He said: "If you want to rank for "tickets" and you move from the bottom of page one to the top of page one, then you've met a goal."

However, he warned that this type of testing cannot be truly accurate, as each person will see their search results in a different order because of personalised search.

"Rankings don't equal clicks - someone has to choose your listing over those around it," added Mr Greer.

He explained that the key to long-term success in SEO is to monitor it closely and regularly.

Last month, SEO manager Danny Wong stated in an article for Search Engine Journal that traditional public relations tactics should be a part of any digital marketing campaign.