Corporate Blogging

I had a conversation with a customer late last week who has had a blogging program going for over a year now.

During that year, this customer has been watching their search engine rankings weekly and evaluating success based on what is happening with those rankings - i.e. has a rank of 100 on page 10 turned into a ranking of 1 or 2?

The customer was frustrated that they had not seen any real traction with those rankings during the past 2 or 3 months. The rankings had reached a stagnant spot, with around 25% of the keyword terms showing up as the #1 result, 25% on the first page, and the other 50% page 2 and beyond.

On the surface level, their corporate blogging program was falling flat of their original goal: To have every keyword they targeted to show up on page 1.

However, below the surface, here is what happened: their blog traffic had more than doubled in the past 3 months. Their conversion numbers had nearly tripled. They were generating real interest and actions from blog visitors. Not only were more prospects finding them -- the prospects were interacting with them!

So back to the original question - are search engine rankings the best way to evaluate your blogging efforts? Not really. They are a helpful gage that will give you an indication of how visible your organization is on the web, but what happens on the traffic and conversion side is most important when evaluating blogging success.