If you are a current SiteJuice user, and tou’ve recently received your website report by email and now you are wondering what Current Site Value and Potential Site Value are and the differences between them. This post will help you understand how we cam up with this, what it means, and what we’re doing to improve it. If you are not currently using SiteJuice, you can get a 30-day free trial.
Overview
What we are attempting to show you is the value of your SEO efforts compared to what it would cost you to purchase all of the search volume in a paid search environment. Many times we are asked “how much should I spend on SEO”, or “how much market share do I have on these keywords”.
Current Site Value
This is calculated by taking all of the keywords in your SiteJuice account by domain, and adding up their cumulative value based on 1) where you rank for the word; 2) how much search volume that word gets, and how much you may get as a result of your position organically; and 3) what it would cost to buy that word in a PPC environment.
Example: your keyword has a search volume of 1,000 searches per month, you rank #2 for that word, and it costs $5 per click in PPC.
Word Value = 1,000 searches per month x 18% of traffic from a #2 position x $5 per click = $900
We know based on research and other data we have gathered, what the approximate number of clicks you may get for the first 30 positions in Google. After position 30, the value is defaulted to “$0″. Now we can calculate your Current Site Value by adding up the word values for all keywords and all pages.
Potential Site Value
This is calculated the same as above, except that the potential traffic percentage is a fixed 42%. What we’re doing is assuming that you rank #1 for all of these search terms, and so this “potential” value shows you how far off you are from achieving this, and unlikely as it may be, this is meant to be a comparison measurement between where you are now, and perfection.
Flaws With This Methodology
As with any type of correlation using several data points, there are a few drawbacks to these figures. Keep in mind that we are working on making these as relevant and insightful as possible, so we welcome any feedback you might have.
1. You won’t rank #1 for all of the keywords you are following. This is really unlikely, and many of the keywords you are watching could be for competitors, or other industry words that may not apply directly to your website. You may also have some very competitive search terms in your list, which are driving up the Potential Site Value number very high. So “internet marketing” which gets searched over 1 million times per month and has a high CPC, might cause your website to get a Potential value in the million of dollars, or tens of millions of dollars.
2. Your account is not tracking enough pages or keywords. If you have a 50-page website, and are only tracking 5 pages and a handful of keywords, naturally your Current Site Value will be much lower than if you were to add all of your pages and all of the keywords you wish to track.
A Possible Remedy
One thing we are considering is integrating your Google Analytics account into SiteJuice so we can track how many actual visits you are getting from a particular keyword, if that keyword has a propensity of bouncing, or is failing to drive conversions. We’d like to give you insight as to how well all of your keywords are performing to give you a better sense of what to focus on in your campaign.
