It’s been pretty commonly agreed for quite a while that PageRank (in the form that’s publically viewable) is a number that just doesn’t match up to the real authority of a particular site. The latest post from the Webmaster Tools blog solidifies that fact that this just isn’t something to base your success metrics on.

The key phrase of the article?

…PageRank comes in a number. Relevance doesn’t.

Anybody with any marked SEM experience would agree that conversions are the ultimate goal. Beyond the obvious (conversion rates, bounce rate, number of conversions), there are a few numerical metrics that I like to keep tabs on.

Domain Authority and Page Authority

Domain Authority is a pretty good indicator of how you’re doing when it comes to building your link profile. Yes, it’s a number, just like PageRank, however, there’s a clear definition of what’s being figured into that number. Inside of Domain Authority, you’ll notice that MozRank, MozTrust, number of linking domains, among others. Page Authority is a similar score, but limited to the single page. The domain’s Domain Authority score is a site-wide average of the Page Authority metrics.

Visit-To-Goal Conversion Rate Trending

You can have all the #1 organic rankings in the world, but if you can’t convert, you may as well just not have a website, right? Far too often, clients are so focused on achieving first place organic rankings that they lose site of why they’re spending money on internet marketing in the first place; to make a sale, a contact, or a lead. Thorough documentation of SEO efforts (dates included) will help you determine with pretty close accuracy as to what is working and what isn’t when it comes to your conversion rate metrics. People tend to overlook high-converting, low competition, long tail keywords because they normally don’t bring an appreciable amount of traffic. However, these quick and easy wins can make the difference between an okay month and a great month of conversions.

Top 100 Keyword Metrics

I like to individually monitor the top 100 keywords that are sending traffic to the site. This could even trickle down to single digit visits, but that’s okay. The goal here is two-fold; we want to make sure that we’re attracting the right traffic by watching the entrance keywords, and then look for areas that we’re not optimizing for that would be yet another easy win. Just so we’re clear, this list is going to naturally morph over time.

Additionally, 100 isn’t a hard limit. Your particular list could be much larger, or even smaller depending on the site. The methods and reasoning is still the same: getting the correct, targeted traffic to the site with the least amount of hassle.

While there are many more metrics that you can and should be monitoring, these three are certainly very (if not the most) important things you should be keeping a close eye on. If you do well in these metrics, you’ll be pleased with your site’s performance (and hopefully, your client will be also).

As of 9AM this morning, I officially joined the ranks of the unemployed freelance community.

I’ve been keeping a radio silence this weekend to mull over and discuss the situation with a few trusted friends/advisors, and making sure I have everything in order. While TopSpot Internet Marketing has been nothing short of an excellent place to work and learn, my first love has always been my freelance gigs.

To the TopSpot friends I’ve made in my time there: Keep #winning. I’ve learned a lot from everyone there (and hey, maybe I taught someone a thing here and there). I couldn’t have asked for a better company to spend my time with. If you ever need anything, you know how to reach me.

There are two areas that I am specifically passionate about: WordPress and Search Engine Optimization. I like to think that I’m extremely talented in both areas. So, that is how I’ll be (and am) making my income, through providing WordPress-specific consulting and programming, and search engine optimization services.

I’ve got a great network of people that have inspired, helped, and pushed me to go for this goal, whether it’s been through an active interaction, or simply letting me observe them in their natural habitat. I won’t name names here, but thanks for letting me be a part of what you’re doing.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with working for someone else, for the things that I want to do, a “normal job” certainly isn’t in line with those things. Other than working, I’ve set goals to do a few things: travel to a foreign country (I’ve never been outside of the US), be on a panel or a presenter at SXSW, help build the best WordPress Meetup Group ever, and get in better shape than I’ve probably ever been in. There are plenty of other goals, but these are certainly near the top of the list.

Questions? Feel free to ask me in the comments below.

WordPress is an excellent CMS for building easily edited and updated websites. It also has a well-structured architecture that performs reasonably well and is mostly well-optimized for search engines. However, depending on your use of WordPress, there are a few tips to keep in mind when building your WordPress website.

