In web marketing, you can save long hours later down the line by creating an SEO Worksheet. SEO can take a long time. Plus, changes you make today might impact your rankings months from now, so it’s important that you keep a record of relevant data and changes you make over time. That way, you can refer to those changes and better understand what worked and what didn’t.
If you’re serious about SEO, you’re going to need to track a number of different statistics over time, including the following:
Traffic from organic search: Your web analytics package should show you clicks from unpaid search rankings.
Keyword diversity: The number of key phrases driving traffic to your website. Again, your web analytics package will give you this.
Incoming links, by search engine: The number of links reported by Bing and Google.
Indexed pages, by search engine.
Sales/leads/other results from organic search: If your site has a goal, and your analytics package allows it, record the results you get. Traffic is great. Sales are better.
Keyword rankings: Notice how this is last? That’s because keyword rankings don’t matter.
Keyword rankings don’t matter. Traffic and results do. Although ranking No. 1 for a phrase or two is one way to get those extra visitors, getting 500 top-10 listings for less prominent phrases may get you far more visitors and sales, leads, or whatever else you need. Don’t obsess about keyword rankings. Obsess about traffic, keyword diversity, and success.
Record these numbers by month. You can record them by week if you’re really obsessive. Whatever you do, don’t check them every day — you may lose your mind.
