You wanted to make more sales from your website. To do that you knew you had to increase not only the number of visitors to your website, but the type of visitors that buy stuff. And you also knew that one of the best sources of this traffic was Google.

You looked at your Google Analytics and found that you weren’t getting much traffic from Google. And you searched for your products on Google, you found that you rarely found your website in the results pages (SERPs). There was just one thing for it: you needed to SEO your website.

Whether you employed an SEO pro in house, or you used an SEO agency, its important to work out how it’s all going.

Here’s 11 ways you can evaluate your SEO program

 

1. Are you getting more general non-paid Search Traffic?

OK this one is pretty obvious, but take time to drill into your analytics to find out if the overall number of non-paid search visitors is going up or down. As some SEO takes time, be sure to look at week on week, month on month and year on year comparisons.

Remember there will be peaks and troughs around the other marketing activity you do, and seasonal events too. For example, an email blast may cause people to search for you online, artificially boosting your traffic figures.

2. Are you getting more traffic from key search terms?

The initial keyword research carried out by your SEO should have identified key search terms that your SEO was going to focus on. Analyse the individual keyword data to find how your traffic is trending against these keywords.

3. Are you keyword ranks improving?

Make sure your SEO gives you access to their keyword ranking tool in order to work out whether your keyword rankings are going up or down. Be sure to use a tool rather than searching for yourself online to make sure you getting ‘normalised’ results.

4. Are you making more sales?

Another simple one: Are you making more sales from your website? Is this down to your SEO program exposing your website to more people? Or are other seasonal or marketing factors at play?

5. Is your conversion rate improving?

Remember good SEO is not just about improving ranking and boosting traffic, but improving rankings in order to get visitors who will buy. If the quality of the traffic source goes up, then the conversion rate of your website will go up.

6. Are you getting visitors from a wider pool of keywords

Whilst SEO initially focuses on specific keywords, a well set up and search engine friendly site will rank well for a wide range of keywords. If your website is gaining traffic from a much larger quantity of keywords, it’s an indication that your SEO is going in the right direction.

7. Are you getting an increased number of links from other websites?

A key part of your SEO program will be building links from other websites. Use a tool like Linkscape from SEOmoz to find out if the number of sites linking to yours is going up.

8. Are you getting an increased number of referral visitors?

An easy way to evaluate the quality of the links to your website is to see whether or not they actually bring you any visitors. Genuinely useful and powerful links serve the purpose for which they were originally intended – as a way for people to click from one website to another.

9. Is your organic Click Through Rate increasing?

Well crafted page titles and descriptions not only help you rank well, they also entice searchers to choose to click on your website in the SERPs. Use Google Webmaster Tools to find out if the CTR from organic search as improved.

10. Are more of your pages being indexed?

As you build new pages and add new content to your website, Google should find and evaluate these pages and add them to its index. Use Google Webmaster tools to find out if the number of indexed pages is going up.

11. Is Google crawling your website more often?

The more you improve your website, and the more content and pages you add the greater attention Google should pay to you. It’s likely that if you are adding good quality and unique content in a well structured manner, Google will choose to revisit and crawl your website more frequently.

12. Are more people searching for your website online?

As you expose your website to more people, and those in turn recommend you on to others, the number of people searching for your website or brand should go up. Of course, brand searches are always influenced by other marketing activities, and are not purely as a result of improved rank.

That’s it

It’s important for every website owner to establish the success of their SEO program. Ask these simple questions to find out how yours is going.

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