Quantifying SEO

Matthew Henry just completed a great article about metrics in search engine optimization. His two metrics – Relative Position Index (RPI) and Click-Through Prediction (CTP) – have helped me prepare and target search marketing campaigns for years now. Some of the math is a little daunting for a marketing guy like me, but the message is a powerful one: You can guide your SEO campaign towards the terms and phrases that offer the best chance of traffic for your particular site, and reduce guesswork.

Here’s a quick summary:

RPI provides a way to quantify how competitive your site is after search engine optimization. It’s an indicator of your rank relative to your competitors, and of your potential. You can increase your RPI by adding quality, relevant content to your web site. You can also use RPI to predict your actual rank on a given search engine. It’s not exact, of course, but we’ve found RPI to be a great measure.

CTP uses RPI to predict the amount of traffic you’ll get for a given term, with a certain RPI. CTP is very approximate, too, but we’ve found very reliably that a term providing double the CTP provides double the traffic.

By putting the two together, you can pick-and-choose the terms and phrases that offer the best opportunity for your site right now, as well as the best opportunity after you add pages.

But you can get the details straight from the source:
Click here to read the article.