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Monitoring Your Search Engine Positions - Five Tips
By Scott Buresh
Contributing Writer
Article Date: 01.28.03
Increasing numbers of companies are recognizing
the importance of high search engine rankings as part of their
overall marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many do not recognize
that search engine marketing is an ongoing process, rather than
a one-time "quick fix". Protecting high rankings, once attained,
is critical to the ongoing success of any search engine marketing
initiative. It is also important to approach your monitoring
efforts with a solid strategy and a proper mindset. The following
five tips can help.
1. Treat your rankings as a portfolio.
Search engine management is an inexact science. Typically, the first several months of a campaign(especially if the site is monitored and adjusted for maximum effect) will show a steady upward trend. At some point, the increases begin to level off and the campaign reaches the "monitoring and protection" phase. In this phase, as with a stock portfolio, it is important not to worry about the short-term ups and downs, as they are inevitable.
It is, however, extremely important to measure the long-term trends. You would not consistently judge your stock portfolio performance based solely upon comparing the present month to the last- you would base your judgment upon how the portfolio performed over a long period of time. Your search engine rankings are no different. Unless you have a system in place to chart your overall performance each month (such as creating an ongoing monthly chart of your overall number of "top 50 positions" or "top three pages"), you cannot determine whether the value of your "portfolio" is trending upward or downward.
2. Monitor on a monthly basis.
Changes in the search engine landscape are frequent and numerous,
and any number of them can have an influence (positive or negative)
on your month-to-month rankings. Individual search engines often
make subtle tweaks to their algorithms that can improve or degrade
some of your positions. In addition, most engines have several
different sets of data (for example, Google has www2.google.com
and www3.google.com). These
different data sets are all in different stages of "freshness",
and your positions can sometimes vary widely based upon the
one that is currently in use. In addition, your competitors
may undertake search engine initiatives of their own, pushing
some of your rankings lower, or lose rankings themselves, pulling
your rankings higher. For whatever reason, monthly changes in
rank are inevitable.
However, it is much more desirable to proactively discover a large monthly ranking loss as it occurs rather than accidentally discovering it sometime later as a result of lost sales. By taking the time each month to monitor your positions and react to unexpected losses you are protecting your initial investment (whether it was time, money, or both). In addition, monitoring allows you to discover areas in which you can improve your search engine rankings, and then to track the effectiveness of the initiatives you undertake to do so.
3. Monitor the engines that are currently
popular.
A common mistake that people make when monitoring their search
engine positions is including the wrong engines in their analysis.
The top ten search engines account for the vast majority of
search engine traffic (studies vary from between 85 and 98 percent).
However, the top ten search engines can change on a monthly
basis. A search engine campaign that was launched just a few
years ago may have targeted engines such as Excite,
DirectHit, or iWon
(which have slipped out of fashion) while ignoring Google
and AskJeeves (which
have seen dramatic increases in popularity). This illustrates
the importance of keeping abreast of the most recent search
engine popularity figures and basing your monitoring strategies
on engines that people are using in the present, not the engines
that people were using when you launched your search engine
initiative.
For a recent list of the most popular engines, see
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html.
4. Look for big losses on any particular engine.
As mentioned above, it is fairly common to see a wide range
of losses and gains in any given month, which tend (on average)
to equal out. However, a large downward shift in all of your
positions on any one engine bears some very close scrutiny.
In some cases, a search engine "spider" (the programs that search
engines use to index web pages) may encounter problems at your
site. These could include recent changes to the code that confused
the spider (such as the addition of a large block of javascript),
a subtle but disastrous change in the navigational structure,
or an attempted spider visit while your site was temporarily
down. In other cases, an individual search engine may extensively
overhaul its ranking algorithm, causing most of your site to
be deemed less relevant (and if the engine is one of the most
popular, some fairly extensive site changes may be needed to
address the change). In still other cases, a search engine that
relies primarily on another engine for their results (such as
MSN or AOL)
will suddenly shift alliances (a recent, stunning example was
the switchover of Yahoo to
displaying pure Google results). Of course, the first step toward
correcting any of these scenarios is to be aware of the problem
through careful monitoring.
5. Look for big losses across a variety of engines for
a particular keyphrase.
It is also important to make certain that you haven't lost your positions on a variety of engines for any particular keyphrase (or set of keyphrases). Such a loss can indicate that a page of your site has suddenly become inaccessible to most search engine spiders. It could also indicate that there was a sudden large increase in competition for that particular phrase (and that you should take steps to regain lost ground). Keyphrases are the building blocks of search engine campaigns, so be sure to pay them individual attention when monitoring your positions.
Conclusion:
If you have taken the time and energy (and/or money) to initiate a search engine marketing campaign, it is crucial that you protect this investment by regularly and objectively monitoring your positions. Following the five tips above can help ensure the long-term success of your search engine optimization campaign. For the volumes of motivated prospects that search engines can bring to your site, it is certainly worth the effort.
About the Author:
Scott Buresh is co-founder and principal of Medium Blue Internet
Marketing (www.mediumblue.com). For monthly tips on how to get
the most out of your internet presence, visit Medium Blue Internet
Marketing at www.mediumblue.com |
