I’ve read a lot of literature that explains how to set up web pages for the best natural Search Engine Optimization. However, there is very little written on how to measure that success. You spend a lot of time optimizing the pages, so here are a few things you can do to see if that time was spent wisely.
Check your Rankings. If you are using a large number of keywords to bring traffic to your site, it will not be feasible to track each one. For this reason, pick a subset of the large list - the main keywords that are increasing sales - and track them.
To best select your keywords, use the words that are ranking high for traffic and revenue in your PPC campaign. Then you can easily measure success by watching for words that climb or drop in search-engine rankings.
Revenue: One might think that measuring Revenue is the easiest way to determine if your SEO is working. But you need to do it right. You can’t just put up the new pages and start tracking money coming in. Revenue is the most important, and most accurate thing to try to compare, but it has to be an ANNUAL comparison.
Since different times of the year have highs and lows, when you track annually, you can get a good average and determine if the overall strategy is working.
Traffic: It’s sometimes hard to measure traffic exactly. Use your web site’s Administrative Control Panel as the best resource. The charts and graphs show monthly traffic, so it should be easy to compare current traffic to last year’s traffic during that same time period.
Just be sure to take into account any special promotions that may have been done during that time that would skew the numbers.
If you’ve done your homework correctly, and have your pages highly optimized for the search engines, all of these areas should show increases throughout the year. And, you’ll be well on your way to effective
SEO!