SEO Results V’s SEO Rankings …There IS a Difference!
Search engine optimization SEO, is all about organic rankings and battling against a ton of other web sites trying to gain visibility for the same sets of keywords as you.
Businesses tend to fixate on gaining popular and high rankings for one powerful keyword phrase that is extremely difficult to rank for …yet they still want be on the first page.
But to focus on rankings alone will surely hurt your chances of your web site performing well.
Why? Because SEO Results V’s SEO Rankings are two completely different things.
When my clients come to me asking about how their web site is ranking, I often tell them that it’s not about how well your web site is ranking, it’s all about how well your web site is performing!
Why? Because of something called “personalized search results”
What does that mean?
Personalized search results are results for searches that you perform. If you run a search for any given topic and often click on the same link in within the search results, then Google will more than likely make that link appear first for another similar search.
For instance Google provides custom search results based on your specific search history. The more often you search for a particular topic, the more often results for that type of topic will show up for your search results. The personalized search results for your neighbor down the street searching for the same thing as you …(if they don’t search as often as you do for the same type of thing) will yield a much different result.
Previously, one had to be logged into a Google account to get this skew, but in late 2009 Google offered personalized search to everyone.
By focusing on specific keywords you might miss much bigger opportunities, but by focusing more a broad range of keyword phrases and moreover ones that are unique to who you are and what you do will gain more traffic and more results!
The downside to this….
It would be a major mistake to go touting a #1 rank, when only you can see it. I’ve accidentally told my clients about their successful top rankings, only to realize my personalized results put them on page 1 instead of page 3. Normally the variance is not too significant, but can make a big difference when the #1 result gets 30% of clicks and the #8 result gets 5% of clicks!
Can you turn off Google Personalization?
Yes you can, click the web history link at the top of the page and then disable customizations based on search activity.
If you have a Google account and you are signed in, the same link enables you to pause or simply remove the history all together, thus yielding more accurate results.
But what if I want a better personalized search for me but not just when i’m searching for my own stuff?
There is a search plugin enabling you to search without personalization as needed from your toolbar. I just tried it for a niche phrase and the site I was looking for ranked on the 5th page without personalization and on page 2 with it turned on.
So what do I tell my clients?
It’s NOT about how well you rank, it’s about how well your web site performs!
Having good compelling calls to action with statistical tracking is vital in monitoring how well or how poorly your web site is performing on a month to month basis. With your performance statistics you can analyze what works and what does not and then tweak up your monthly SEO campaign.