Well Written Content

Without decent content on a page, getting a page to rank organically is an extremely tough and often fruitless endeavor. Simply stuffing keywords has been proven countless times to cause a page to perform very poorly, and provides no real value to a human who finds your page. The best rule of thumb is to write for people first, and fill their need before considering any SEO implications.

Use An SEO-Optimized Theme

The core of WordPress is pretty good by itself when it comes to structuring content for SEO considerations. However, the bulk of the work falls upon the theme (also called a “template”). Many of the more common frameworks (like Genesis and Thesis) are very well constructed and perform very well in respect to SEO. Some even have configurable settings dedicated to common parameters that may need to be tweaked for optimization purposes.

Use An SEO Plugin

While the optimization of many of the popular theme frameworks is fairly well thought out, there are many important details that the theme simply cannot control. Robots.txt files, .htaccess editing, and XML sitemap files are all important for proper crawling and indexation. Most of the better SEO plugins for WordPress (Yoast’s WordPress SEO, SEO Ultimate, and Platinum SEO) can control these natively. If you prefer another SEO plugin that cannot access these settings, there are tons of standalone plugins for each of these functions.

There are thousands of SEO tools and plugins available, but keeping these three simple tips will be a great start to optimizing your WordPress blog or website for SEO.

A while back, I did an experiment trying to prove that while Twitter links are marked as nofollow, that they actually ARE followed.

I had a registered, but never-used domain. Google searches for the domain name yielded zero results. I published a simple, static HTML page (no possibility of trackbacks/pinging/RSS/etc.), and tweeted a link from a public Twitter account (the published link was nofollowed). Within 16 hours, the page was picked up and indexed.

This alone tells us multiple things:

1. Links on Twitter accounts can be followed, regardless of the link state. I’m sure that some spammy accounts are “sandboxed” and not followed, but for the sake of discussion, we’re referring to good accounts.
2. The next logical step here is to push for a self-hosted short URL service. Even though most services (like bit.ly) do 301-redirects, it’s better for it to redirect from your own domain.
3. Links from good Twitter accounts are a probable ranking metric.

My personal Twitter account currently has a SEOMoz Page Authority of 58. That’s pretty respectable. So, it’s not crazy to assume some of that will get passed (Google did crawl the link, after all). If nothing else, it’s a great way to get a site indexed quickly!

Site speed is important from a usability standpoint. If you’ve got a Flash-heavy site, or large images, the bounce rate tends to go up, given that people are, by nature, impatient. So, for Google to announce that they’re taking page load speed into account is no surprise.

I’ve said many, many times before that the ultimate goal of Google is to see the web as a real person does, and rank accordingly. They’re getting quicker and better at it. People need information and want data quickly. They want it to be updated and as efficient to access as possible. Attention spans are simply shrinking, and unlikely the surfer will stay very long if the page takes forever to load.

Google’s Webmaster Tools has a great Site Performance tool that highlights possible issues on the page, and gives some detailed information on the issue. You could also install the Page Speed plugin for Firefox to study site speed problems.

There are countless “SEO experts” available. Online, locally,…just about everywhere. They’re like fire ants. You get rid of some, and twice as many pop up later.

You have to give these guys some credit. These “SEO experts” can undoubtedly make a page appear high in search results. However, it’s for a keyphrase that is not realistically profitable (or even useful) for your business’s website. Long-tail keywords have value, but you just can’t build a business from that.

Search Engine Optimization is really becoming an archaic term. We’re no longer needing to appease the crawlers; it’s the user that is really important here. There are some things that should be done for the sake of the search engine, but ultimately, it trickles down to making it an easier surfing experience for the user.

Optimizing for the user won’t get you front page results in hours, days, or maybe even weeks. It does take time and effort to appear in natural results for your profitable keywords. And, while it’s true there are ways to game the system, these almost always result in a much more costly and time-consuming negative impact for your site. It’s simply not worth it in the short or long term.

Keep in mind that you’re selling to the user, not the search engine.