I’ve mentioned that, while I provide them, I am not a huge fan of ranking reports for SEO programs. Most Recently here: The Future of SEO Services. So, I decided to come up with a pro and con list.

Pros:

• Can chart progress of an SEO program over time.
• Illustrates value of SEO to clients/boss.
• Can track important keywords against competitors.
• Tracks ranking of your brand name and its variations.
• Can highlight site issues due to design changes, links, keyword changes, etc.
• Can help identify pages that are not ranking for targeted keywords.
• Can be a great addition to an overall report package – along with traffic and conversion data.

Cons:

• Easily manipulatable by which keywords you decide to “track”.
• Weighs each keyword equally – which can be deceiving to clients/boss.
• Can over value the importance of rankings to clients/boss.
• Rankings change daily. Getting bogged down in the details of why a single keyword changes by one or two positions is usually a waste of time.
• Different data centers can produce widely different results.
• Will increasingly become irrelevant with localization and personalization of search results.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few… Anything you can add? How do these pros and cons stack up against each other?

*For a great comparison of ranking report software, visit Matt Diehl’s post here: 3 Rank Reporting Softwares Reviewed.

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC

I just read a great article by Mike Grehan about the future of Search Engine Optimization. The question, “what is the future of search” is getting asked a lot lately. It’s changed a whole lot since I first got involved just about 10 years ago.

One key element that Grehan points out is that SEO is a really a function of marketing, which I don’t think many people outside the industry (and some inside) really understand. He says,

…even though industry leaders acknowledge that SEO is much more of a marketing process than a technical effort, there’s still a lot of fixation on crawler activity and indexing.

Most new clients and even developers I work with tend to think that I can put up some meta tags and do some voodoo to their code and, POOF, their site will be “optimized.” A lot of people (and, again, developers) call me a week before a new site is set to go live and say, “can you make sure this is optimized?”

Another thing Grehan mentions that stands out to me is:

Personalization and digital asset optimization will end 1999-style ranking reports, as search engine results will be based on blended results from end-user specifics, such as geographic location, time of day, previous searching history, and peer group preference.

Thank god! I’ve already started to ween myself, and clients, off of ranking reports. And with the availability of good analytics programs (like Google Analytics), there is really no need to base success on a handful of keywords. Ranking reports are easy to manipulate, inaccurate, can provide a false sense of SEO success (or failure) and, today, really have very little value.

It HAS to be about conversions! 1000 #1 placements aren’t any good if users aren’t going to and taking action on your site. Unfortunately, the search industry is still pushing rankings (Guaranteed #1 in Google!) as the be-all and end-all of SEO success. Let me make this my new motto:

Rankings are not an End, But a Means to an End…

Another key here is that great rankings and great traffic still aren’t any good on a broken site. This is why I’ve started to include a site analysis incorporating usability best practices as part of my standard SEO offering. My job is not rankings, it’s to help my clients succeed.

Another thing to point out from Grehan’s piece is that SEO is really turning into Reputation Management:

Reputation management will become more important as marketing continues its reversal from a broadcast medium to a listening medium.

It’s part of your overall marketing message. It’s about having a consistent marketing message acorss all channels and monitoring the voice of consumers. It’s social networks, it’s blogs, it’s public relations, it’s search results, and… just a little bit of voodoo. (-;

The Future of SEO – ClickZ

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC

I’m not sure how earth shattering this is, but this post from HotelMarketing.com refers to a study showing that most people searching for a hotel are using a search engine to find hotels rather than going directly to a hotel’s corporate site. No big surprise that the internet is helping to commoditize hotel rooms just as it assisted in pushing airline tickets that same direction.

For most people, I believe, hotel rooms are booked primarily — in this order — for their location (city & state), price, proximity to desired landmarks, amenities, and then brand loyalty. No real scientific data there, just my gut instinct on how the average person goes about finding a hotel room for a family vacation, weekend getaway, business trip, etc.

I don’t doubt that brand does come into play if there are two hotels that match closely on the other factors. But average people don’t much care if it’s a Hilton or a Radisson in most cases. So, searching by destination, as this study suggests, seems perfectly matched to my theory. And, if you look at the search data you’ll find that a city name with a qualifier such as “discount” or “cheap” are the next most popular.

The danger for OTAs and Search Marketers or resellers depending on search marketing, though, is the risk of becoming nothing more than a price and amenities comparison engine that enable users to pick out a property, from a location search, and then go directly to the chain’s website to book the room. This study suggests that just that is happening:

“The BDRC said bookings are increasingly being carried out on hotel sites but third parties such as Expedia (40%), Lastminute.com (36%) and Ebookers (22%) continue to feature prominently during the research stage.”

If all you sell are hotel rooms, how do you differentiate from the rest of the pack? How do you use all of those great rankings to convert visitors to buyers?

Here may be a clue… The PhoCusWright Travel 2.0 Consumer Technology Survey, published in December of last year, says that,

“When it comes to making travel purchasing decisions, most American travelers would rather see the options for themselves than simply act on the recommendations of others. In fact, travelers want to view the options in detail via pictures, online maps and video.”

Frankly, I’m surprised at the fact that hotels aren’t trying harder to compete head-on in search engine marketing. Aren’t they leaning on their brand a little too much? Or are we just doing the hard work for them?

Search engines dominate how consumers look for hotels

From: Aaron Dalrymple & Associates, LLC