Distraction |

Do Not Worry About PageRank

On February 22, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

For years people have always made an effort to really focus on increasing their Google pagerank as much as possible. I always ask people, what is it about Google pagerank that makes you want to increase it so badly? Many times they really didn’t know how to answer the question or at least answer [...]

For years people have always made an effort to really focus on increasing their Google pagerank as much as possible. I always ask people, what is it about Google pagerank that makes you want to increase it so badly? Many times they really didn’t know how to answer the question or at least answer it correctly.

For many years Google pagerank was the sought out factor for many people diving into search engine optimization. Over the years it has been severely abused as people seek out science project like marketing campaigns only to increase page rank. News flash, rankings alone don’t grow a business and the search engines are really starting to evolve and change the way that they rank websites. They are tweaking and modifying search engines to only reward those who take a natural approach to building their business. An approach that builds over time with heavy branding and marketing elements rather than pouncing on loop holes to achieve rankings in search engines. Internet marketing company HubSpot based out of Boston MA had this to say about Google page rank: “Page Rank has nothing to do with SEO rankings or results. I know of websites that have a Page Rank of 0, and yet they still get organic rankings and search traffic for competitive search terms.”

Basically what HubSpot is saying is that businesses and websites should be focusing on building their brand and their business and not worrying about what the Google pagerank of their website is. At the end of the day page rank does not offer any value. You can’t track where your page rank comes from or why it is even there. It has almost become a distraction for website owners that have lost focus on what it really means to market your business online. Even Google has removed any mention of pagerank from their guidelines.

A recent Q&A session on one of Google’s forums had this to say:
“Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.”

When Google comes out and says it than you better believe that it is true in every possible way. You can read more about Google’s view point on page rank on the Google webmaster forum. I given touched on the subject of Google PageRank sculpting as a waste of time a few months ago as well.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

Is Social Media ROI Unmeasurable?

On November 11, 2009, In SEO, by Dr. Pete

Posted by Dr. Pete

I’m reporting live from Pubcon Las Vegas this week, along with some of the SEOmoz team. To be honest, we’ve struggled a bit with how to cover the conference here on the blog. As someone who only hits a couple of conferences per year, I know how annoying it can be to have to hear how great an event is that you already regret not being able to go to. On top of that, sometimes information that seems brilliant in context just doesn’t translate into a quick blog blurb or Tweet. So, in the interest of providing value to those of you who aren’t here at Pubcon, we’re going to try to take some deeper dives into the content, hopefully providing some of that context you may be missing.

Is That An Elephant?

No, I’m not trying to distract you. These first two days of sessions, I couldn’t help but feel that there was an elephant in the room with us during the social media sessions. The enthusiasm for social media (and especially Twitter) has been stronger than ever, but we all seem reluctant to dampen that enthusiasm by talking about an uncomfortable fact – very few of us have really found a way to measure social media success. Sure, there are internal metrics for any given platform – Twitter followers, for example – but without something external to tie it to, those are little more than high scores in the social media video game.

The B-word

Of course, the default answer is always "branding". Unfortunately, much like "engagement", branding is too often just a distraction, an intangible excuse we use to avoid the fact that we have nothing to measure. Ironically, during a session that had nothing to do with social media, I heard something close to an answer during Q&A. No matter what you think branding is, find a way to measure it. Here are just a few possiblities:

Direct brand mentions
Links with brand-related anchor text
Branded search volume

Where’s there a number, there’s a path to calculating ROI.

Target a Response

At this morning’s keynote, we had a chance to hear from the marketing departments of various Vegas hotels. Like the rest of us, these marketers are learning as they go, trying to figure out how to use Twitter and Facebook to drive real business value. Most of the hotel marketing departments see social media as a direct-response channel, and that’s certainly a start. Put out a special offer through social media channels, and you can measure the response. Where there’s a measurable response, there’s ROI.

MGM Grand’s marketing head hinted at another possibility – their employees monitor Twitter to spot dissatisfied hotel guests, dispatching staff to help solve the problem. What’s the natural next step? Measure this response. How many problems did they intercept? How many were they able to solve? What does solving one customer’s problem equal in real dollars? All of these questions can be answered, and from those answers comes tangible value.

Find a Comparison

Finally, during a session about how social media and search intersect, we heard a great example from Lee Odden about how to put a value on social media. Lee mentioned that his firm drives about 15-20 major media mentions per month from social media. He estimates that this equates to paying a PR firm $10,000/month. This may not sound like metrics in the traditional sense, but it’s an entirely valid approach. PR costs money to generate, and social media has replaced that value.

Just Measure It

When it comes to measuring social media ROI, what are we really afraid of? If I start measuring, will I have to admit that being a 307th-level Maniac on Facebook Mafia Wars isn’t providing solid business value? Stop making excuses, stop mumbling about branding, and find a way to quantify social media success in real dollars.

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Posted by Dr. Pete

I'm reporting live from Pubcon Las Vegas this week, along with some of the SEOmoz team. To be honest, we've struggled a bit with how to cover the conference here on the blog. As someone who only hits a couple of conferences per year, I know how annoying it can be to have to hear how great an event is that you already regret not being able to go to. On top of that, sometimes information that seems brilliant in context just doesn't translate into a quick blog blurb or Tweet. So, in the interest of providing value to those of you who aren’t here at Pubcon, we're going to try to take some deeper dives into the content, hopefully providing some of that context you may be missing.