How To Gauge Real World Success and ROI For Your SEO Efforts – 87

Here is the Transcript for Episode 87

Caleb Baumgartner: Hello folks, and welcome to another episode of Local SEO Tactics, where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I am your friendly neighborhood producer Caleb Baumgartner, here to intro another helpful episode. Have you started working on your SEO, but you’re not sure it’s helping? Bob and Jesse are here to help you understand how to identify what’s working and how to press on your strengths to find your own niche in your area. Thank you again for checking us out and enjoy the show.

Jesse Dolan: Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics, where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I’m your host Jesse Dolan, here again today with Mr. Bob Brennan.

Bob Brennan: Howdy.

Jesse Dolan: What have you got there? Let’s cover this, the important backgrounds first.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: Got some skis, some skis back there now?

Bob Brennan: Yeah, skis. Wonderful skis. I bought them, what? Back in November. I used them twice and blew out my knee.

Jesse Dolan: Oh no.

Bob Brennan: Getting surgery here in April. But they’re pretty cool, they’re light. And when you’re old, it’s not about how they perform, it’s how light they are in the chair lift…

Jesse Dolan: Nice.

Bob Brennan: So your knees or your legs don’t fall asleep. So yeah, I’m excited to use those next year, will get a nice edge on them.

Jesse Dolan: I snowboard instead of ski. I’ve got to tell you, those are almost as wide as my snowboard, I think.

Bob Brennan: Isn’t it crazy? They’re almost like water skis.

Jesse Dolan: Right? It’s awesome.

Bob Brennan: And they’re short. So I’m 54 and when I was younger the skis I skied on were like 203s, 207s, and these are like 188s…

Jesse Dolan: Oh wow.

Bob Brennan: 185s. But they turn with the side cut and everything else, they just turn better. And in the Midwest it’s ice, so it’s kind of nice to have a good edge set. And then when you get out West, those are all mountain skis, so they’re a little bit better in the Western mountains than they are here in the Midwest.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. Which our season is kind of rapidly coming to an end here it looks like, with the weather we’ve had.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: Just talking to another team member on Intryks here, TJ earlier, and he lives out in Colorado, and he’s like, “It could be June, could be July on a crazier, season’s over.” It’s like elevation makes a big difference, right?

Bob Brennan: Oh yeah. Colorado usually stays open well into July. They won’t be open all the time, but there’ll be open on the weekends and you can go catch a few turns up there.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. Not that I want winter to keep lasting, just saying. But as usual I digress, let’s jump into the topic here. So what we’re going to be talking about today is… Its kind a follow-up Bob, we had an episode I think… Let me check here, it was number 80 with Sue a few weeks back. And we were talking in that about which metrics are the right ones to track for your business. And you and I got to talk and we’re going to kind of crack that open a little bit wider, going a little more in depth with people. The metrics that do matter for SEO, but then also the metrics that really matter for the business, right? Not just for the vanity of rankings and some other stuff. So we’re going to dive into that. It’s kind of two-part deal. What do you want to look at from an SEO perspective, but then what do you want to look at for… Is this SEO giving the ROI?

Before we get into that, just a couple of bits of housekeeping. Everybody has heard us talk in recent episodes about our courses that are coming out. Thanks to everybody, we’ve had an overwhelming response for our Beta program or Beta sign up for students, more than we thought and a pleasant surprise. Not that we thought it would flop, but just how many people want to jump on board to kind of help Beta test it out and give feedback and whatnot. And it’s been great, so we’re pushing forward with that. Had some great conversations with some of you out there listening, and looking forward to some more we’ve got scheduled in the next week or two.

But with that, the Beta has closed on it just because we’ve got more than enough people involved, and a ton of traction and some great feedback. The link is still going to be active, localseotactics.com/courses. But now instead of signing up to be a Beta student, what we’re looking to do is if you’re interested in any of our courses that we’re going to be launching, and there’s going to be quite a gamut of them. It’s local SEO, Google My Business, how to get more reviews, a lot of the topics you hear us talk about on the show here.

