Comments on: How to Track SEO Performance for Multiple Keywords http://blog.teachstreet.com/learn-new-things/how-to-track-seo-performance-for-multiple-keywords/ Learn something new. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:58:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Vanessa Fox http://blog.teachstreet.com/learn-new-things/how-to-track-seo-performance-for-multiple-keywords/comment-page-1/#comment-159 Vanessa Fox Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:16:32 +0000 http://blog.teachstreet.com/?p=648#comment-159 I wouldn't recommend tracking rankings for those thousdands of long tail keywords. There's just not much you can do with that information. Better to track qualified traffic for long tail categories of keywords and monitor if 1) traffic x bounce rate and 2) conversions for those categories are up or down. You might monitor categories like "tutoring", "piano", "coaching", etc. That will not help you keep track of any qualified traffic changes, but will help you monitor volume for those types of keywords (to help you determine if you should adjust your content strategy). You can easily do this type of tracking via your analytics program. I also suggest using Google Webmaster Tools to check out what queries you're ranking well for but not getting click throughs for as this can help you figure it if you're either accidentally optimizing for the wrong things or if you are close to getting some qualified traffic but just need to make your SERP more compelling. When it comes to tracking individual keywords, I generally suggest tracking only up to 10 or so. These are head terms that you get the bulk of your traffic from and want to get the bulk of your traffic from. Store (weekly is often enough) the query, the ranking, and the URL that ranks for the query. That information can help you with diagnosing issues. Don't even pay attention to that data unless you get a traffic drop. If that happens, you can go back to this data and see if you're ranking dropped and if so, if the ranking URL lost ranking or if that URL got de-indexed somehow, etc. Other than the diagnosis described above, ranking can be a pretty poor metric. Monitoring traffic is a significantly better metric towards the same end. You can rank highly and get no click through at all if your result isn't compelling or if video/images rank directly below you... not to mention that these days, every searcher may see a different ranking of results. So it's pretty impossible to track anyway. I wouldn’t recommend tracking rankings for those thousdands of long tail keywords. There’s just not much you can do with that information. Better to track qualified traffic for long tail categories of keywords and monitor if 1) traffic x bounce rate and 2) conversions for those categories are up or down. You might monitor categories like “tutoring”, “piano”, “coaching”, etc.

That will not help you keep track of any qualified traffic changes, but will help you monitor volume for those types of keywords (to help you determine if you should adjust your content strategy).

You can easily do this type of tracking via your analytics program.

I also suggest using Google Webmaster Tools to check out what queries you’re ranking well for but not getting click throughs for as this can help you figure it if you’re either accidentally optimizing for the wrong things or if you are close to getting some qualified traffic but just need to make your SERP more compelling.

When it comes to tracking individual keywords, I generally suggest tracking only up to 10 or so. These are head terms that you get the bulk of your traffic from and want to get the bulk of your traffic from. Store (weekly is often enough) the query, the ranking, and the URL that ranks for the query. That information can help you with diagnosing issues. Don’t even pay attention to that data unless you get a traffic drop. If that happens, you can go back to this data and see if you’re ranking dropped and if so, if the ranking URL lost ranking or if that URL got de-indexed somehow, etc.

Other than the diagnosis described above, ranking can be a pretty poor metric. Monitoring traffic is a significantly better metric towards the same end. You can rank highly and get no click through at all if your result isn’t compelling or if video/images rank directly below you… not to mention that these days, every searcher may see a different ranking of results. So it’s pretty impossible to track anyway.

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