Clicky (aff) has recently added what I call passive rank tracking to their already awesome analytics package. André wrote about stuff you can do with the rank tracking in the Google referrer data over 2 years ago here on Yoast. About 2 years ago as well, I used this same referrer data to build a passive rank tracker, independent of Google Analytics, because I wanted to do things with that SEO ranking data that I couldn't do in Google.

The one metric I wanted most of all from that big blog of SEO ranking data is the average rank from referrers. You see, because of personalized search results, rankings are never the same and there's no "good" way of tracking the impact of personalized search. Now you have a semi decent average in Clicky though, so I like that.

Because Clicky has a pretty decent API too, you could use this to do all sorts of cool stuff. I use this kind of data in combination with Authority Labs and a new toolset in my arsenal, SEscout. Authority Labs shows me all sorts of info about universal search other tools don't give me, SEscout does hourly rankings when you have a paid account, which helps me track fluctuations in "the force" more easily.

SEO Ranking Data in Aggregate

Rankings for specific keywords are very often not that interesting for my clients, as outside of the clients for my website reviews, most of my SEO clients tend to think in tens or hundreds of thousands, if not millions of keywords, not one, two or ten. So for them I track rankings in aggregate, something you should probably do too if you track more than a couple of keywords. You can then answer questions like "how did we do on this keyword group", "how did we do on that keyword group". Authority Labs allows you to tag keywords which makes this kind of analysis even easier.

I then compare that aggregate number to the SearchMetrics data for their site and see how good that number is (usually they correlate very highly), after which I can see how well their competitors did using SearchMetrics as well.

The issue is with both Authority and SEscout: they don't give you the complete view because they don't do personalized search, which is good, because we want to know our "real" ranking, but it's also bad, because it might not always correlate well with our traffic. That's where the extra layer Clicky added comes in, which allows us to see just how much personalized search impacts those real rankings. For quite a few of my own keywords I can see that without personalized search, I'd get a lot less traffic, while for others it's completely the other way around.

Always correlate SEO ranking data with Analytics!

Of course, no ranking is worth anything if you can't correlate it to a decent amount of incoming traffic. Luckily, both the Google Analytics and Clicky API allow you to easily correlate the two and see where you have a chance of gaining more traffic.

One of my favorite ways of looking at sites SEO ranking data is looking at where they rank inbetween #5 and #10 that's already sending traffic. If a keyword you rank #8 for consistently sends you traffic, that's a keyword with enough traffic to optimize for and see if you can get into the top 5 or even the top 3.

And now, it's your turn! How and where do you use SEO ranking data? Share it in the comments!

Image credit: financial chart from Shutterstock.

SEO Ranking Data: Tracking Passively and Actively is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Click here to view the embedded video.

And you might want to have the slides as well:

Video: Making sure your content is found is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Click here to view the embedded video.

My WordCamp Ireland WordPress SEO Presentation is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

But today, I can tell you that we've got something new, and better. Tracking rankings is hard, especially because Google isn't too fond of people scraping their search results. Because of that, running daily rankings was a pain, but the data we all secretly wanted was in there, we've all known it for ages: visitor data, combined with rankings, day for day, week for week.

Let me show you what I wanted, all this time:

This isn't some mockup, this is real stuff. A rankings tracker called SEO Rank Monitor, that uses the Google Analytics API to combine rankings data with visitor data, showing you what the difference really is between position 1 and position 2. It's also the fastest rankings tracker I've ever seen, ranking a few dozen keywords for me in a few minutes, and then on a daily basis after that, giving some awesome ranking charts:

It also allows you to add your competitors, so you can easily track their goings on your keywords as well. Now all experienced SEO's know they should work on keyword groups more than they should work on single keywords, and thus this new ranking tool allows you to tag your keywords, easily allowing you to check rankings for the group:

As you can see it also allows you to export the keywords to a CSV file. There's more: tracking the number of backlinks to your domain according to the search engines you selected, the number of indexed pages etc. Also, because this isn't a rank tracker that runs on your own machine, it's not clogging up resources and you can check your rankings from everywhere you want.

The tool is paid, of course, but you can try it for free for a month. The normal pricing is $39 a month for the Pro package and $19 a month for the Basic package. With the Pro package you can track 2,500 keywords and 10 domains, with the Basic package you're limited to 1 domain and 100 keywords. In other words: the Pro package is well worth the money. Now there's something even better: I've negotiated a discount code with which you'll get $10 a month off, for as long as you decide to keep your subscription! The discount code should be easy to remember: "yoast" is all you need.

So go check it out, and should you decide to sign up, don't forget to use the discount code "yoast"!

Rankings that make sense is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

I've made a short video, which covers how to get your VideoPress account on WordPress.com, how to install the VideoPress plugin and how to then insert a video into your post (make sure to click on HD in the upper right if your bandwidth allows for it):

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you can see this video is 1280x720, aka HD, and you get unlimited plays, all the bandwidth is "on" Automattic. You also get pretty detailed stats about your video, even with the total number of minutes played, and a whole lot more. The complete feature list is best gotten on the VideoPress support page.

