Track online results

Based on the SEO goals for improving organic search results, identify the core metrics you can measure. The deeper you get into SEO, the more you’ll realize the infinite possibilities for measuring key performance indicators as well a minutia. Sometimes minutia is very helpful for content, but not always for higher level analytical analysis.
At the beginning, keep metric measurements simple, yet meaningful. At the very least, when prospects call your office, want to buy your products or hire you, ask them how they found you. Make note every time someone mentions your website and dig a little by asking the role the website played in their decision to act. Even this minimal information provides clues for improving the home page, making the online purchasing process easier and quicker, reworking ineffective pages, or discovering new keywords.
Using your benchmark information, you can compare figures such as sales, donations, memberships, and subscriptions before and after your SEO improvements.
You can also glean useful information from your website’s analytical package or from a multitude of free analytics tools such as Google Analytics. Become familiar with the type of data available and then determine what makes the most sense for you to continually monitor. Data can include:
Search engine traffic: the percent of visitors arriving through search engines vs. total site traffic, top keywords and search engines used to arrive at your site.
Unique visitors
Referring sites: other sites sending traffic to your site.
Page views: entry and exit pages, page views per visit, top bounce rate.
Time on site
Using benchmark information, specific goals and your new ability to track and measure relevant data are the building blocks for interpretation and continued improvement. You’ll be able to spot trends and determine whether you are moving toward or have reached your goals. You’ll also identify problem areas such as high bounce rates, ineffective pages, and keywords visitors are using to arrive at your site that are not being optimized to attract even more visitors.
SEO is a continuous loop process. Once you create and execute the strategy and analyze the results, you have the information you need to return to the optimization stage. A website are no longer just nice to have, it is an essential component to your marketing strategy and the time spent getting the site to full potential is well worth the effort.