Focus on SEO visibility NOT rankings
As search engines evolve and user behavior grows increasingly complex, it is time for more nuanced language: measuring SEO success through visibility rather than rankings.
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The world of SEO has always been obsessed with rankings. "We're number one for this keyword," “Make me number one for this keyword,” or “We have x number of number one rankings” are all common refrains heard in agencies and in-house SEO teams for the decades since search engines were created.
However, as search engines evolve and user behavior grows increasingly complex, it is time for more nuanced language: measuring SEO success through visibility rather than rankings.
For many years, I have avoided using “ranking” in discussions about SEO goals as much as possible and have always tried to orient the conversation toward “visibility.” In my book, Product-Led SEO, as often as I could I used “visibility” to explain SEO goals rather than a ranking because rankings are not a funnel metric, visibility is. But that’s not the only issue.
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Rankings are flawed
Traditional ranking metrics suffer from several fundamental flaws that render them increasingly unreliable as standalone success indicators. Rankings are inherently volatile - a page ranking first for a keyword today might drop to fourth tomorrow, bounce back to second the next day, and continue this perpetual dance indefinitely.
Even when a ranking is stable for an extended period, as they say in finance, “past performance is not indicative of future results.” Today’s position, in no way, guarantees tomorrow’s.
An SEO agency or team might like to take credit for those increases but doesn’t want to be on the hook for the decreases. In both cases, up and down, the movement and precise positioning are out of human control.
This volatility can even be expected to increase as deeper personalization with AI becomes a feature of search (see my 2025 predictions) as a ranking measured by one individual or tool doesn’t mean it is the same for all searchers.
Rankings aren’t a business metric
Most critically, rankings of single queries or even collective averages tell us nothing about actual business impact. While a number one ranking for a high-volume keyword might sound impressive in a report, that traffic becomes meaningless if it fails to convert or engage with your content in meaningful ways.
Throughout my career, I earned many “#1 rankings” for vanity keywords, but only when they disappeared or lost rankings did I realize how little most of them contributed to the bottom line - unless that “ranking” drove high volumes of quality traffic.
To illustrate this point, if this newsletter were to rank first on Google for “SEO consultant,” I might receive significant traffic, which would benefit my sponsorship efforts but would not directly correlate to conversions into SEO consulting. If my objectives were to drive more consulting, that ranking would be a vanity keyword, whereas if I were more interested in driving media traffic, that would be an ideal keyword.
Understanding SEO visibility
SEO visibility represents a more holistic approach to measuring organic search success. Rather than fixating on individual keyword rankings, visibility examines your overall presence in the search landscape for your target market.
This comprehensive view encompasses the total number of keywords for which your site appears in search results, their search impressions, clicks from search, and most importantly, the relevance to business goals across different stages in the user journey.
Instead of measuring success on single queries that you predetermine from keyword research, visibility measures how much of a footprint you have across the entire landscape. This broader perspective provides deeper insights into your actual organic search performance.
Visibility matters more
Visibility metrics align better with business objectives by considering the entire spectrum of user interactions with your URL’s in search results. This includes informational queries at the top of the funnel, navigational searches from aware users, and transactional queries from ready-to-convert prospects. The approach delivers a more accurate picture of SEO performance by accounting for seasonality, market trends, and the competitive landscape while reflecting the actual potential for business performance from search.
Visibility metrics enable strategic decision-making by revealing gaps in indexation, opportunities in underserved user segments, and sectors requiring additional investment in content and/or technical SEO.
Make the switch
To transition from rankings to visibility as your primary SEO metric, define what visibility means for your business. This means understanding what you want users to find when they search your intent clusters.
Rather than measuring individual rankings, look at the share of voice for those users from an impression standpoint before measuring the traffic from ALL queries. For example, an e-commerce site selling luxury fashion should calculate the number of impressions each product receives. This impression number can be compared against other products in the catalog to determine whether a product has good or bad visibility.
Within this calculation, an average position (as shared by Google Search Console) can also be included as a relative visibility benchmark.
Tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Similarweb are helpful, but focus your measurement on metrics that indicate true visibility: total ranking keywords, position distribution, AI overviews, brand mentions, media mentions, and, if relevant, geographic coverage.
Search in the future
As search continues evolving, visibility's importance over rankings will only intensify. The rise of AI-driven search experiences in SEO will increasingly depend on maintaining a broad, authoritative presence across the entire search landscape rather than winning rankings on isolated keywords, which most people only track on Google.
Visibility should be viewed literally; total visibility should include any search engines or AI outputs.
While rankings will always remain relevant, they represent just one component of a broader visibility metric. By shifting focus to visibility, SEO teams and agencies can better demonstrate the value of their work and make more informed decisions about organic search strategies. This approach provides a more accurate picture of SEO success and aligns with future search engine operations and user behavior patterns.
The next time you catch yourself using the word rankings, swap that word for visibility. It will unlikely change the meaning of what you are attempting to say, but that subtle change will impact your and any stakeholder's views on what constitutes success.
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