Tracking SEO Changes

Tracking changes in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) progress of your website can help identify effective techniques and reveal areas where improvement remains necessary. Here are some tips on more easily tracking SEO progress changes.

1.) Record the Google PageRank for your site’s home page every few weeks; consider tracking the PageRank changes of other important pages as well. Using a spreadsheet (with individual pages in the rows and different dates at the top of each column) may make this easier. PageRanks can be checked using the Google Toolbar or websites like prcheckingtool.com. Here is an example of how the fields of a two site, three-month PageRank spreadsheet might be formatted:

Row 1: Web Site, Aug., Sep., Oct.
Row 2: Example.net, PR 6, 8, 7
Row 3: Example.org, PR 6, 5, 5

2.) Monitoring the site’s position in search results for various relevant keywords is also helpful for tracking SEO changes. For example, you might record that your site ranked 6th on Yahoo! and 8th on Google for the search phrase “antique radios” on September 1st. If its ranking changes the next month, you could assess whether or not your SEO techniques have been effective. A spreadsheet can be useful for this type of tracking as well, although it will be somewhat more complicated than the PageRank tracking spreadsheet. Reviewing your site’s usage statistics can reveal additional SEO keywords it receives traffic from that you might not be aware of.

3.) Usage statistics (accessed either through the site’s control panel or a third-party tracking service) can also be used to monitor how much search traffic each of the major pages receive. This may help you recognize which pages need more SEO work before they will receive sufficient traffic. Website statistics systems (like AWStats) often keep data from previous months and store it for future reference, so it may not be necessary for you to store this information manually. Other SEO information these systems provide includes data on how much traffic came from each search engine and the number of hits from various engine-specific “spiders”.

Applying these tips will make tracking SEO changes easier and more effective. When deficiencies are found, the best solution may include obtaining more links, META tag changes, or different keyword usage. Each technique should be used once every month or two, more often as a site becomes popular and search ranking changes appear with greater frequency.