eLearning Series
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.