Day: August 26, 2014

One of the achievements of any successful company is to sustain a website that brings back business leads. As we hurtle towards 2015, the importance of standing out amidst a crowd of similar companies and business entities has become ever more important. Initially, companies could get away with writing content about targeted keywords and placing strategic advertisements. Things are of course, not so easy anymore. The importance of measuring and tracking SEO success While there are a number of strategies that can help one to achieve SEO (search engine optimization) success, one of the most neglected or misunderstood aspects is that of measuring and tracking SEO success. Anything that confuses us or even remotely seems difficult to us creates a feeling of resistance. This resistance builds up over a period of time and we either choose all the wrong tactics or choose not to do anything at all, both of which are increasingly common among clients that we see. In order to ensure that a website is successfully helping you to connect with the right kind of people, good SEO practices are a must. However, the most important aspect is to be able to measure if your SEO tactics and strategies have been successful. In this article, we shall discuss how you can measure the success of your SEO projects and what your success metrics must be, for the SEO investments you or your company makes. Before we go further into tracking and measuring, make note of the 10 commandments of SEO success. Do not expect quick results. There are no magic results for SEO Nothing compares to conversion rate originating from organic traffic You need to participate proactively with your agency regarding website content and design alterations. Begin to track visits from your non-paid search Analyze and track the keywords that bring traffic to your website, other than your brand name Track all the branded keywords which bring traffic, right from the first month Keep track of your SEO goals Calculate the average price of your products and services. If you cannot do that, calculate the conversion rate from your leads Filter your organic search to assess if conversion tracking is working accurately Don’t give up. Ever. Every business is unique and it is important to consult with an SEO agency or a search professional to arrive at the best strategy for measuring and tracking SEO success. However, if you would like to try this on your own before approaching professionals, here is a detailed guide. Remember that you are going to measure and track SEO success and not SEO rankings. Search engine ranking is not as relevant as it used to be and things have certainly changed. Where Is Your Traffic Coming From? SEO professionals already know that it is important to segment and categorize from where traffic is coming. It is important to understand how each of these segments behave and how they can be improved in the future. For this, it is important to track the contribution of various traffic sources for your website every month. Direct Navigation: How many people are directly typing in your address to arrive at your website? Did they type it in traffic or did they arrive from a page that was bookmarked? Did they click on links within emails sans tracking codes? Analyze these visits as they probably are more interested in your brand and what you offer than anyone else. They already know you, and they are specifically searching for you. Referrals: How much traffic is coming from referral sources? This may include traffic that originates from links across the web. It could also be from a branding campaign that you launched or some kind of promotion or traceable email. Search Engines: How much of your traffic is coming from queries that were typed into search engines? Search traffic may come from all kinds of search engines. Whether they are big or small, you need to make a list of search engines that are regularly sending you traffic. This may give you important insights into the kind of demographics that are arriving to your website. You will need to keep track of the number of traffic and also the percentage. This will help you to become alert when traffic from search engines plummets. Moreover, if your traffic suddenly increases because of referral links that are insignificant, you do not have to become excited. These insights can be particularly important to track SEO strategies and plan marketing campaigns. What Is the Number of Visits for Each Specific Search Engine? The number of visits per search engine can reveal valuable information about your target audience. Much of the search traffic in North America and elsewhere comes from Google and the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing.There are also other search engines such as Yandex and Baidu, which are popular in Russia and China respectively. People hardly use Ask, AOL and others anymore. However, it is important to know which search engine is sending you the most of number of visitors. Unless you are in China or Russia, it will most likely be Google. Track by each country: By tracking your traffic by country, you will understand how search engines are being used to arrive at your website. Moreover, it helps you to assess market share and compare performance. Google usually has a younger user base than other search engines, though this gap is widely closing in. Yahoo and other search engines are used by older users who have still not moved towards using Google. Yet, that could be a valuable insight in itself. If your business concerns health or retirement benefits, your traffic may very well come from Yahoo. Analyze traffic drops: Sometimes, your traffic will drop drastically. It is then time to check your search engine share in order to see what went wrong. If all search engines have contributed to the traffic drop, then it is probably due to an accessibility issue. However, if only Google shows a