Why Ranking Shouldn't Be the Only KPI in SEO
It's 2024, and yet many businesses still issue Request for Proposals (RFPs) for SEO to achieve high rankings for specific keywords or a set of keywords. While using keyword rankings as a key performance indicator (KPI) in an SEO campaign is tempting, it's an outdated and potentially harmful practice. Focusing on individual keyword rankings can lead to missed opportunities, scalability issues, and fragile marketing strategies.
This blog post will explore why ranking-based KPIs are problematic and how businesses can shift toward more sustainable and impactful SEO practices that deliver real value. It's time to move beyond the vague goal of "ranking" and focus on the bigger picture: brand growth, audience engagement, and long-term scalability.
The Pitfalls of Keyword Ranking as a KPI
Keyword rankings have long been the go-to metric for measuring SEO success, but more than relying on rankings alone can be detrimental to a business's long-term digital strategy. Here are some of the key risks involved:
Keyword Interest Changes Over Time
One of the most significant flaws of using keyword ranking as a KPI is the assumption that user interest in keywords remains static. The reality is that search trends and user behaviors are constantly evolving. Keywords that are popular today may not be relevant tomorrow.
If a business builds its entire SEO strategy around a limited set of keywords, it risks becoming overly dependent on search trends beyond its control. The fragility of such a strategy means that when user interest shifts, the business's search visibility and traffic could plummet.
For example, a fashion brand that optimizes for a trending seasonal term like "summer 2024 beachwear" may rank highly in the short term, but that keyword will lose value once the season ends. Relying solely on that ranking would leave the business vulnerable to sudden traffic drops.
Why This Is Dangerous:
Keyword volatility: Interest in keywords fluctuates based on seasonality, market shifts, and consumer behavior changes, making rankings an unstable metric for long-term success.
Fragility: Basing success on a small set of keywords puts your business at risk of losing visibility and traffic when user interests shift.
Limited Value from SEO
When SEO campaigns are designed with ranking in mind, the true potential of SEO could be more utilized. Businesses focusing on specific keywords as KPIs limit themselves to capturing traffic from those queries alone. However, SEO is much broader than that. It's about optimizing your entire website and brand to attract a wider audience, enhance brand authority, and improve overall visibility.
By narrowing your SEO goals to ranking for a few keywords, you might attract users who search for those specific terms, but you'll miss out on potential customers who use related or long-tail queries. Additionally, when rankings are treated as the primary measure of success, businesses may lose sight of the more meaningful outcomes SEO can deliver, such as increased conversions, brand penetration, and customer engagement.
Why This Is Dangerous:
Narrow focus: Focusing on more than just ranking misses the broader potential of SEO, such as brand growth, audience expansion, and enhanced customer loyalty.
Missed opportunities: By targeting only a handful of keywords, you overlook long-tail keywords, related search queries, and content opportunities that could drive more valuable traffic.
Lack of Scalability
A ranking-focused SEO strategy is inherently unscalable. Imagine an SEO campaign that targets just 10, 20, or even 50 keywords over months. While this may sound reasonable, it doesn't account for all the available SEO opportunities.
Search engines are evolving, and users are no longer searching for simple, one- or two-word queries. They're typing in whole questions, searching by voice, and expecting rich, comprehensive answers. If your SEO strategy only focuses on a handful of short keywords, you're missing out on the ability to scale your campaign to cover a wider variety of queries.
A scalable SEO strategy should address hundreds or thousands of queries over time, leveraging content that meets users at different customer journey stages. This approach increases your website's relevance for more diverse searches and helps future-proof your SEO strategy against search trends that will inevitably change.
Why This Is Dangerous:
Limited reach: Focusing on a small set of keywords limits your ability to attract diverse traffic, which means fewer conversion opportunities and less growth.
Missed scalability: To achieve long-term success, SEO campaigns need to scale across many different queries, not just a limited set of target keywords.
Risk of Unethical Practices
When an SEO agency is incentivized to achieve rankings for a specific set of keywords, there's a high risk that it will resort to unethical or short-term tactics to hit its targets. SEO providers may engage in keyword stuffing, spammy backlink building, or even purchasing low-quality backlinks to get quick results.
The problem with these tactics is that they can work in the short term, but they carry significant risks in the long run. Search engines like Google are increasingly sophisticated, and their algorithms penalize websites that engage in manipulative practices. Once penalized, recovering your website's ranking and reputation can take time and effort.
Additionally, when SEO agencies focus too heavily on ranking, they may neglect the bigger picture. They'll be so preoccupied with meeting keyword ranking KPIs that they fail to address your audience's actual needs, the importance of brand penetration, or broader business goals.
Why This Is Dangerous:
Risk of penalties: Unethical SEO tactics can result in search engine fines, causing long-term damage to your website's visibility.
Neglecting audience needs: When agencies focus solely on ranking, they may ignore critical factors like user experience, content quality, and brand trust.
Ignoring Business Goals
SEO should always be aligned with a business's broader goals, such as increasing revenue, improving customer engagement, or building brand authority. However, when an SEO agency solely focuses on ranking as a KPI, it may lose sight of these more significant objectives.
For example, an agency may get your website to rank for several low-competition, low-value keywords with minimal traffic or low conversion potential. While these rankings may look good on paper, they don't contribute to your business's overall growth or bottom line.
Why This Is Dangerous:
Misalignment with goals: Rankings for rankings can lead to SEO campaigns that don't deliver meaningful business value, such as conversions or revenue.
Wasted resources: Focusing on ranking KPIs means that resources are spent chasing rankings that don't align with long-term business growth.
The Real Value of SEO
So, if there are better KPIs for SEO success than ranking, what should businesses focus on instead? The real value of SEO lies in its ability to drive sustainable growth, enhance brand awareness, and attract relevant traffic that converts. Here are some more meaningful KPIs to consider:
Organic traffic growth: Rather than focusing on specific keywords, look at overall traffic trends from organic search. Are you attracting more visitors to your website over time?
Conversions: SEO should drive users who are more likely to convert into customers, whether through purchases, sign-ups, or inquiries.
Engagement metrics: Monitor how users interact with your site, such as time on page, bounce rate, and click-through rates. These metrics provide insights into how well your content resonates with your audience.
Brand visibility: SEO can help increase your brand's presence across search engines, making it easier for users to discover you through multiple search queries.
By focusing on these more holistic KPIs, businesses can better harness the power of SEO to achieve long-term success and growth.
Time for a New Approach
The time has come for businesses to move away from outdated, ranking-focused SEO KPIs. While ranking can provide a sense of accomplishment, it's ultimately a fragile, limited, and often misleading metric. Instead, businesses should focus on SEO's broader value: organic growth, brand visibility, audience engagement, and meaningful conversions.
By treating SEO as an investment in your brand's future rather than a quick-fix solution, you'll unlock its full potential and build a strategy that scales with your business for years.
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