How Do You Measure SEO Success?
Published on: 10/08/2010 10:48:29 PMFiled under: Search Engine Optimization
So you have researched SEO strategies, made necessary adjustments, and implemented all the latest SEO techniques to assure your website is fully SEO optimized. Now what? How do you go about measuring success of all your hard work?
Years ago you could say, well I have a number one rank. Unfortunately this is not sufficient enough these days. The problem is that search results aren’t the same around the world due to localization. If you do a search in Ottawa Canada for a phrase you may rank #1 or #2, however if you did the same search in London England, you may not even be on the first 5 pages. Furthermore, search engines are becoming very smart and rank according to previously searched phrases. Obviously this is only done if you are logged in. If you are, then they can track your search history and rank according to those behaviors. Because of this, it is much harder to figure out what OTHER people are seeing when they search on specific terms or phrases. Because you see certain results, doesn’t mean others are seeing the same results, which makes it very difficult to put on a value on how well your SEO strategies are working.
Web Analytics
So how do you measure success with organic searches? The primary way is to monitor your website with a web analytics software and identify what constitutes a successful visit on your website. This is referred to a Conversion Point. Did a person come to your website using a specific term? Which terms did they use? Which terms convert on your website? So you want to monitor search terms and conversion for those search terms.There are a few free analytics software that will be able to track your results such as Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics. I prefer Google Analytics. First you would have to register your account. Once that is done, you simply have to place a small piece of JavaScript code at the bottom of every web page within your website. Data begins to flow in immediately, so by the next day you will start seeing various data pertaining to searches and other valuable statistics.
Identify Goals
Once that is done, you need to identify the goal or purpose of your website. What constitutes a conversion? You establish these goals in Google Analytics in which they allow you to specify up to 4 goals. An example of a goal could be, did someone fill out a newsletter subscription? Identify the final page in the conversion and assign an amount of money it’s worth to you. By putting a monetary value to your goals you can then determine which search terms drive buyers versus ones that amount to nothing. For more information about goals and how to set them up, you can learn more by going to Google Analytics Help Section.How to Measure Success
So we’re getting data on all sorts of things using Google Analytics. Data such as search terms used, amount of click throughs, conversion rates based on goals, and much more. So how do we measure success from a search engine optimization standpoint with all of this data? Using Google Analytics you would look at the following: traffic sources, search engines, and keywords and sort this by dollar value, and then examine. You will be able to determine which search terms are bringing in the value. For example, you may have a search term show up 100 times in a day with no conversions, and then another search term that shows up only once but did convert. From that, you would know that you really need to optimize more on that 1 term since it converted far better than the other. Moreover, you can then lookup that converted term and see where you rank in the search engines. If you rank somewhere very low, then you can then decide to put more effort into getting that term to rank better. Optimize for the search terms that are converting well and making you money.The Purpose
The purpose in all of this is not just to get numbers, rather it is to figure out where to put your effort so that you can increase the bottom line. It’s part of a life cycle. Many people think that once you optimized your website, you can just leave it and it will flourish. It doesn’t work that way. You need to continually adjust, and Google Analytics provides a perfect way to make those adjustments.So, how do you measure SEO success? Show me the money!
For a brief introduction to Google Analytics, please view the video below: