Last month we covered changes to SEO in the last decade, also offering advice on how to ensure your website is optimised for engines such as Google and Bing. However, now you want find out if your hard work is paying off. So, how can you measure it?
Where is your traffic coming from?
Assuming you are measuring your website analytics – if you’re not, you should be – you can track where site referrals are coming from. These can come from several sources.
Direct referrals are users who typed your website’s complete URL into the address bar, or have a page bookmarked.
Referral traffic comes from other sources, such as links on social media, email campaigns, other websites and advertisements.
Organic search traffic comes from – you’ve guessed it – search engines.
Monitor the percentage of the latter and any spikes or drops as you carry out your optimisation. Have you seen a drastic increase? If so, it looks as though your optimisation activities are proving successful.
Become your own audience
An obvious (but often missed) step, is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Let’s say, for instance, you own a gluten-free bakery in Leeds. What happens when you type “gluten-free bakery Leeds” into the search engine? Do you show up? Where do you rank?
If you find yourself on the first page, particularly towards the top, you’re doing great! If not, your website needs some SEO. It generally takes about three and six months to really see results, so don’t get disheartened if it doesn’t take effect immediately. However, if after six months you still don’t rank, it’s time to rethink your strategy.
Are users bouncing back?
Do people stay on your website once they have organically found you through a search engine? If not, you might be well optimised, but not for the right keywords. A high bounce can indicate that you are ranking for topics, services or products that visitors are not looking for. It should fall at around 35-50%, any less is brilliant, anything over 70% is not.
Above are just three of the simplest ways to measure your SEO activities. It is something that is continuous, and takes time to see results, but can be made much more simple when you understand what is and isn’t working for you!
Can RED help?
We can help with your SEO activities – from the creation and management of your website to writing copy for it. Find out what we can do here.
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