If you do search engine optimization (SEO) and don’t have a Google Webmaster Tools account… you may want to get one fast! For one thing, you’ll get access to invaluable data, including your ‘average position’ in Google. With Google now localizing and personalizing search results, your average position is actually the most important Google search engine ranking to consider.

Data inside your Google Webmaster Tools account also shows what keywords are really translating into traffic to your website. And they may not be what you think. In fact, as you’re about to discover, a high average position for a given keyword may not give you as much traffic as a lower average position… and the keywords you’re optimizing for may NOT be the ones that generate the most traffic…

Although a Google Webmaster Tools account is free, some Internet marketers decide not to get one because they don’t want to alert Google to some (or all) of their websites and, perhaps, their ‘blackhat’ search engine optimization (SEO) activities. Fair enough, but if you don’t mind sharing your website data with Google, you’ll certainly benefit from the insightful analytics you’ll get in return. These are analytics that may well change – and improve – your entire SEO strategy…

As such, if you don’t have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can register for one at Google Webmaster Tools.

Once you have your account up and running, just add and verify the website(s) you wish to track, and then simply select a given website to view the data for that site.

Okay, so why is your average position in Google so important?

Well, Google’s efforts to localize and personalize search engine results mean that if you search Google from a different country and/or computer, you’ll likely see different results come up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). What’s more, your site will tend to rank differently at different times.

Your average position in Google – based on where your site ranks for all or a selected location(s) and over a specific time period – is therefore much more meaningful than where your site appears in Google when YOU happen to search on a given keyword phrase.

To see what your average position is for various search queries, log-in to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on a website to view the dashboard for that site. Your dashboard will display some VERY interesting data, including the following:

• Search queries – a list of the top search queries or keyword phrases used to access your site, including the number of impressions and clicks for each search query.
• Links to your site – the number of links to your site that Google has counted.
• Keywords – the most common words Google has found when crawling your site.

This data alone is highly illuminating, but for the purposes of this article, let’s just focus on deriving meaning out of the Search queries section and your average position. To do so, follow these steps:

Step 1: View Search Queries

Once in the dashboard, click on the “More” link displayed under the Search queries data set. A list of search queries or keyword phrases will appear, along with their impressions, clicks, click-through rates (CTRs) and average positions.

Step 2: Select Data Parameters

Above the list of search queries you’ll see three parameters or filters you can modify:

• Select ‘All’ to identify searches across all Google’s search indexes or just its videos, images or webpage indexes, etc.
• Select ‘All countries’ or just a specific country to see your average search engine ranking for each search query.
• Select a date range, noting that Google will only present data going back a month from the current date.

Step 3: Review Impressions, Clicks, CTR and Average Position

Based on your chosen data parameters, you’ll see the following data for each keyword phrase:

• Impressions – the number of times your search listing appeared to search engine users when they searched on the given keyword phrase;
• Clicks – the number of times people clicked on your Google listing;
• CTR – the clickthrough rate (clicks divided by impressions); and
• Average Position – the average position of your listing in the Google SERPs.

Now you know, not only how your site is ranking for a given search phrase, but how EFFECTIVE that search phrase is for eliciting page impressions and click-throughs (i.e. traffic to your site).

In other words, Google is basically telling you what keywords or keyword phrases you should be optimizing for, based on what search engine users are actually clicking on.

If, for example, a given keyword phrase has a large number of impressions AND clicks – i.e. a high clickthrough rate or CTR – then you’ll probably want to optimize your site (or more precisely, a particular page on your website) to rank highly for that keyword phrase.

Or will you?

This is where the data available in your Google Webmaster Tools account provides even MORE insights…

Step 4: Analyze Position in Search Results

Select one of your keyword phrases and click on the little plus ‘+’ sign to the left of that keyword phrase. Google will now display the number of impressions, clicks and CTR attributable to a given position in Google’s search results. (Where applicable, Google will display results for positions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to 10, 2nd, and 3rd page +). Google will also display the specific webpages that received impressions and/or clicks for that keyword phrase.

Now you can see how many pages are ranking and attracting impressions and clicks for a given keyword phrase, along with an indication of how a relatively high (or low) Google search engine ranking impacts impressions, clicks and CTR.

One thing that intrigued me when I reviewed this data for some of our websites was that, for some search terms, we actually got MORE clicks for LOWER rankings e.g. in positions 6 to 10 on the first page of Google results or even on the second page of results!

So, in some cases, a higher search engine ranking may NOT translate into more traffic. The reasons for this probably have a lot to do with the psychology and context of search engine users – a fascinating topic in itself, but one for another day.

For now, as you can probably see, this data is pretty empowering and may well change the way you view and do SEO…

So, if you haven’t yet got a Google Webmaster Tools account, seriously consider getting one to see how your site is really performing in Google.

Related Articles:

• Why SEO Beats PPC Advertising: Most Search Engine Users Ignore PPC Ads
• Google Changes Search Engine Results… What’s The Damage?
• How To Get Your Flash Content Indexed By Google
• Free Must-Have Tool: SEO For Firefox
• Warning: Don’t Use The Google Keyword Tool For SEO

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Feature, Search Marketing, Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.