Measuring Success

Organic vs. Pay Per Click Search Traffic

Our SEO services will be focused on increasing the amount of search traffic your website gains as a result of naturally occurring or “organic” search result listings. This means that the results that are displayed originate from the search engine’s ranking algorithms and indexing of the web. These results appear to those entering a search query without the search engine charging you a fee to show them.

Another marketing investment used by many businesses is Pay Per Click or PPC campaigns via a tool such as Google’s Adwords. With a PPC campaign, you are basically paying for advertising with the search engine. By bidding a high enough amount, you can have your pages displayed at the top of the results list regardless of how optimized your site may be. This is an effective and useful marketing strategy for sites that are currently unable to rank well via natural methods for search terms. The downside is that every time someone clicks on your advertised result, you will pay, and the costs can add up quickly. In a competitive market, the cost per click price can be very high.

Long Term Rewards for Investing in SEO

While there is an investment in SEO up front, once your site is receiving organic search results for key terms, you will continue to reap the rewards of this traffic without having to continuously pay for every visitor.

Website Analytics – Tracking Visitor Activity

On-site web analytics are an important part of measuring the overall success of an SEO campaign. An analytics application tracks visitor activity on your website. It allows measurement of stats such as: how many unique visitors your site receives in a day, how those visitors arrived to your site, which pages they landed on, and what they did once they got there.

Setting up the Site with Analytics

If you already have an active analytics application that you are using, we will want to get access to it so that we can incorporate it into your new site and begin to evaluate any existing data. If you do not already have an analytics application for your site, we will setup a free account for you with Google Analytics.

Defining Analytics Conversion Goals

A key metric for measuring success will be tracking how many of the organic search hits to your site result in meeting some pre-defined goals. By defining and tracking specific types of site activity as “conversion goals”, we will be able to monitor whether the traffic you are earning is doing what you want it to do.

Selecting Goals that Add Clear Monetary Value

We will work with you to define specific visitor activities on the site that you believe will correlate to a successful visit or “conversion”. These may include such things as filling out a quote form, signing up for a newsletter, emailing for more info, reading a specific article, or checking out a shopping cart item.
Assigning monetary values to each of these conversion goals will help you to get a better picture of how your SEO investment is paying off. We will work with you to come up with a good estimated value for each goal that is defined.

Special Note Regarding Google Analytics and PPC Traffic

If you are also actively running pay per click (PPC) campaigns, we will be giving special attention to ensure that there is an accurate distinction of PPC and organic search traffic in the analytics application. One of the main metrics for SEO performance will be the total number of organic searches your site receives per month, and so it is critical that this information can be clearly discerned from the data.

Accurate Separation of PPC and Organic Data

It is a common problem for both PPC and organic search traffic to be combined under the “organic” traffic listing in Google Analytics if not setup properly. This could incorrectly inflate the numbers we are tracking if not addressed and we do not want to mistakenly take credit for traffic that actually originated from a Pay Per Click ad.

Baseline Traffic and Ranking Report

We will evaluate your site prior to any re-design or SEO optimizations and create a baseline report which includes key site performance metrics. As months go by, we will generate new reports to show how the site performance is changing as the SEO campaign progresses.

We Evaluate the Analytics Data to See Which Terms are Bringing Traffic

Google Analytics data will need to be gathered on your existing site for a period of 1-2 weeks so that we will have a before picture of visitor statistics. This can take place while your site re-design is under way.
We will evaluate the analytics data for your current site to determine which key phrases (if any) are ranking in the first 3 pages of search results. These keywords will be taken into consideration during our initial round of keyword research. We don’t want to lose sight of any terms that are already successful for your site.

Providing Regular Status Reports

At the end of each month we will provide you with a status report showing key stats and SEO related progress for your site.

We Provide Monthly Reporting On:

Analytics summary – Key statistics showing changes in monthly search related traffic will be reported on.
Search Rankings – We will monitor the current ranking in each of the top 3 search engines for the keyword phrases that were selected for your site.
Indexed Pages – Shows which pages of your site are included in the index for the top search engines.
Site Up-Time – As mentioned in the “SEO Friendly Site Design” points, we will be monitoring your site constantly to ensure that it stays accessible. The results of that monitoring will be included in your report.

Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) – Some Benefits are More Difficult to Measure

Above we have mentioned several ways that we will be able to effectively track the impact of our SEO services for your business. However, we also believe that your business is likely to benefit in ways that are not as easily measurable. Internet user behavior can be complex, and it’s not always easy to measure the impact your site has on visitors. Some users may visit a site briefly, return again weeks later, and ultimately end up visiting your retail location or calling. In these cases, the analytics stats may not show any conversion goals were met, but your site did in fact have a positive influence that translates to sales.

Also Take into Consideration the Following as you Try to Calculate your Overall ROI:

Impact to monthly sales figures- Have you seen an increase in monthly sales that you can’t correlate to any other specific marketing effort or event? If so, consider the possibility that these are a result of your SEO efforts.
Impact to Reputation - Our work of creating a modern, content rich, and user friendly website for your business will have widespread benefits that are not limited to search visitors. Your direct visitors and repeat customers will take notice too.