Chapter 21. Analyzing Success

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Analyzing SEO successes

  • Competitive analysis

  • Conversion analysis

  • Analyzing server logs

If you want to maintain successful SEO efforts, you need to analyze what works and what doesn't, and try to extrapolate why, based on the information that you have. That information can vary, depending on how you gather it.

There are many methods for measuring the success of your SEO efforts. Some people are just happy to see their site traffic and sales rising. But if your SEO strategy is to work toward achieving a more complicated goal, you might need more ways to measure the success or failure of your efforts.

As an example, if you've implemented SEO strategies in an effort to build visitors to your site as a way of creating or improving brand recognition, you might not be as interested in the sales achieved by your SEO efforts as you are in the creation of returning visitors.

It doesn't matter if your SEO goals are monetarily based. You can create goals, and conversion values, for non-monetary activities like newsletter sign-ups, filling out a form, or even requesting additional information. Whatever your goals are, learning which SEO efforts work and which don't is vitally important to ensuring that you're always putting forth your best effort to reach those conversions.

Analyzing SEO Successes

You know that search engine ranking for your web site can change from week to week. Those changes can be caused by competition, modifications to search algorithms, ...

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