Once you’ve completed your website and have it as SEO friendly as you think you can make it, it’s time to sit back and watch the visitors come pouring in. Or at least, that’s the goal. However, after about six months, it will be time to evaluate your SEO practices and make certain they’re actually working. How can you do that? Here are a few things to take into consideration when deciding if you need to adjust your keywords.
Where are you ranked on search engines? Do a general search on several of your keywords and see where your site ends up. If you can’t find it within the first two or three pages, don’t bother—people searching on that topic almost never bother to look at results three or four pages in.
Look at your site statistics (you should have some form of statistics tracker for your website). See how many hits you’ve received over the past six months and take note of any increase or decrease. Some statistics programs will even show you what website your visitor came from and what keywords they used in a search. This is very useful information, especially if your number of hits has decreased or not increased significantly. You may want to take those keywords and use them in your SEO.
Also take a look at your actual sales. If you’ve noticed your profit margin has increased significantly, that means you’ve done something right. Remember that increased hits do not always equal increased profit. It doesn’t matter if you have millions of people visiting your website if none of them are buying. However, despite that, you really are more likely to get more sales if you get more customers to see what you’re offering.
After you’ve looked at all of these numbers, you’ll have to make a decision: are you happy with the increase in sales, or do you need to revamp your SEO to bring even more visitors (and customers) to your site?
