Transcript
Hi guys. And welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is be wary of the average position metric in ranking reports. So what I specifically mean is, a lot of rank tracking tools, like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, the whole gamut of them, they all have their rank tracking tools. And usually... And even in Search Console, there is a metric called your average position. And it's something that is usually displayed very large, but I actually would be very wary of how much weight you give that metric.
So I'm going to go ahead and talk about that today in today's video, but I wanted to introduce the tea we have today. Today we have a Keemun black tea, which is a tea that I bought five or six years ago, when I wanted to make boba milk tea at home. And I was a huge fan of it, and so I went to one of my more favorite boba shops, bought some tea, and then I still have it to this day. I don't really drink this as much anymore. I'm [inaudible 00:00:55] drink much black tea, but whenever I do drink black tea, it always gives me boba milk tea nostalgia. So let's go ahead, get brewing, get chatting.
So when we're talking about being wary about the average position metric, so the reason why this is important is that when you're rank tracking a lot of different keywords... The average position is a very important metric in that you can kind of see where you're generally at in terms of your ranking. But the one thing that you have to be very careful about is the average position metric does not measure two things that could be really important.
It depends on your settings. The number one setting that I'm very wary of in Search Console... This is the reason why I don't even use Search Console's metric, is your average position is just the average of all the keywords you may be ranking for divided by the number of keywords. Right? So that's the average. But what I specifically mean here is I have seen instances where our site has grown. We've added a new page, or we've added new sections of the site.
And because now we are targeting new keyword groups or we're expanding... Let's say our website used to rank on average on the 20th spot. So the second or third page. Right? And because we have expanded our keyword list, we are now are trying to rank for, I don't know, 50 more keywords under these two keyword groups. And we've just added these new pages.
Well now, because you're trying to go for those keywords, let's say now your site ranks for lots of different keywords on the eighth or ninth page, because Google is starting to recognize that your site is starting to rank. Well, now the average position metric will take into account all those keywords in the eighth and ninth page, and it will plummet your average position. And I wouldn't say that that was... So when you read the metric, you might see it negatively because you're like, "Oh my god, our rankings are getting worse." But actually, in this case, they're getting better because your keyword library is expanding.
So your average position, if you do it as a whole totality, it can be really deceiving. Or actually... There's just no insight into that metric because there's many keywords that your site will rank for that don't matter to your bottom line. And it's just the normal way of things. Your website will rank for non-related keywords or just random things that don't really matter, but they will pull down your average position metrics.
So when you're on Search Console or you're looking at these other reports, if you're looking at the average position metric, be careful about it. If their average position metric takes into account any keyword that you possibly could rank for, it will take into account many keywords that just don't matter to you. Right? And so that's the one where I'd be very careful about. Average position should only really be taken into account when you can really slice and dice and get granular with that metric. So that's why in the beginning, I said it depends on your settings.
Now, let's say you've done a good job. You've organized all your keywords into different keyword groupings. And then now you have average position metrics by keyword group. That's a lot better, because now you have filtered out a lot of keywords that don't mean anything to your site. And the second... Can only pull down, or maybe even pull up your average position metric, but actually don't matter to you. Because who the hell cares if your average position goes up if all those keywords pulling it up don't matter to your business. Right? So that's the first segment.
The second segment. Now, let's say you do have the average position metric broken down into the different keyword groups. Now, what I will say is that the second issue I have with average position metric is it doesn't take search volume into consideration. And if you've done any keyword research, you've probably seen that a lot of keywords follow that 80/20 rule, where 20% of the keywords in your keyword group will account for 80% of the search volume. Where a lot of the keywords may have 0, 10 to 50 searches, but your high-volume keywords have anywhere from like 500 to a thousand or up search volume for that keyword.
So the average position chart unfortunately doesn't take that into consideration. It really only looks at all the keywords you have in the average position. So I have seen a lot of reports where our average position looks like it's terrible, but we do rank for the high-volume keywords on the first page. It's just that low hanging fruit, those long-tail keywords, that have 10 here, 10 here are not doing as well. And so therefore, the average position metric may look like we're not doing well, but in actuality, if you take the search volume into consideration, we're doing hot, because we are ranking for a high-volume keyword.
So at the end of the day, I do want to... I do use average position metrics, but when I look at them, I look at them as a general base performance kind of metric. I do not use it as the end all be all. I report to my clients, "Oh, look. Our average position went up or down." I don't use it in that sense. I just use it more as a guiding light. I'm like, "Oh, okay. Our average position used to be 40 and now we jumped to 41. So we went down a little bit." But I don't... I really only pay attention to it when it gets massive, like, "Oh, we were on... Our average position was 40, and now we're at 50." That's a whole page down. So we need to take a look at that.
All Right. So average position metric it's a great metric to look on the top level at a real quick glance. But if you're actually executing SEO, it can very deceiving and it can point you, essentially, nowhere, to be honest. I really feel like the average position, if it's used improperly, just tells you absolutely nothing. Right?
So when you're using your own rank tracking, ensure that you understand that metric's fine, but you don't use it as the golden like, "Oh, this is what we want to improve." Because I feel like it's kind of a waste effort, but go... I'm interested. Hopefully that will help you guys. I generally use rank tracking more so on keyword specific... In each keyword group to see what are the high-volume ones are performing better and so on and so forth. But hopefully that will, guys, will help you when you're rank tracking. If you guys found the video valuable, please like and subscribe. And I hope to see you guys again soon.
Thanks everybody.
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