As you can see these video's come with default embed codes, just hover over the video and click on embed in the upper left:

So thanks, Automattic, for supporting yoast.com and for making such a cool service available.

Note: even though the link above has a tracking code, I didn't get paid for this post in any other way than that Automattic advertises with a 125x125 button here. I bought my own VideoPress upgrade when I was shooting this video.

VideoPress: Web Video, WordPress Style is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Track SEO rankings?

Well, you can't specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from 'personalized search' or 'local results' that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. People see other results than you see with your ranking tools. And therefore you need Google Analytics to do the real ranking.

Setup the filter

To get the rankings in your Google Analytics reports you have to create a new filter:

The title of the filter contains a 3, that's because filter 1 and 2 take care of filtering out everything else than Google Organic traffic. So yes: you also have to create a new profile to apply these filters on to be sure you don't screw up your main profile.

This filter only works for Google. if you want it to work for Yahoo and Live Search also, make sure you change the filters 1 and 2 so they accept Organic from all three of them. Then setup the filter like this:

The ranking results

After a while the "User Defined" report will look like this (ignore the language):

What you see are not the actual rankings, but the number of the first result of the page the keyword was on. So when you see 20, it means the keyword was on the third page, and a 50 means the sixth page. (Yahoo and Live Search will report 21 and 51 in stead of 20 and 50).

When you don't see a number but only "(page: ): it means the keyword was on the first page. So perhaps it is better to change "page:" to "minimal position;", I leave that up to you.

If you want to filter the list of keywords on keywords with at least a page 2 position you can use "(page: d{2,3})" in the filter field below the list. The d stands for digits, and the 2,3 for the amount of digits you're looking for.

Enjoy.

Track SEO rankings with Google Analytics is a post by André Scholten on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Do we need to worry about rankings?

Over the years the discussion about the value of search engine rankings when determing the succes of SEO comes back now and then. Last month Google gave us another reason to discuss the value of rankings, while blocking the automated rank checking software tool Web Position from retrieving search engine listings from Google.

This has led some people, including myself, to ask themselves again what the value of rankings is. Historically search engine rankings are a key metric to measure your SEO succes. But do we need to continue tracking and reporting them? Do we need to make ourselves and, more important, our clients worry about rankings? I think we should not.

Search engines blocking rank checkers

One reason to not worry about search engine rankings (anymore) is the fact that search engines start to block rank checkers which are often used to track and report rankings. Webposition was the first victim (it seems to be working again, but for how long?) and it's not impossible - I even think it's realistic - to think that Google, or other search engines, will block more automated rank checkers which sent out hundreds or even thousands of queries per day to search engines.

I'm not sure why Google would want to block tools like Webposition, besides that it's against their guidelines (they even mention Webposition there). The argument they give - that it costs to much server power - doesn't sound convincing to me. Maybe it's because Google just wants human searcher behavior on their search engine so they can adjust their algorithm to humans and not to automated search activity by rank checkers. I also think that personalization of search results plays a role here.

When personalization kicks in

Another reason for which I think we should not worry about rankings is the personalization of the search results. Based on a growing amount of personal data search engines are showing a different set of search results to different searchers more and more. Last year Google has said several times that personalization is one of the most important things the search engine is focussing on at the moment. And they do.

Take for example iGoogle (one of the fastest growing products of Google) which collects tons of personal data. And don't forget the widely spread Google Toolbar which started collecting personal website visits alongside your search behavior. And what could they learn from Google Analytics, Google AdSense, Google Chrome and many other Google services? As you can image, Google has a lot of data to personalize their search results. And that's what they're doing.

What's the (future) value of rankings?

That said, what's the (future) value of rankings? Search engines blocking rank checker software tools is the least hardest problem to solve. Creative minds will find a way to track rankings anyway. But what about personalization? That's a different story.

It's very hard, even nearly impossible, to find a way to optimize your content for search engines while search results are getting personalized more and more. That's because you just don't (and won't) know the personal data Google has collected.

When rankings could be of value

I think there are rare situations where rankings could be of value though. That depends on the goals you want to achieve. I think most websites should start their SEO goals with traffic from search engines. But imagine yourself some major brands who already have a strong awareness in their market. For those companies their visibility in the search results on category or product related searches can be of value. But bacause of personalization maybe you shouldn't track positions but for example you could track if you're listed in the first 5 or second 5 listings or something like that. Of course most websites aren't major brands so for most websites rankings tell you nothing in terms of measuring SEO.

What should we worry about?

