When you are using search engine optimisation on a web site or blog it is useful to keep track of a few points to check your progress. By doing this you may be able to identify aspects which are working and those which are a waste of time. Also, it may help you to identify the cause of any problems that come up.
Track Your Indexing
Create a basic spreadsheet for each site you work on and add the following columns:
Number of pages indexed by Google
Number of pages indexed by Yahoo
Number of pages indexed by MSN
Number of backlinks reported by Yahoo
Each week use the site: command in the 3 main search engines to see how many pages are indexed and record the results on your spreadsheet. If you have a new site this should help you see the gradual indexing of your pages, if you have an existing site it will allow you to check that most of your pages are still indexed. Google will rarely index all the pages of a site.
A sudden drop in traffic is often explained by one of the search engines dropping your pages from their index. The first step to take here, depending on the search engine in question, is to submit a Google sitemap, a Yahoo URL list or submit to MSN.
When you note the number of pages indexed you should also check the number of links for your site in Yahoo Site Explorer. The best setting to use here is show inlinks ‘except from this domain’ to: ‘entire site’. You will then be able to see the effectiveness of your link building campaign over the course of time.
Track Your Traffic
It is also useful to keep a record of your monthly traffic and split it into search, referral and direct traffic sources. This will show you how your traffic grows over time and can also help you resolve problems.
If your traffic goes down one month, go back and look at what has changed since the previous month. See if the fall in traffic was from an organic, referral or direct source. You can then go further and see which search engine or which referral link was responsible for the fall and in some cases take steps to resolve the problem.
If your web stats program does not provide you with this level of detail you may want to consider Google Analytics. It is free to use, easy to install and has a good level of statistical detail.