We’re going to be turning into courses, so if you’re interested in any of that, go to localseotactics.com/courses, drop your name in. And basically we’re going to put you on the waiting list. The courses are going to be coming out here in the near future, and anybody who signs up now, gets on that waiting list. We’re going to do a couple of things, we’re going to let you know when the pre-registration opens up, so you can get first in line. And secondly, anybody who signs up to get on the waiting list, we’re going to come up with some kind of freebies, special bonuses, discounts. We don’t have it all defined yet, but kind of like a kick starter, if you get it on the ground level, you’re going to get something for it.

So if you’re interested, that doesn’t mean you have to commit. You’re not placing an order. There’s no credit card, none of that.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: Just drop your email address and let us know you’re interested. We’ll put you on the list and as it comes to light and we have information, we’ll broadcast it out to you and take it from there. So if you’re interested, localseotactics.com/courses. And then secondly, as far as another bit of housekeeping, Terry Samuels, who was on a number of episodes back, two episodes. Let’s see here, that was episode number 76 and 77, talking about schema. Anybody who is interested in schema for your website, check those two episodes out. We’ve been getting a lot of great feedback that, number one, Terry is super smart and knowledgeable. Number two, that, “Hey, this was really great. I’ve been wondering about schema, what it is, why it is, and things like that.”

And we’re looking to get more questions. We’re going to have Terry on for some more interviews, answering your questions. So if you’re out there and if you listen to those and that kind of turns you on, what questions do you have? If they’re small, if they’re big, it doesn’t matter. Terry wants to answer them. We want to ask them to Terry. We want to help you out. If you’re wanting to learn more about schema and dive into it again, check out those two episodes and then come back, and we’ll tell you a link here in a second, where we want you to go and just submit the questions. It doesn’t have to be a calling question like we do for the other segment that we do as Sue Ginsburg.

Just send us your questions for Terry, what do you want to know about schema? If it’s technical, if it’s rudimentary, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to start on the basic level and get more advanced as we go through interviews with Terry.

Bob Brennan: He’s the best.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: He’s one of the best in schema so it’s a great opportunity.

Jesse Dolan: He really is. There’s schema tools out there, there’s schema courses out there. I can tell you that people are either influenced or been working with Terry in these areas. He’s very well known for his schema expertise and we’re excited and privileged to have him on previously. And that he’s committed to doing some more interviews with us to answer questions for everybody. So he really is the best Bob, like you’re saying. So if you want to get in on that and have a direct line of Terry to get your questions answered, go to localseotactics.com/schema. And that’s S-C-H-E-M-A, just to make sure, and just submit your question. And we’re going to have Terry on, we’ll ask it and get to the bottom of it for you.

It’s an exciting area for your SEO. You can definitely make some hay there if you’re not using schema already. All right, so enough housekeeping. And I got to say too, I hope you guys out there don’t feel like that was a lot of self promotion. A lot of the reviews and the feedback we get, people are like, “You guys show us awesome. You get right to it, conversational and you don’t promote the heck out of yourself at every turn.” I feel like that was quite a bit stuffed there. Hopefully it didn’t come off as extremely self promotional.

Bob Brennan: We’re from Minnesota, we’re pretty humble.

Jesse Dolan: We are, we are. I like Guardians of The Galaxy, one of my favorite movies. The Drax and there’s, “I too am very humble.” Whenever I hear that, it always just resonates with me, I can’t help it. I’m a nerd. All right. Speaking of nerds, let’s just get back right into it here then. So how do you measure success? How do you know if your SEO is working? How do you know if all of this was worth it or not?

So Bob and I are both going to kind of talk about this. I’m going to kick it off, talking about kind of more of the analytics side, some of the initial gateways. How do you know if you’re having some success in it? And then I’m going to throw it over to Bob and talk more about the real world business side. How do you know if your SEO is working for you? Because it’s definitely a two-part deal, which we’ll kind of explain.

