Ranking Revolution

Doug: To the ranking revolution podcast,
your go to source for strategies

and ideas for SEO, organic growth,
content creation, and online business.

I'm Doug Cunnington, your host.

And today we're going to talk about.

Key performance indicators or KPIs.

I came from the consulting world,
the corporate world, and KPIs were

immediately shoved down my throat
when I showed up for orientation.

So not too long ago, I was.

talking with a coaching client
and I threw out KPIs and they

stopped me and said, what are KPIs?

And I had to explain their
key performance indicators.

So today we're going to go through
some of the benefits of having

KPIs that you actually track.

We'll talk about metrics, dashboards,
how these KPIs could provide motivation.

They could also be a little depressing
depending on what's going on.

And they could provide some insights for
performance reviews, bonuses, raises,

and things working with your team.

So KPIs are key performance
indicators, as I mentioned.

And the idea is what's right
there in the definition.

You're looking at specific
metrics that help you understand

how your business is performing.

All right.

So pretty straightforward.

And a lot of you out there are running
an agency, you're solo operators.

You might have a fairly big team,
but you may not be tracking KPIs.

And when I was coming up through,
uh, consulting, not that it was novel

at that specific time, but there
was a great interest in dashboards.

And I mentioned it before.

I mean, I was basically doing the
job that the Bob's from office space.

We're doing and essentially, you
know, we're trying to look at complex

situations And simplify them a little
bit and maybe there's a big organization.

There's a lot of moving pieces There's
political stuff involved and if you

could boil it down to a dashboard Then
it's very helpful for Management and

leadership and people that are driving
the vision to make decisions because

they have the data that they need,
that tracks hopefully with the actual

performance that, that they need to track.

So it provides a clear picture.

And the thing is with dashboards,
you can have, uh, Pictures, and you

can have graphs and charts that show
things versus looking at a spreadsheet

of numbers, which could be a little
bit harder to decipher and interpret

and having the data in a chart and
having the spreadsheets valuable.

Some people.

Want that data just like that and then
other people want to see the pictures

Specifically, you know management
often wants to see the pictures.

So when you're thinking about Working
for a client, you know, they're sort

of the boss or sort of the executives
They are the decision makers or the

people writing you the checks if you're
running an agency and you're doing

marketing or SEO for them So if you
could show them a dashboard It's awesome.

So one of the things you have to consider
is what do you put in your dashboard?

What are some of the metrics
that you're going to look at?

What depends on, you know,
what business you're running?

If it's a sort of a cert pure sales
organization where you have, um,

clients that you need to close, you, you
have cold outreach that you might do.

You might be tracking the number
of new leads that you call and you

actually have a conversation with them.

That could be, you know, one of the things
that you track, or you might be tracking

like how many deals are actually close.

So if you are in a sales
organization, you're probably

tracking both of those things.

Those are, those are pretty
key, but what you get into is

leading and lagging indicators.

And the leading Indicators often
focus on the front end so that they

lead and you do those up front.

So those might be the sales calls
and I'm going to give some specific

SEO examples just to illustrate it.

So the leading indicators, you do those
first and then the lagging indicators.

Those are typically the results.

So it.

Typically is the performance.

So it might be the revenue generated.

It could be the number of deals
you closed or the number of widgets

that you sell and tracking both is
important because hopefully you have

some sort of correlation, you have.

Uh, an idea of how many deals you close or
what the conversion rate essentially is.

So for specific examples, you might
have a leading indicator for SEO

is like publishing more content.

And typically if you publish more content
and you're targeting the right keywords,

you're going to get more traffic.

And then hopefully if you get
more traffic, then you're going to

sell more stuff, whatever it is.

So at the end of the day, you're.

Your results are tracking along.

They're moving in a positive
direction, but it all started with

doing more of that leading indicator.

Another example might be
building more backlinks.

So if you build high quality
backlinks, you do proper.

PR and you're getting links from great
sources, then probably your rankings

will move up, your traffic will go up
and you will again, close more deals.

You'll earn more money
at the end of the day.

So the lagging indicator that's
most important for a business

typically is that revenue number.

However, there might be some intermediate
steps along the way that you could track.

And as I mentioned before, it
is useful to track both of these

things because it turns out.

Let's use the example of publishing more
content for SEO, you publish content,

but it's not like you're going to get
traffic immediately after you publish it.

So it might, it might be
lagging by a few months.

So you might publish a lot of
content and nothing happens for

several weeks, a couple months.

And then all of a sudden you start
getting some traction, you gain

a compounding effect and you end
up getting a whole lot of growth.

But it's.

Way out in the future.

And this happens all over the place.

And you can observe this for
podcasting or YouTube or whatever

kind of content you're creating.

This is sort of what happens.

Like there's some critical mass that
you have to hit and then growth is.

Not intuitive.

So things grow out more.

So when you put all this together,
it's great to have a clean dashboard

that shows the leading and the lagging
indicators, and be very transparent

about the timeframes, as much as you
know, about how long it takes for.

The results to propagate
through the system here.

And if everyone's expectations are
lined up, you, the rest of your team,

the client, then they'll know when
to expect results and that's great.

This all comes together with the fact
that if the clients see that they're

getting good results from your work,
they're going to keep working with you.

So.

It's very important upfront to set the
right expectations, have the dashboard,

have the understanding, everyone, everyone
involved, you, the client, your team

for the leading and lagging indicators.

And actually I think I'll do another
episode where I go a little bit deeper

into leading and lagging indicators.

But the whole point here is to track KPIs.

And if you track KPIs in an effective way,
there's a good chance your clients will

be stickier when you come in and you have.

A proper dashboard with KPIs,
you're going to be able to show your

professionalism that you know what
you're doing, and you could probably

find some great templates for dashboards
for SEO specifically, and then, you

know, you can add your own spin on it.

So.

That is KPIs in a nutshell.

If you have any questions out there,
do let me know and keep an eye out

for the leading and lagging indicator
episode, where it can go a little

bit more in depth on some of those
specifics, if you haven't left a review

for the show, it really does help out.

It helps, helps people.

Realize there's value in these
ranking revolution episodes.

I got some cool guests coming up.

So hopefully you will check those out.

And one of them is Dre from the SEO
video podcast or the SEO video show.

Right.

So it's over on YouTube.

He does have a podcast too, but
we'll link up and we talk about it

when we actually do the interview.

Have a great day out there and
we'll catch you on the next episode.