12. Measure & Track Your SEO Efforts
How
do you know if your search engine optimization is working?
The quick answer
is this: You need to measure and track how people come to your site. If someone
makes a purchase from the site, or fills out a contact form, you should be keeping
track of the search engine queries that they used to get there.
This is information
that your website is probably already collecting, but you're likely not using
on an individual basis for each person.
When someone comes through our website
and fills out a contact form, we are able to track exactly what search terms
they used.
We then can do roll-up reporting on our search engine optimization efforts, to
know what new leads came in from SEO.
If you're doing Google Adwords or other
CPC advertising, it's easy to measure and track the conversions. Google's tracking
system makes it easy, as you are paying on a cost per click basis each time someone
clicks on your keywords.
However,
with a natural search engine program, it can be a little more difficult. What
we like to do is track 10-15 top keywords, and see how they change in the search
results each month. Then we track and measure what's working (new pages, added content,
new inbound links), and try to enhance the results even more.
The
issue is that SEO is a zero sum game. If you're not at the top of the rankings,
but one of your competitors is instead, you're going to lose out. SEO is a constantly
shifting game. What worked last year or last month won't necessarily work next
week, as other sites add content and better optimize their sites.
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