So there’s really three areas from our side, from the agency, serving clients, or if you’re sitting there doing SEO for your own business, kind of on that end of it, right? Just for getting ranked and visibility, there’s really three areas if we drill it down on the most basic level that we’re concerned with. Number one is your keyword ranking. Really, this is where it all starts. You have to be ranking high in order to be found. And then in order to get traffic and clicks and in business.
So if you’re not already checking your keywords through various means whether they’re using some kind of a tool like BrightLocal, we’ve talked about. But we’ve talked in recent episodes about just manually checking it yourself on desktop, on mobile, things like that. And again, if anybody wants to go back to listen in episode 80 with Sue, we do dive into some of this with Sue and go through some examples.

Bob Brennan: Hey, can I throw something out real quick?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: When you say ranking high. And this is amazing to me when I ask people that.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: How you rank it, right? Just so we’re on the same page here.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: What’s your definition of ranking high?

Jesse Dolan: On the first couple pages of Google probably. No, I’m just kidding. Top three, got to be… It’s got to be top three. That’s really all we care about.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: If we’re in the middle of the first page, do you get some traction? Sure. But all that means is we’re almost there, right?

Bob Brennan: Yeah. That’s where you start, is the middle of the first page.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: So everybody has the same expectations because what rank or number one position is what? 20% of the people will actually click on your position or some high number like that.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: Number two, let’s say it’s 25. Number two, it drops down to 12% or 14%. And number three, it drops down to 7%.

Jesse Dolan: Yep.

Bob Brennan: So anything below number three is you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t even be happy about that.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, we don’t really… When we look at it, and when I say we, I mean, Bob, you and I, and the Intryks team, we don’t really count anything outside a third place. I’m sure there’s a stat and there’s a number there, right? But again, that doesn’t mean you’re ranking at all to use that term. Ranking really doesn’t mean top three, whether you’re in the natural search or in the Google My Business map pack. Right. Both of those things, which I’ll get to in a second for…

Bob Brennan: Yeah, to quote Ricky Bobby, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

Jesse Dolan: Yep. If you ain’t first, second, or maybe even third in this case, but yeah. So with that…

Bob Brennan: I’m sorry, just that was Ricky Bobby’s dad. I didn’t want to get that.

Jesse Dolan: If we’re going to cite something, let’s be specific, right?

Bob Brennan: Indeed.

Jesse Dolan: So again, start with your keyword rankings. And as Bob, we’ve mentioned before, what are those keywords is definitely a whole nother topic on where to start, but let’s just say for the sake of brevity here, that you’ve identified your primary keywords, and those are the ones that you’re tracking. Track your keywords, track the right keywords, make sure everybody’s tracking the same keywords in that context, and start there.

With that, have a system for it. Again, if you’re using something like BrightLocal, they’re going to have kind of an archival report. You can see what the trend is, what’s been happening to your ranking? Is it going up, is it going down? Don’t just esoterically kind of check yourself and just mentally know because rankings can fluctuate daily, weekly, monthly, even hourly. I read an article, I think just yesterday, Darren Shaw, from Whitespark, had put out about a study where rankings can fluctuate hourly.

Now, the further down the page you are, the more they fluctuate. Again, if we’re talking here for a number one spot, there’s a lot more consistency when you’re in that top one, two or three positions. But rankings fluctuate, that’s the bottom line. They fluctuate, so if you’re checking it manually, grab a scratch pad, grab a spreadsheet or something, and just input and put some rankings. So when you get weeks and months into it, you can look back and see the trends. Is what you’re doing working? Are you heading up? Are you heading down?

Maybe there’s an algorithm update. Maybe a new competitor opened up shop, whatever, just so you can see the impact and get the context. Just like for your business, if your sales are going up or down, you need to know that as a trend. You can’t just know how much revenue was yesterday or last month, there has to be some context to it. Identify your keywords, track your keyword rankings. Within that, you’re going to track your Google My Business and your SERPs separately.

