Measuring and Tracking SEO Results

Name: Measuring and Tracking SEO Results
Author: Rick Hart

Learn about measuring and tracking SEO results

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 3 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

(light music) Measuring your position on Google, your site traffic and your sales, is how you'll know if you're moving closer to your target position. In SEO, we want to know if we pick the best keywords, what position we are in the SERP for a given keyword, whether or not we're moving up in the SERP, the number of backlinks, and if traffic improves with SEO efforts. No metric points straight to the money, but other indicators get us closer. Let's take our example website, golfclubreview.com. The goal with this website is to make money through affiliate sales. That business model is about pre-selling visitors and creating trust in a merchant so they click and buy. More visitors lead to more clicks which lead to more sales. The main metrics for this model are number of visitors, click-through rate, and revenue associated with clicks. Each of these metrics can be broken down. Tracking visitors might involve noting which pages get the most traffic, how long visitors stay, how many other pages visitors go to, and what keywords brought the traffic. Each metric can be broken down into submetrics that tell us more. What pages are ranked on the first page of the SERP? How does SERP rank change over time for a page and keyword? Check out the pages that have the most backlinks and how backlink count changes over time. You can also track keywords based on buying intention. Let's check Google Analytics about traffic sources for the example site. Notice that the main source of traffic is Google Search, Over 80% of traffic is coming from Google. Also notice that the second largest source of traffic is direct or none. That means the traffic comes from a link on another site or from people typing in the URL. Some of this traffic could be coming from backlinks. We can get an acquisition report on the referral traffic. Here's what that report looks like. The report doesn't show a lot of backlinks, but it does show traffic coming from Wikipedia. The report shows which specific pages on our site were linked from Wikipedia. The traffic doesn't add up to much, but it's a good start and adds another potential link partner to our strategy. Our action item here is to go to Wikipedia and see what more we can learn. Another tool that offers tracking information is Google Search Console. It lets us know about technical issues with our website, errors it finds, and how to fix them. For our SEO purposes, it will also tell us what keywords people use to go to our site and how much traffic we are getting. The Search Console Performance Report shows this information. The report shows traffic and clicks for the last three months and which search phrases brought in that traffic. Given our business model, our top keyword is a good fit even if it's not based on strong buying intention. It's a good page for our affiliate links. People might be motivated to click through to one of our merchants and that might lead to a sale later on.

Intermediate Provider : Rick Hart 3 Lessons · 8m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Optimizing a website for high search engine results is easier when you track your progress along the way. If your efforts don’t improve your search ranking over time, your SEO efforts may be ineffective or incomplete. Knowing what metrics matter most helps with measuring your progress. A paid tool like Semrush helps many content development professionals reach their SEO goals. It keeps track of your SEO tactics and provides reports that compare your ongoing results over time. The most effective tactics emerge when you see what’s helping over time and which techniques are bringing less traffic. Also effective at tracking and monitoring your SEO efforts are free tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Alerts.

In Measuring and Tracking SEO Results, we will show how to track SEO efforts. We will discuss how to monitor web page traffic and visitor flow, how Semrush can help you analyze link building, and how an SEO management spreadsheet can provide a big picture of your SEO efforts.

What You'll Learn

Track your SEO efforts to measure progress and improve search ranking over time
Use free tools including Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Alerts to monitor SEO
Monitor web page traffic and visitor flow to identify effective tactics
Analyze link building using Semrush reporting
Manage your SEO with an SEO management spreadsheet for a big-picture view

Key Takeaways

Tracking your progress makes it easier to optimize a website for high search engine results.
If SEO efforts don't improve search ranking over time, those efforts may be ineffective or incomplete, and knowing which metrics matter most helps measure progress.
A paid tool like Semrush keeps track of SEO tactics and provides reports that compare ongoing results over time, and it can help analyze link building.
Free tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Alerts are also effective for tracking and monitoring SEO efforts.
An SEO management spreadsheet can provide a big-picture view of your SEO efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

Measuring and Tracking SEO Results shows how to track SEO efforts, including how to monitor web page traffic and visitor flow, how Semrush can help you analyze link building, and how an SEO management spreadsheet can provide a big picture of your SEO efforts.

Which tools does the course discuss for tracking SEO?

It discusses the paid tool Semrush, along with free tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Alerts.

What skills will I gain from this course?

You will build skills in progress monitoring, search engine optimization, web analytics, website metrics, website monitoring, and website visitor tracking.

What are the main learning objectives?

The learning objectives are to understand SEO tools, analyze link building, and manage SEO.

Why is tracking SEO results important?

Optimizing a website for high search engine results is easier when you track your progress, because if your efforts don't improve your search ranking over time, your SEO efforts may be ineffective or incomplete, and knowing what metrics matter most helps you measure progress.