For an internet marketing company, this information will seem pretty elementary.  Actually, if an internet marketing company finds this information useful, then (I hope) they are in the beginning stages of creating the company.  If not…. Then you probably don’t want to invest in that internet marketing company.  Anyway, here are 5 of the most important concepts to monitor your company’s SEO progress:

1. Are You Tracking Your Conversion Rates? – A Conversion is an action that you (as the website owner, operator, and advertiser) deem valuable.  This action may be a page view, a transaction payment, an information submission lead, or any other website related action able to be tracked.  Whatever the action, it is a positive step in creating a sale or lead for your company. Google Analytics is one of the most reliable and easy to use methods of tracking website statistics.




2. Are You Paying Attention to Your Site’s Traffic Patterns? – With all the focus on conversions and transactions, site traffic may be sometimes overlooked.  A high conversion rate is wonderful, but if you are only seeing limited traffic, your total conversions could be much higher with more visitors.  With more total conversions may come a lower conversion rate, but will ultimately lead to more sales.  You can receive more visitors by a variety of methods, but some of the most common include your site showing on search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing inbound links, and using more relevant keywords.  Google Analytics is also useful for tracking website visitors, page views, and time spent on sites.




3. What are you number and types of links? – One of the (many) ways Google determines your page rank on its SERPs is to determine your total link values.  This includes the quantity and quality of the links on your website.  Outbound links (where you link to other pages from your website) are valuable, but inbound links are much more so.  Valuable inbound links from larger, reputable websites can boost your rankings in a SERP quickly.  So how do you earn these links? Writing press releases, and submitting them to some of the many free press release distribution sites online such as www.prlog.org & www.dbusinessnews.com. You can also create a Wikipedia page for your company, or write reviews to industry related blogs and forums, and include your website there as well.  The more inbound links you can amount, the higher value your page will have to Google.




4. How does your site rank in Google? – When you search for your website’s related keywords in Google, where does your site rank?  Do you appear on the first page? Second?  If not, you want to perform some optimization-related tasks to increase your value to Google, increasing your rank in its SERPs.  Most users do not even look past the first 2-3 pages of a Google search, so if your site is not visible on the first few pages, you might as well not even have a website.  Some of the linking steps stated above can be very beneficial to your website’s online rankings.




5. What is your Bounce Rate? – Bounce rate is percentage of visitors who land on your page, and immediately leave without exploring any more pages within your site.  Ideally, this number would be as low as possible, as visitors would land on your site, like what they see, and want to explore your other services and offers by clicking around other pages on your site.  A high bounce rate means that your site is not relevant, and therefore not captivating the readers.  Improving your keyword relevancy is almost guaranteed to reduce your bounce rate.  So how can you determine your bounce rate? It is yet another stat tracked by the all-powerful Google Analytics.

So the moral of the story, if you aren’t tracking all important aspects of your website, you should be.  Understanding the complexities of bounce rates, traffic patterns, and conversion rates will give you a greater sense of control and understanding regarding the ins and outs of your company’s website.  And if you want to be a successful internet marketing company (like TriMark Solutions, *wink wink*), then understanding link value and analytics tracking has got to become second nature.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 11:46 am and is filed under SEO - Tip of The Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.