You want to be dominant on both. You want to be in the top three on both. We’ve talked about it in some previous episodes, but there is so much value. If you can be in the three-pack, even if you’re third in the three-pack. If you can be in the three pack and in that top three in the natural SERPs, for your prospects and your customers and your targets to see you twice in that same kind of top view. That shows your dominance and there’s some psychology there, right?
If you’re first in the map pack, and first in the natural SERPs, you’re crushing it, right?

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: You’re doing awesome. But again, even if you’re third and that map pack in first and the SERP, or variations like that, you should still be very dominant and getting some good business off that. So check that stuff, make sure you’ve got the tools and the resources in place to do all that. Again, if you’re searching for something to provide some automation to that and some regularity, we love BrightLocal. There’s other ones out there as well, some are free, some are paid. I’m not going to go through all the options.

You can go to our localseotactics.com/resources page, there’s a link to BrightLocal on there. We are an affiliate, which means we do get a commission if you sign up. It doesn’t cost you anything. I think you can get a discount if you go through there so it’s a win-win. But do something there to track that and archive that information.

Another area that a lot of people we talked to Bob, surprisingly do not pay attention to this, is your impressions within Google Search Console. Again, to refresh everybody, Google Search Console is a free application if you will, put out by Google. You have to set it up and get it going, but what it does is, in a simple sense, it shows your activity within the Google search engine.

So it doesn’t show traffic to your website. It doesn’t necessarily and directly show your ranking, although there’s a spot in there for average page rank. The main thing we’re curious about here, that we look at it for is your impressions, which is how many times have eyeballs been put on your pages? So if Bob does a search for red balloons in Minneapolis, did his website show up when he was searching?

Whether he’s on the first page or the third page, did he click through? Have people users clicked through and been exposed to the website? So if your rankings are good, you should be getting more impressions. But if you’re on a high volume search term, and like Bob is saying, if you’re middle of the first page, maybe your rankings aren’t great, but your impressions are going up. That’s something you want to know too. You’re getting more exposure.

Again, these are impressions. This isn’t clicks, this isn’t traffic to your website. This is kind of more preliminary thing to pay attention to you as your traffic is increasing… I’m sorry, as your efforts are increasing to generate more traffic and more exposure. You really want to know, is Google serving you up and are they putting eyeballs on your pages? That’s just a great spot to look.

So Google Search Console and looking at the impressions. Google Search Console does a ton of other stuff, but particularly here, as we’re talking about what metrics are important, keyword ranking, impressions and Google Search Console are two of our standards that we always are looking at. Last, but not least, kind of in that chain of events, is the organic traffic you’re getting, reported through analytics. In this case here, I’m talking Google Analytics, which is free.

Again, just like Google Search Console, you do have to set it up. There’s just a couple of clicks you’ve got to do, and you have to install the tracking code on your website. But Google Analytics is going to give you the information about what happens on your website, right? Where Google Search Console was within Google, your exposure for your website, Google analytics is what’s happening now on your website once people get to it.

And specifically in there, we are looking for the organic search traffic. Just like search console, there’s a ton of stuff you can do with Google analytics, which is an entirely different topic, but key in if nothing else, jump in there, look at your organic search traffic. Look at the different date ranges. Again, is it trending up? Is it trending down? Are you getting high bounce rates? Are people getting to your page, but then bouncing out because it didn’t match up with what their intent was? That’s other stuff to decipher.

But if you’re looking at those three things again, kind of from the agency perspective or the SEO on staff perspective, if you’re ranking well, if you’re getting good exposure, good impressions in Google Search Console, and you’re getting good traffic through Google Analytics on the organic traffic side, you should be setting yourself up to be delivering a real world success to your clients or to your business from your website.

I’ll pause right there Bob, I’ll throw it over to you for the three areas that really make a difference for the real world, and talking about the need to really track those as well to kind of round all this out.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: So what is important for the actual business, not from the worldwide web aspect?

