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How To Evaluate SEO Effectiveness.

2016-10-22 | 5107 Print PDF

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How To Evaluate SEO Effectiveness.

Is SEO meant for you? Seriously is Search Engine Optimization the right path to go for your business?...If you are not in the business of having patient or perseverance, then I think SEO may not be suitable. There are many reasons you might want to get SEO for your website, but the most notable ones are for sales and brand awareness, both are all based on traffic.

Now if you value SEO then you know its something that does not give instant results but rather you build momentum traffic from it, and judging from the fact that 80% of search engine traffic are owned by organic ranking, hence the importance of having an organic ranking for your website.

So you have decided to execute an SEO campaign, and the most important thing you ought to look at is the cost of executing it with respect to your turn over from it. This is why I have listed some cogent points to look out for in an effective seo service and when evaluating your SEO cost and SEO performance with respect to your goals.

1.) Type of Keywords : This is very crucial in your SEO campaign with any SEO agency, because this will build the foundation of your SEO evaluation. Mostly SEO cost or SEO pricing are loosely based on your keyword Effective Index (KEI) or Keyword Difficulty Score (KDS) ie to determine how tedious your keywords are. 

Mind you we have several types of keywords that can fall under a high or medium or low KEI/KDS metrics, among then are the most favorable keywords "Keywords for Buying". This type of keywords are majorly optimized for websites that are aiming to get sales and are usually of three to four words long. They carry little weight in terms of traffic but have a higher conversion rate compared to other type of search phrases (keywords).

The number of search queries associated with the keyword targeted in your niche will determine the quantity of conversion keywords you can aim for eg most money related keywords have a lot of conversion keywords that even spawn four to five sentences long eg How to make money online (Five words long) can have a search query of 480 to 800 per month even competing with other two keyword phrases that do not convert like online money.

You should read more on how to execute a better keyword research for your website via How To Do SEO Keyword Research, this post is very insightful.

A very resourceful tool to use for keyword research will be the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, this tools is very good to evaluate the keyword performance for your seo work on your site.

If your SEO partner or agency is targeting a very lose based keyword for your website, meaning a keyword phrase that does not get traffic nor sales, then you know you are actually being fooled. Unless it's your decision, eg targeting the domain of your site to rank or your brand name to rank etc all this keywords are not of great value (money wise) but are of importance to your business online.

2.) Search Traffic Volume : You need this vital information to note if your site is actually undergoing any SEO changes in terms of search referral traffic. The best tool for this will be your Google analytics.

You will notice a lot of referral searches via your organic traffic and to know which keywords are sending you traffic a better keyword position analyzer will be your Google webmaster tool (now search console). With this tool you can easily get all the metrics you can easily run search insights to know how your keyword is performing in terms of click through, impressions and positions. I personally use this as part of my reporting when documenting monthly seo reports for clients.

If you have a similar graph like the image above then your SEO is on the right track, but if you notice a drop during the SEO work or a decline after SEO work, you need to quickly alert the seo specialist handling your site (that's if they are not paying attention), most SEO agencies make use of third party tools to monitor your keyword rankings and rely on this majorly to track your seo performance (ie to meet up with deliverables of attaining first page of Google SERP).

This is a very important tool for you to also evaluate the seo work done on your website, as it also contains records of links that are being built to your website likewise, in some cases not as sufficient or accurate but still its dependable.

3.) Conversion and Goals : I like to place this last as it is the most over looked aspect by some seo clients, now apart from getting traffic via keywords to your site you need to undergo some forensic A/B Testing especially if you are majorly targeting keywords that converts for your SEO campaigns. Now the conversion of your keyword traffic actually are based on how your landing page are perceived (performs) by your web visitors.

Basically put yourself in the shoes of your regular customer (prospect) who is searching for some pair of sneakers, now this potential prospects does not have an idea of what s/he wants to buy and instead they decide to do a bit of research with such a broad keyword as "pair of sneakers". If your site is ranking for such, then your website descriptions and Title has a lot of work to convert this into a click through to your website.

Eg Title meta tag : Get Latest Pair of Sneakers Brands Here: Discount price offer! 

Now imagine such an headline might get a lot of click through but may not get sales, because the keyword is not eccentric enough, the buyer may actually be a lady in her early 20's, now such keywords may actually be associated with older people than younger ones, its during your analytic insights as an seo agency you will be able to unravel this metrics.

SEO is really good in terms of return on investment, as all you need to do after getting to the top 5 is to work on your click through, and web visitors performance on your site. This will actually improve your ranking as well, it will send signal that your the right source for the keyword you are ranking for and Google will compensate you for this by improving your ranking gradually.

You need to know what you want for your seo keywords, when I rank for my clients, I need to know their goals, and its based on this we define conversions. Some of them simply want to increase their traffic via search engines, most simply want to build sales via inquiries or leads.

When you calculate how much you have spent on your seo work and how much turnover you have had during seo and after seo you can significantly determine if SEO was profitable. Some SEO results fall out after 3 months that is if you were on top 3 after seo within 3 months you are not close to top 5 such SEO work will not be profitable, especially if its a conversion keyword that generates sales, because keywords ranking on Google divide their search volumes with respect to their positions, with the top 3 ranking positions having over 50% of the search volume of any keyword.

So falling out of top 3 or top 5 SERP (search engine ranking position) is not a good signal for seo campaign sites, I for one believe that clients should stop soliciting for cheaper SEO services from shady agencies that send out blast emails to promote seo work. If they were that good you would have gotten them from Google, is that not the point in the first place to get found on Google? if they cannot do it to their site how can they do it for you? and also be cautious with sites that have search phrases or numbers or hyphens in their domain names trying to sell you seo work, eg affordable-seo-firm.net such firms are not reputable.

Check for credibility also via reviews from other sites like Google page or their Google place correlate it with their Facebook page reviews too (if they are the same people on their I mean duplicate users and content....that is a red signal that they bought this reviews online.) 

You can read 8 Signs of Bad SEO Company For Small Business to know if that seo agency is legit.

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