Website Rankings
How to Measure and Monitor your SEO for FREE
8 tips on how to keep track of your SEO for FREE
You can offer the best services or goods in your marketplace, but if those who are searching for what you sell find your competitor online instead of you, you will likely not earn their business. The research shows most consumers first look online when they are interested in making a purchase. The statistics are clear; over 80% of consumers will do their own search online well before they pull out their wallet to spend their money.
In order to know where you stand in regards to your competitors, it’s crucial you measure your SEO (search engine optimization) to establish your position, and to monitor it on an on-going basis. If you have the budget, SEO is one of the most dominant factors in your online marketing campaign and allocating the funds to have it professionally managed, will be some of the most valuable money you spend towards driving traffic to your site and bringing potential clients directly in touch with your brand. However, if you are not yet in a position to afford expert assistance with your SEO marketing, all is not lost. With some time and effort, you can use the following free tools to identify your ranking and monitor your position. For 6 free techniques you can put into practice today to power your SEO upwards, you can read our article 6 Simple SEO Habits to Increase Website Rankings & Traffic.
1. Google Analytics
You can sign up in minutes to begin taking advantage of this powerful, free tool. Google Analytics offers daily traffic statistics which you can sort and organize: per keywords, per visitor, per location, per referring website, per search engine, and by any time scale. Packed with useful features, it is a must have for anyone interested in measuring and tracking their website traffic and SEO progress.
2. Google Adwords' Keyword Tool
This powerful and free online resource allows you to see the number of searches that Google receives nationally, and internationally, for any specific keyword phrases. We recommend checking off the box that says "Exact" searches, not broad or matching, for the most accurate and relevant statistics. What this means to you is that now you can confidently know which keywords your target audience is searching for the most when they're looking for brands or businesses like yours online. We use this to help decide which keywords would be most profitable to target in our SEO campaigns for ourselves and our clients.
3. Understand the Power of Search Results Ranking.
On any Google search page in organic results: #1 gets 33% of clicks, #2 gets 22%, #3 gets 11%, #4 gets 7%, on down until #10 gets 1-3% share of link traffic. This shows how skewed the numbers are toward the top of the first page of Google. Because traffic is so heavily funneled to the first few listings, its easy to see how companies can become forgotten when they are not actively managing their SEO and staying on top of their ability to be found. Keep in mind that these numbers vary widely based on the industry you're in and how likely it is that people searching will be satisfied with the first search results versus continuing down the search results page looking for something the other results aren't providing.
4. MicroSiteMasters.com
This extremely valuable service provides Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rank reporting and tracking keywords in Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and their service is free for first 10 keywords. 10 keywords are more than sufficient to get started measuring the progress of your SEO efforts, and if you're not using a tool like this, you need to start now so you can begin understanding where you rank and how your rank changes over time.
5. HubSpot's Website Grader
In less than 30 seconds, HubSpot issues a report that analyzes all of your online marketing efforts, not just on your website, and gives you a Marketing Grade on a 1-100 scale. It doesn’t stop there; it recommends the next steps, in order of priority that you should take to improve your strategy. By assessing over 30 factors, HubSpot offers a comprehensive assessment and then provides a plan of action, complete with online resources to help put their recommendations into practice.
6. MajesticSEO.com
This website offers a free tool to track and analyze off-site backlink health of any website online, by total history or by recent growth. Use the power of MajesticSEO’s enormous link intelligence database to compare your backlink power to that of your competitors.
7. Google's "Site:" search
I use this tool everyday, even when just browsing because it's so powerful. Just try typing “site:examplesite.com" into the Google search bar, adding in a website use regularly, and then look at total search results for the number of pages indexed by Google. This normally tells you, with a fair amount of accuracy the total number of pages on any website, which can be used as a rough indicator of their on-site SEO credibility in Google. The total number of pages a website has can also roughly approximate how well established and trusted your website is according to Google search engine’s algorithm, this is because the longer a website has existed and the more valuable content they have online, the more it lends to the idea that they know what they're talking about, assuming that the content is relevant, unique, and that there's a decent amount of it on every page.