Bob Brennan: Yeah, it’s tricky because we’ve got a client that we effectively got them in the GMB, we helped them get reviews. And fortunately, we were able to measure metrics for them beforehand in terms of phone calls and everything else. And because they were moving into a new market and new cities, so to speak. So we were able to track the calls before we took action, got them in the three-pack, and no calls.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: And sometimes you do all the right things and for whatever reason, that market’s dead or you just don’t get the results you would hope to, or whatever the case is. So there’s this what I call the street in really, I guess, from what we’ve understood in terms of some of our Beta, talking to some of our Beta students, there’s really two types of students. Currently there’s small business owners and then there’s small agency and/or small agency owners.

And the point is, get your team involved, when there are people coming through the door, again, this is a tough deal, but it’s like, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” Or, “I drove by your store, I see you all the time.” Okay. Well, that’s good but you’re looking obviously for that person that hopefully find you on Google, and then once they’ve done that you want to measure, “Do you recall what you searched?”

Jesse Dolan: Sure.

Bob Brennan: Which is tricky because it’s not very accurate. Like any of us, we’ll search for… Let’s just say diesel repair and we find a shop. We get there a day or two later when the appointment is set up and they ask, ‘Well, how did you find us?” “Oh, I typed in for diesel repair.” Well, we don’t know how accurate that is, but you’ll get a trend, you’ll get a consensus. You get the idea, but engaging with your customers or getting your team to engage. And if you’re an agency, somehow you’re going to have to encourage your clients to do that.

And through that engagement, you may find that you’re showing up for terms that you didn’t realize, and then that you need to pour gas on that particular term because it’s a beautiful niche, it’s whatever. So I don’t know if that makes sense, is getting your people, your team involved and say, “Hey guys, we need to find out how they found us and who is coming through the door here?”

Jesse Dolan: Right.

Bob Brennan: And what type of work? And then that hopefully correlates with your efforts.

Jesse Dolan: On that part you’re saying that coming through the door that is one of the areas to try to measure. Like walk-ins, like walk-in traffic. Maybe they didn’t call first or contact you, they just show up. Depending on your business, that’s going to happen. You don’t always call the sales person first and whatever.
Bob Brennan: Yeah. There’re all kinds of dynamics there where again, in my 50s, I pick up the phone and I call people, right? If you’re in your 20s and 30s, they’re text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook messaging. Whatever reason, it’s not that big of a deal. When things are urgent at my age, you want that level of communication. Younger age, that heightened level of communication is interpreted as a text.

Jesse Dolan: Sure.

Bob Brennan: It’s just not that urgent. So anyway, it’s really understanding that and then when you’re talking to the people that are coming through the door, tactfully asking them those questions, I think as a way to measure what your walk in business might be doing, and/or even your call in business, if you can coax that out of them as well.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. Well, I think if there’s a way to parse that out too. It’s like you said, and we’ve talked about it before, call tracking. Somebody is calling in, you mentioned a few times, hopefully you’re tracking that somehow.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: You’re quantifying the calls you get. And even if you’re in a business where somebody calls, like you were saying Bob, him, you’d call first and then you’d show up. If that happens for your business, still trying to parse that out like, “Did you call first? Did you find us on Google?” Because if you’ve got 10 people that walk into your store today, if five called first and five didn’t, that’s 10 unique leads if you will, right?

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: From your website. Again, like you’re saying, ask them, “How did you hear about us?” Found your website, found you on Google. Okay, now you’ve got five people that walked in, five people that called first and then came in. You try to parse that out because otherwise it’s like, “Yeah, we had five phone calls and 10 walk-ins today.” Well, if five of those walk-ins called first, that’s kind of a double dip on that lead, right?

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: You only had 10 actual leads. It’s trying to parse that out, and then something else you kind of mentioned as you’re saying there. Yeah, man, whether it’s Facebook messaging, could be an email that came across, but you got your calls and you got your walk-ins, but then the messaging type leads, right? Depending on your business. If you’re on Pinterest, if you’re on Instagram, I don’t know. How do people… If they’re not calling you and they’re not walking in, how else do they get a hold of you through digital means, if you will?

