How to review organic SEO progress and what to measure for organic search engine results

In measuring success, breaking away from conventional thinking isn’t easy.

So often, organic search success is based upon incoming traffic. But the sophistication of today’s search engine processes can easily and unknowingly render your metrics less insightful.

Measuring is becoming more difficult.

Just because someone didn’t click into your site- does that mean they didn’t “find” you? No way! If the search result gets them a phone number, an image of your product or logo, a map of your local location, and perhaps a video, but they DO NOT enter your site (they just call directly from that page or stop by,) did your optimization fail? Not by any means! So, search becomes a bigger picture, and is not just black and white (number of visitors.)

Expand your metrics.

Try attaching measurement of search to more than just web site visitor stats. Some additional data points or criteria you can measure:

Record and trend the number of search results for your company.

Visit Google and type in your company name or specific product. Then see how many results are found. Track the trend of this number. Are you gaining more or less “search exposure” over time?  This will also show other sites than your own.  Review what others are saying about you.

Record and trend the number of incoming links.

Type “link:www.yourcompany.com” in Google and see the results of incoming links to your site. Again, track the trend of this number. Are you gaining more or less incoming links over time?

Ask questions.

If you have a call center or physical location, are you asking where people found you? This can also be a good indicator of search exposure.

Keep monitoring.

Search for both your keywords and your company name. What’s the result? Does it still reflect your position and personality? If not, you have the ability to change it…so do it.