Tracking Results and Measuring Success
Web analytics and other data – mining tools can provide a rich array of data that is invaluable to the SEO process. This includes tools of discovering new links, finding long tail search terms, determining the best links your competitors’ sites have, and more. All in all, a strong understanding of these tools will make you a better SEO practitioner.
Why Measuring Success In Essential to the SEO Process
Although quantifying and measuring progress are important for external reporting purposes, it is just as important for SEO practitioners to measure the efficacy of their own efforts to make timely adjustments as necessary.
At the beginning of any SEO project it is wise to establish baseline data points for the website. This includes the following:
- Quantifying organic search traffic by search engine and keyword,
- Quantifying a baseline of the major keywords that are driving traffic by search engine,
- Quantifying a breakout of what sections are getting the current organic search traffic by search engine and keyword,
- Quantifying data on conversions broken down by search engine and keyword,
- Identifying poorly performing pages,
- Tracking search engine crawler activity on the site,
- Determining the number of indexed pages,
- Identifying 404 error pages and external sites linking to these pages, if any
Defining and mapping the path toward concentrate goals are crucial aspects of the SEO process and over time, some goals may change. Therefore, it is also important to make sure the data you capture helps you understand your progess against these goals.
In the world of web analytics, this is referred to as picking Actionable Key Perfomance Indicators ( or Actionable KPIs). The best data measurements are those that potentially result in an action being taken in response. Think of this as data – driven decision making.
