How do you know if your SEO is working?
SEO is a long-term play for sure, and it can be tough to tell if it’s working. SEO can take 6 months or longer to show results—and this depends on your industry.
Organic traffic, which is driven by SEO, is an extremely important metric for the draw of your website. The better you rank for competitive keywords influences the amount of organic traffic that comes your way.
In fact, websites that consistently create content optimized for search will see a steady increase in organic search traffic and improved positioning in search results.
But here’s the rub. With SEO, there’s no direct ROI with every click. SEO can take 6 months or longer to show results—and this depends on your industry. Plus, you’re vying for ranking and the keywords you use with your competitors.
SEO is a long-term play for sure, and it can be tough to tell if it’s working.
Want to Know if Your keywords are Doing Their Job?
Here are a few things to look for.
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Keyword Rankings
Your goal is to achieve ranking for specific keywords within your industry. When used in your business, those necessary words are in top positions (1-11) and are page 1 in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). There may be millions of pages on the web, but none are more important than SERPS which are a combination of organic and paid results.
SERP snippets (also called Google snippets) can substitute for certain key words. The snippet consists of the title of your website, a short text preview, and the URL. It’s the first and therefore most important point of contact between the searcher and your website.
Something to think about: If you ever need more relevant keywords, visit a competitors’ website with high-ranking keywords. See what your competitors are targeting. You’ll know you’re doing well if you manage to beat their position in the SERPS because of 1 of your keywords.
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Page Authority and Domain Authority
Page Authority (PA) is a score that predicts how well a specific page will rank on SERPs. Scores range from one to 100. Higher scores mean you have a greater ability to rank.
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Domain Authority
Domain authority measures the strength of entire domains or subdomains. It helps you better understand your site’s credibility in the eyes of the search engines, and you can see how you compare to your competition.
An average PA and DA is 40-50. For more niche sites, a DA or PA above 20 is good.
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Impressions
Impressions refer to the number of times your website shows up in a search result. Even if web browsers fail to click on your site, Google may still think your site has good, relevant content and ranks it highly. This metric is important in showing how often Google pushes your site out to searchers. It’s hard to say what a good number is, because it depends on so many factors. You should look at trends and upticks in growth over time to see if your organic traffic is working.
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Traffic
Look at traffic that’s sourced organically. The main goal of SEO, after all, is to generate qualified traffic “naturally”—meaning it appears high in Google’s search results without having to pay per click (PPC), as is the case with an ad. There are many ways to increase traffic to your site. Varying the length of your content, creating irresistible headlines, promoting your content on social, posting your content on LinkedIn which has become more than a find-a-new-job site, guest blog on other sites or invite guest bloggers to submit on yours are among the ways to get more traffic
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Backlinks
Backlinks occur when 1 website links to another. Also referred to as Incoming or inbound links, backlinks make their connection through external websites. These links from outside domains point to/link to pages on your own domain.
Backlinks are great for exposure and visibility and increase your authority. They actually validate your site to Google. An increase in backlinks can help increase SEO traffic and rankings over time.
An important point: Quality is important. The link can’t just be to any other site. Look for links from sites with a good DA and with 100-250 referring domains
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Google My Business
Your GMB profile is listed in the map pack for important keywords. Be sure to use your correct address and updated contact information.
Increasing your GMB business profile interactions each month boost your rankings.
So yes, SEO is important for getting visitors to your site. To be successful, it must always be improving.
Achieving ROI can get complicated. You need a strong marketing team that can create high quality content and consistently measure how well your SEO is working. We have that winning combination at Ballantine. Now you know some of the things to look for.
Give us a call. Let’s talk SEO and make it happen. More keyword rankings. More backlinks. More traffic.
I'm the Director of Digital Services and Partner at Ballantine, a family-owned and operated direct mail & digital marketing company based in New Jersey. and started in 1966 by my great uncle!
