Keyword Volume: The Overlooked Indicator

My post on Keyword Potential™ generated some great responses and some questions.  I was surprised by the number of emails I have received about Keyword Volume so I thought I’d spend a little bit more time on it.

Keyword Volume is defined as the number of phrases that generate search engine referrals for you over a given period of time.

When you are tracking the performance of a SEO plan, particularly for large sites, there is a lot of data that can obfuscate the results.  For example, just because your search engine referral traffic has gone up by 100% doesn’t mean you are getting better SEO results.  After all, you may be have been ranked #1 for “Angeline Jolie’s Devil Child” for a year before you did any SEO but when she gave birth to the AntiChrist yesterday your traffic went through the roof.  That doesn’t mean that your SEO plan is working.

I have found that the change in Keyword Volume is a great indicator of how the SEO is going.  For instance, if your site generated referrals off of 100 phrases a month ago and now it is generating referrals off of 200 phrases, that might indicate that you are ranking for many more phrases now.

Of course it’s not 100% foolproof (seasonality of search subjects could easily skew the data), but it’s not a bad place to start.