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Showing up higher in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is certainly one of the primary motives of all website owners. This is one way clients get to know about you, reach you and adore you for what you offer them. However, simply boosting search engine rank won't work. As a web marketer, you need to make more efforts. Many clients want a significant improvement in calls/sales as they think this is what makes all the difference.

The Truth

Boosting ranking will not improve sales. Although boosting ranking is crucial, and in order to accomplish the goal, you should focus on keywords and their ranking data, checking a set of keywords against the SERP and locating their positioning does not actually help!

Why?

Having knowledge about rankings for a set of keywords will not give you an idea of performance. The improvement may be defined as the following:

- Ranking increase

- Additional traffic

- Impressions

- More conversions

- Improved CTR

- Much more

It is also important to remember that some of these improvements are simply stepping stones to final goals. Hence, some improvements should be regarded as signals indicating that you are on the right track. On the other hand, some need to be considered as actual success metrics which work towards achieving final goals.

Here's how you can discover high ranking keywords of a website and their signals. It also helps understanding the way you need to use these for perusing success metrics or conversion goals.

Signals vs. Success Metrics

Some webmasters believe that conversions on a website get affected by a range of metrics that they have no control of. Some of these metrics include low budget for improving code/design, wrong call to action, bad sales copy, bad offer, etc. These barriers may prove to be a hurdle in your way to reach the full potential of the website.  However, you may still be able to observe some improvement with your success metrics. This is enough to prove that your efforts are working. Results is not in your control, especially if you do not have any access/resources to boost on-page conversion metrics as an integral part of what you do.

As far as signal/success metrics goes, listed below are some of the metrics one must review when promoting a business. You may do this on excel. Here, signals are merely direction pointers. Success metrics are what you must really aim for:

- Signal – Impressions

- Success metric – Goal completion

- Signal – CTR

- Signal – Traffic

- Signal – Ranking

All of the data might not be available to you unless there's a PPC campaign in place. If that isn’t the case, the information should be drawn from somewhere else. Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) can be used for the same.

Screening in Webmaster Tools

You need to download list of queries from Google Webmaster Tools.

- Select ‘Search Traffic’

- ‘Search Analytics’

- Click ‘Download’ on the bottom

You should check all of metric options available.

The Next Step:

1. Open the excel file.

2. Click CTRL F

3. Input your core keyword

4. Click ‘replace’

5. Click ‘options’

6. Click ‘format’

7. Click ‘fill’

8. Choose a color

9. Click ‘ok’

10. Click ‘Replace All’

All key terms comprise of core keyword are highlighted. Now repeat for all keywords.

What to Do With These Keywords?

Now the information you had downloaded and sorted containes all of the signals discussed above:

Signal – CTR

Signal – Impressions

Signal – Ranking

Signal – Traffic

Actions to be Taken:

- High ranking + Low Impressions – Improve page relevancy

- High Impressions + Low Clicks – Improve page engagement and all relevancy metrics

- High ranking + Low CTR/Clicks – Improve meta description

- High CTR + Low Clicks/ Impressions – Make sure your keyword is in the title

Remember a combination of Low + Low indicates that the work required is beyond a few tweaks. Once you are done with all of content updates, it is time to wait for next few crawls, review and then adjust. This is precisely where you feel that simply checking ranking for a list of keywords feel like only a half-way job. This is because you did not have any direction on which specific actions to be taken and why. Here, you have the signal metrics to achieve crystal clear direction.

Another important and instant action you should take to improve your overall organic presence is using all metrics and actions above. You may use the option in WMT to see ‘Pages’ in search metrics.

All results will display a table of URLs. Hence, you need to make efforts towards improving anything that ranks on pages 2 to 5. This shows up as 10.1 to 50 (table positions) in the SERP. The pages are more likely to improve with only a few minor tweaks as compared to pages 5 and down which indicates that level of relevancy requires much more than only a few changes in content changes to enhance ranking.

Why Wait for Crawls?

In case, you have been working on inner pages, you would like to give ample time to Google to update its index. Alternatively, you may also make use of WMT ‘Fetch as Google’ option to boost speed of this process.

Brand and Non-Brand Keywords

You should continue working on the same excel file. However, continue with searches and then sort by company name/ business owner name. You also need to color cells in different colors. For instance, you can color non-brand keywords in blue, and the brand keywords in pink.

Is Keyword Research Still Important?

Yes, you can go about the whole process. All core keywords you come up with post keyword research make for the main pathway to the final destination. The origin is the present status of those keywords. Progress is not possible without them. Unfortunately, most webmasters only check ranking on core keywords. They forget about other important metrics.

Understanding Success Metric

It is Conversion Goals. Success Metric actually makes for a different topic altogether. However, it is still very important to get to know about some of the essentials associated. SEO specialists are mainly responsible to attract relevant traffic to their client’s website. They are also responsible for conversions (although they can't really force a purchase).

Here are a few examples check:

Example #1

An SEO specialist can define user conversion once a subscriber signs up for his 30-day software trial. However, it is not the specialist's responsibility to convert them from free subscribers to paying clients.

Example #2

An SEO specialist may define a user conversion on a Hair Salon's website as soon as someone clicks the option - ‘Book Now’. However, It is not his/her responsibility to convert them from prospects to buyers.

Example #3

The SEO specialist can only define a user conversion once any user fills out a form or even calls up the company. However, the specialist is not responsible to sell company's services over the phone.

Now what about eCommerce websites? After all, this is where the conversions turn into actual sales?

Well, this is not very different from the examples cited above! In case, the client decides to sell designer eyeglasses 25% above suggested drop-shipping retail value than 15%, the sales will automatically drop down. However, as an SEO specialist, you may actually help define conversion goals than actual sales (of which you have no control).

Listed below are some ideas you can actually use in this respect:

- Enhance email subscribers

- Download discount coupon

- Product searches on the website

- Create an account

 - Calls via using a call tracking number

In a Nutshell

Using Google WMT search metrics data will boost SEO results. It provides 90 days of data. You may even try and align strategy of testing and tweaking via making adjustments each quarter as per the present trends.