SEO is undoubtedly essential to running a successful internet based business. Without good SEO, a webiste will never get noticed by potential customers and business partners, which is why many companies spend thousands of dollars on getting top rankings.
However, it is not enough to simply apply SEO strategies such as getting good backlinks, using keywords in the right locations and submitting articles to article directories such as Ezine and Suite 101. You also have track your SEO performance if you want to gauge whether or not your SEO strategy is as successful as it should be.
When tracking SEO performance, you will want to look at the following factors:
– Where site visitors are coming from
– Which links are leading to the most sales
– Social media shares and bookmarks
– Advertisement based leads and ROI
Tracking Site Visitor Information
Tracking site visitor information is very important, as you want to find out which sites are referring the most people to your site. Google should be near the top of the list; if it is not, then you will need to work on your keyword strategy to increase organic traffic.
You also want to find out the geographical location of most of your visitors. This can be done easily using Google Analytics. If you see that a large number of visitors are coming from a certain area, this means that there is an interest in this area for what you have to offer and you may want to consider doing a local SEO campaign to target the area in question.
Sales
You also want to find out which links are bringing in the most sales. it is entirely possible for most of your visitors to be coming from one or two particular links while most of your sales come from entirely different links.
Finding out which links have the highest return on investment will help you know where and who to target with a strategic marketing plan. It will also help you see which products are in high demand and which may need to be marketed in a different way or even discontinued altogether.
Social Media Shares and Bookmarks
You will also want to keep track of your social media sites and see how they are performing. While social media sites may not bring in immediate traffic and sales, they perform a valuable service by helping to create an awareness of your brand name and what you have to offer. Some good social media sites to use include Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter.
Social sites such as Reddit and Digg are good for sharing your blog content. Each of these services has a way in which you can keep track of views, bookmarks, shares, likes, subscribers, etc. Your site statistics area should show how many visitors come to the site via any one of these avenues.
Keeping Track of Advertising ROI
If you are investing money in Google Ads or some other form of advertisement, you will naturally want to make sure the money being spent is well worth the investment. You can keep track of Google Ads using Analytics. Yahoo and Bing have their own advertisement platforms and webmaster sites with detailed report statistics.
If you work with affiliates, develop a number of banner ads that affiliates can place on their sites. Track these banner ads to see which ones are bringing in the most visitors and revenue. This can be done using one of the many affiliate ad creation and tracking programs available from various companies.
Optimizing and promoting your site online is very important, but you also want to make sure that your hard work is paying off and resulting in sales and leads. Take some time on a regular basis to analyze your sources of traffic and see which links and sites are the most profitable in terms of generating traffic and sales. Getting help from a professional SEO agency can also help you to better target your market, especially if you are new to marketing and/or not particularly tech-savvy.