These two reasons only give me enough reason not to worry about search engine rankings. But what should we worry about then? I think you can measure the succes of SEO in a lot of ways, but let's mention some metrics which I think are most important. These are just some basic metrics, but they give a much better insight in your SEO succes than search engine rankings do (feel free of course to add your thoughts about measuring SEO succes in the comments!).

1. Growth of search engine traffic
3. Growth of search engine traffic per keyword
4. Growth of conversions from search engine traffic
5. Growth of conversions from search engine traffic per keyword

1. Growth of search engine traffic

One basic metric which is easy to measure (and which means a lot more than rankings) is the growth of overall traffic you receive from search engines (of course that's from natural search results and not the sponsored listings). Before you start with SEO, measure the amount of traffic from search engines and make this your benchmark. Start your SEO activities and measure the growth in search engine traffic on a regular basis. This gives you a basic insight into the results of your SEO activities, but it tells you more than measuring search engine rankings.

2. Growth of search engine traffic per keyword

An easy addition to this metric is to measure the growth in traffic from search engines for specific keywords. Most of the time SEO is based on optimizing your web pages for specific keywords. Therefore the measurement of growth in traffic from search engines for these specific keywords gives you a good indication of the succes of your SEO efforts. Of course don't forget to make a benchmark of the amount of traffic you receive from search engines per keyword before you start doing SEO.

Together with this metric you should also measure which page the traffic from search engines for the specific keywords lands on. Of course that should be the pages which you've optimized for those keywords. But especially with the more generic keywords and/or pages with similar content it's interesting to see which page search engines will pick to rank and thus sending you traffic.

3. Growth of conversions from search engine traffic

Every web site has one or more goals which you want your website visitors to complete. You should measure your web site in depth to know if your website visitors convert from random visitors to prospects or even clients, depending on your goals.

When measuring the succes of SEO you should measure this conversion of traffic you generate with search engines. It doesn't matter where your site ranks in the search results. It doesn't matter how much traffic a search engine sends you. But it does matter which quality of traffic a search engine brings you. And a great way to measure the quality of your web site traffic is to measure how well it converts according to your goals. Of course as with every metric, start with a benchmark and look at the growth.

4. Growth of conversions from search engine traffic per keyword

You knew this metric was coming. To get an even better insight in the succes of your SEO efforts you can measure the growth in conversions per keyword from search engine traffic. This tells you if the keywords for which you've optimized your web pages brings you quality traffic. If not, maybe there's something with the conversion process or usability of your site. Or maybe you're even targeting the wrong keyword. You wouldn't have a clue about this if you were just measuring rankings to determine the succes of SEO.

Quality of traffic

These 4 basic metrics give you a much more better insight into the succes of your SEO effort than search engine rankings do. But you could even go further with determing the quality of the search engine traffic you generate. Take one of the 4 mentioned metrics and take a look at the bounce rate, the time on site and the amount of retruning visitors. These metrics don't tell you much individually, but look at the trends over time.

Does the bounce rate of a web page decrease after you've optimized it for a specific keyword? Then that's a signal the searcher finds what he's looking for. Is your bounce rate increasing over time while doing SEO? Then you might be targeting the wrong keyword for that specific page.

No absolute metrics

These metrics which say something about the quality of the traffic aren't solid laws which can be applied to every web page. Sometimes a high time on site is a good signal, for example with a blog which writes long articles. But when the time on site is high on an ecommerce website, it could be a signal visitors can't find what they're looking for. The same goes with metrics like bounce rate and returning visitors.

So please take into account much more than the metric itself. What does the web page look like? What's the goal of the web page? How much content is on the page? And what sort of content? Ask yourself these and more questions when interpretating metrics like bounce rate, time on site and returning visitors.

Web analytics needed

I think it won't surprise you that a web analytics package is needed to measure the metrics mentioned above. The choice of the specific package depends on your goals, demands and experience with web analytics. But the metrics mentioned above can all be tracked with free web analytics packages like Google Analytics, Yahoo Index Tools or Microsoft adCenter Analytics. Are you using a blog or website based on WordPress? Go download the WordPress plugins Joost created to easily implement Google Analytics or adCenter Analytics in your blog or website.

Conclusion

So why bother about search engine rankings when measuring the succes of your SEO efforts? Are rankings reliable with search engines personalizing search results more and more every day? I think we shouldn't worry about rankings, but what should we worry about?

Go beyond rankings and measure basic metrics like the growth of traffic generated from the organic search listings. Segment that traffic per keyword and go measure the conversions, preferrable per keyword. And get even a greater insight about the quality of this search engine traffic with metrics like bounce rate, time on site and returning visitors. But interpretate those metrics with care and take in account much more information besides the metrics.

That should give you a good insight into the results you achieve while doing SEO. And this insight goes far beyond the information you retrieve from measuring search engine rankings. Because what's the value of a search engine ranking without receiving quality traffic that converts? Such a ranking is worthless.

Measuring SEO: why rankings are worthless is a post by Eduard Blacquière on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!