Last week, we mentioned how lots of marketers and business owners mistakenly decide that their SEO efforts aren’t working, either because they give up too soon or because they fail to keep track of the search engine position over time. But Googling yourself isn’t the only way to figure out how you’re doing; here are few other ways you can keep score on your search engine optimization campaign:
New visitors. Naturally, next to where you actually come up in search engine queries, the first thing you’ll want to know is how many visitors are actually coming to your site. It’s hard to sell anything without customers, so keep a close eye on these figures.
Your most popular keywords. With Internet traffic, quality counts every bit as much as quantity. Even a small number of visits can be profitable if the hits are coming from serious shoppers, so pay attention to which keywords and phrases are bringing people to your site.
Incoming links. While finding and arranging incoming links is usually hard work, they can start to appear on their own – if your content is top notch. For that reason, an increase in the number of sites linking to yours is usually a very good sign that your SEO campaign is coming along nicely.
Time on site. Again, think quality, not quantity. All the visitors in the world won’t do anything for you if they aren’t hanging around for long, and it only takes a few devoted readers and buyers to make your search engine campaign worth the effort.
New online sales and revenue. As obvious as it sounds, this is one some people overlook. Hits, Google position, and other numbers are great, but for 99.99% of search engine optimization clients, the goal is more sales, leads, online donations, or some other financial metric. A bump in the bottom line is the clearest sign that you’re going in the right direction.
