Keeping an Eye on Your Optimised Site

It takes time before two companies can trust each other. Caution is required in any business relationship and even more so in search engine optimisation where there are so many unethical practitioners. While hiring a professional SEO company guarantees receiving regular reports on the activity of your web site it's worthwhile sparing a few minutes every week to keep an eye on your website, at least in the first few months. Some of the things can keep an eye on are:

• Position in search engines for certain keywords
• Traffic from search engines and third party sites
• Visitors converted in sales
• Spider visits
• ROI
• General web site factors - Functionality, appearance
• Non ethical SEO methods

A good stats program is essential to allow you quick and accurate monitoring of website activity. There are many such stats programs, some are quite expensive but do their job right. Some SEOs have in-house developed monitoring systems or can recommend a third party program for you. For most small to medium businesses, some of these programs are quite affordable, if not cheap, but will lack some advanced features such as ROI tracking.

What to Look Out For

Once the stats program is set up, take half an hour every week to look at:

• Traffic tracked down by source - See which search engines deliver most traffic, whether it increases or drops from a week to the next. If the problem persists for more than 2 weeks in a row or whether the change is significant then report the problem to your SEO. They will identify the problem and fix it. They will check for any technical problems which might prevent search engine spiders from indexing all pages or any other factors which could affect your site's rankings. They will come up with methods to restore your website to previous rankings and traffic.
• While the position in search engine results for your keywords is important, as it ensures receiving targeted traffic, you should not be hung up on it. Result pages fluctuate all the time. It may be that you were in the top 10 for a certain keyword and then in 2 weeks' time you have dropped to the second page. If your site drops from keyword positions you've held until that point, don't take it out with the SEO unless traffic and sales drop as well. If your website maintains the level of sales and profits as before, then it is obvious that current rankings don't influence ROI.
• Most good stats programs (that are likely to be expensive as well) will provide information as to the number/percentage of visitors that made a purchase or contacted you in relation to your services. The conversion rate is highly important. Once you have a steady stream of traffic it's important to convert as much of it as possible. If the conversion rate drops, report it to your SEO. More often than not this is connected with poor site usability, technical issues on landing pages and most importantly, with written marketing copy. The copy has to sell and even the slightest changes can make a tremendous difference. The SEO can help you test the most effective copy that improves conversion rate and increases your sales.
• Checking to see how often search engine spiders visit your web site will assure you that all pages are properly indexed and you can be found under them in search engines
• Not many stats programs have a ROI calculator but the SEO should either provide one or recommend one for you. ROI is the single most important measuring tool that you can base your conclusions upon. It doesn't matter whether your traffic drops or if your site is gone from the top 10 for certain keywords as long as your ROI maintains to the same level or even increases.
• From time to time visit your web site. Look at its appearance and try to look at it as if you'd never seen it before. If you can't do that, ask one of your employees to look at it for you. Browsing through it from time to time keeps you in a reality check. Measuring and checking statistics is all very well but if you really want to know how your site is doing, then you have to experience what your visitors and customers are experiencing.
• One thing to always check for is potentially unethical methods your SEO might be using. At least in the beginning, until they gain your trust and you're sure that they play by the rules, it is something that you shouldn't overlook and do on a regular basis.

If you don't have the time to do a regular check of your website and its performance then have one of your staff do it. One of the biggest mistakes website owners make is have complete faith in the SEO. Trust is something that takes time to develop and until it is achieved, be suspicious, cautious and always double check their work and make sure the money you are paying them is getting positive results.

Success vs Failure in Internet Marketing

This article was first published on 22 August 2004 and does not necessarily match current events or the current opinions and views of bigmouthmedia ltd.

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