Trying to quantify that too and make sure that there’s not… Make sure you’re filtering out the overlap in these areas. If people have called and emailed or called and walked in, to really get accurate numbers and marry that all together, man. How good are we ranking? What kind of traffic and impressions are we getting? And what kind of actual client business are we getting here? Track all that. That’s all important and it’s all related.

Like you said, you can have a situation like with that one client where we seem to be ranking really good and dominant. Exposure’s good, traffic seems okay, but there’s no business generated from that for some reason, right?

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: If you find those kinds of things, then you do got to go back and take some kind of action. Is it your usability? Is it your conversion? Is it something you didn’t realize? Like just in this one spot in town, you rank high but quarter mile down the road, maybe you don’t. And that’s where people live or whatever.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: The devil is in the details there. And if you’re only looking at… I guess the real moral of our story here is if you’re only looking at one of these areas or one of these things, and you’re not taking this entire kind of encapsulating viewpoint on, is your search engine optimization, is your SEO bringing in business at the end of the day, not just ranking high? If you’re not looking at it from that perspective, you’re pretty short sighted in your SEO approach.

Bob Brennan: Yeah, because I think as agency owners, you track all the metrics but we don’t have any empathy for the business owner to say… It’s like how is your business not growing from our efforts?

Jesse Dolan: Right.

Bob Brennan: And I say 80% to 90% of the time, it will. But there’s that rare instance that you’re ranking for everything they’ve asked you to rank for, but the phone isn’t ringing. And it’s like some stuff you just can’t control that, that particular city or suburb has no interest in special balabushka bacon, whatever the deal is.

Jesse Dolan: Right.

Bob Brennan: But doing the best you can to measure all that I think is imperative.

Jesse Dolan: Yep. And your clients too, or maybe if you’re working for your boss, if you will, it’s your business doing SEO for your business. Whoever you’re reporting to, they’re going to appreciate those stats. They’re going to appreciate those analytics because as we know, if anything in business, it’s communication, and that kind of insight is very important. So when you’re spending money or time on something, you want to know if it’s working and you’ve got to have the data and archive it, catalog it so you can see those trends, is my other big takeaway there.

So good stuff. Do you have any other closing thoughts on that topic Bob, before I get to the review?

Bob Brennan: No. I think we covered as much as we could.

Jesse Dolan: Good stuff. Well, let’s get to our review for this episode here. If you haven’t left us a review yet, we’d love to hear from you. The last couple of weeks we’ve had a big increase, so thanks to everybody who has been leaving reviews, really appreciate it. Like I always say, it really helps the show out from an exposure standpoint, and for us just mentally to know that we’re connecting with you out there, and that you really like what it is that we’re putting out, and that it’s helping.

So got a good review here from this. There isn’t no way to pronounce this. It’s just @XJohnRossX. However, you’d say that altogether. JohnRossX, there you go, that’s your handle.

Bob Brennan: Nice.

Jesse Dolan: But it was left on iTunes and says, “Instantaneous value. Hey guys, enjoyed your show with Kyle Roof today. I’m an SEO dabbler who has found himself needing to be an expert all of a sudden. Had to get a job in parentheses.” We all understand your plight, work sucks right? But you just got to do it. It goes on to say though, “Can’t wait to geek out more with you and gain the confidence to marry some deeper SEO knowledge with the other side of my brain.” Sorry about that there.

Yeah. And I wanted to read this review because where I get excited with SEO is it does really work both sides of your brain, right? You’ve got to really think logically and strategically to do things. And then you also get the creative side, the problem solving. There’s just so many elements to it, that it’s always changing, always dynamic, and it’s a challenging industry.

So glad we’re helping you gain some knowledge there. Hopefully you can get paid good for the job. And in this industry, everybody needs help marketing. So welcome aboard the SEO train, and hopefully we can help you get some good results. And yeah, you tuned in on a good episode with Kyle Roof. Again, we talked about Terry Samuels earlier. There’s another genius in the industry, Kyle Roof right there for tuning into. So appreciate the review, I’d love to hear from the rest of you all out there.

That’s it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in everybody. And we’ll catch you on the next one. Take care.

Bob Brennan: Bye.