Written By Noah Mallin | October 20, 2008 | Share This |

Profile Optimization

There was a moment on most episodes of the classic TV sitcom Three’s Company where one character - usually crusty landlord Mr. Roper but sometimes ascot-wearing landlord Ralph Furley - overhears one or more of the other characters and totally misinterprets what’s going on. A simple coat being left at a party turns into a trip to the sanitarium in the fevered minds of the landlords at this particular apartment building.

Search engines often have as much to go on as Don Knotts did when he put a glass to the kitchen door and heard Jack and Chrissy discussing how high the souffle was rising when it comes to what’s relevant to searchers on a given website.

Back in olden times, say 2007, you could measure how will Google was getting your SEO drift in part by looking at how you ranked for a given search query. Those days are past now, as Google and the other engines get ever more sophisticated with targeting by geography and search behavior and different results are served up depending on the user. Indeed Google blocks most third-party search ranking tools now.

So how do we know that users (landlords) are getting the right idea when they visit our apartment (website)? A good SEO will tell you that your on-site measurement is more important than ever. After all, the ultimate point of SEO is to build traffic and in some cases have that follow through with an action. Though it’s harder to measure this directly than it is with paid search through analysis of the analytics on your site can go a long way to determining if Google sees your page as fornicating heathens or two fresh-faced youngsters making dessert.

Topics: Google: AdWords, SEO, Search: How-To |