Committing yourself to SEO is very noteworthy, but unless you know how well your SEO efforts are performing, it’s all a little meaningless. By tracking your SEO, you can identify what changes need to be made to improve your position.
The two key factors you need to focus on for measuring SEO are your keyword rankings and traffic.
Keyword Rankings
According to SEO-Hacker, knowing where your keywords sit in the search results is the primary indicator of your SEO efforts. It can take a few months or more to get where you want to be in the search pages once you start implementing SEO, but you should be aiming to get on the first page of the search results for your target keywords at around the six-month mark.
Traffic
Measuring your traffic is a good way to assess if your SEO endeavours are going in the right direction. An increase in traffic is a good sign, although how much of a rise you can expect to see may depend on the niche area of your website. Although a rise in traffic is positive, it’s important that the traffic is converting, so traffic alone isn’t an indicator of a profitable site.
There are other factors that can influence your SEO efforts, so familiarising yourself with these and making any necessary amendments could have an important influence on your keyword rankings and traffic.
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Changes to Your Website
Simple changes to many aspects of your website could have a direct impact on your SEO. Refining your keywords, redesigning your site, improving your site loading speed or optimising your links can give your SEO and keyword rankings the boost you need.
Knowing how to effectively implement changes to your site requires skill, so you may wish to leave this in the hands of SEO experts such as http://www.rycomarketing.ie/search-engine-optimisation-seo.html, who offer SEO in Dublin and elsewhere.
Competitors
Your rival websites may influence your rankings, so get to know what tricks your competitors are performing that keep them ahead of the game. Study their sites, in particular their backlink profiles, and try to find out why users may be inclined to spend more time on their websites.
Google
Changes in Google algorithms have a profound impact on search rankings, so it is vital that you keep informed of updates and comply with best practices.