For even more fun, try adding search terms with a space just before where the "site:" appears, and you'll be amazed at how useful it is to be doing a Google search of pages ONLY on the website listed in the example. ("site:example.com")
8. Use "Page Source" / "View Source"
This is a simple, fast way to determine which keywords your webpages, and your competitors' webpages, are targeting. This is the basic information you need to assess where your current SEO is focused and vital to your understanding of what type of traffic you are attracting—or failing to attract. "Page Source" or "View Source" is a browser tool option which you can access in most browsers by doing right-click on the webpage on PCs or Option-click on Macs; it also appears in the browser's menu. Select this option and you will see the HTML code for the page. In the code, near the top of most webpages you should be able to see or find using CTRL+F the following text meta tags; look for <title>, <meta description >, <meta keywords > tags.
Pay attention to the first words that appear in these meta tags. These keywords can be used to analyze your competition and see what keywords they are telling Google to target for each of their webpages. The most important is the title tag, but the description tag is also very important to Google, because this is the text that appears in Google search results. Conversely, be sure your meta tags are telling search engines the right story about who you are and what content or keywords each webpage is primarily relevant to.
Based in Nevada, our Las Vegas web design team would be happy to answer any questions you may have about SEO. For more resources and helpful tips sign up for our newsletter or send us a message telling us what topics you'd like to see covered here. For now, don’t hesitate to get started with these useful resources that you can access free of charge anytime. We recommend always getting professional feedback and direction at the start of any SEO campaign, no matter how small, to ensure that you're not making any mistakes that could be costing you valuable traffic. We offer free consultations and are happy to educate our customers on the value of a well designed SEO campaign.
6 Simple SEO Habits to Increase Website Rankings & Traffic
In our Digital Age, the success of your business depends on getting noticed online. With 83% of U.S. consumers researching online before they make purchases, and 80% of global consumers doing the same, being found on the internet is tied to your survival in your marketplace. If your customers are not clicking on your website link and coming to you when they are searching for the products or services your company provides, they are locating and interacting with your competitor.
As the numbers of consumers doing primary research on the internet before they buy continue to rise year by year, being easily accessible online will only become more crucial. Being among the first search results in your category is the only way to guarantee consumers interested in what you do and what you sell will be able to discover your company. In fact, on any Google search page in organic results the #1 ranked link gets 33% of clicks, the #2 receives 22%, the #3 grabs 11%, #4 nabs 7%, on down until #10 only catches 1-3% of clicks. The conclusion is strikingly apparent—your website must live on the prime real estate of the top of the Google page or you will drown into the oblivion.
Why is SEO imperative to the success of your business? Because if you want to be around in 5 years you have to stand out from your competition so consumers find you, and not them. But fear not, there are easy methods to boost you to the top of the search rankings for those keywords that represent the services you provide and products you sell.
6 SEO Tips And Habits for Ranking High in Search Engines:
1. Check rankings weekly.
You need to know where you rank, and checking your SERP for your top 10 keywords is a great way to know exactly how you stack up against the competition. SERP is an important acronym to know if you’re doing any online marketing campaign. "SERP" is short for "search engine results page", and since marketing through search is a dominant factor in online marketing, you need to be aware of how you measure up to your competitors, and not for just one keyword, but for all of them. This will tell you where you stand and allow you to gauge how well each SEO strategy you implement works. Getting easy to access measurable feedback will help you see what’s working well over time and what isn’t. We recommend using micrositemasters.com to easily track the ranking of your top 10 keywords for free. We can also provide and manage this for you if needed.
2. Leave your link.
Create a digital trail by linking to your website everywhere you go: in profile pages, social media interactions, blog comments, articles, friends' websites, your competitors sites, social networks, and any other websites that show up in relevant Google searches. Don’t forget to ask others to link to you (especially if you guest blog or participate in a speaking engagement, panel, seminar or other industry event). Always be genuine and don’t be a “sales person”.
3. Update old content.
Update the content on your web pages annually and be sure to remove or change any content that is outdated or incorrect. By recycling older, popular blog posts you can get extra mileage out of them. If industry updates and changes have occurred, you can create a new blog post by piggybacking off the original article. Also, keep your web content current so consumers are confident you are a leader with your finger on the pulse of your market.
4. Build more unique content.
Have little to no original text content on your webpages will hurt your ranking in Google. If you say the same thing over and over, even if you change some wording and sentence organization, search engines will also identify it as not adding new value and may penalize you for it too. Conversely, the more original and unique content you have that brings new value to your visitors, the higher you will rank on relevant search engine results pages. The more new original content you have, the better.
5. Ask for reviews.
Regardless of what type of website or business you have there are websites where people can write reviews about you. Take advantage of the opportunity to let your best customers and fans write something nice about you on those websites. If you're a restaurant Yelp is an obvious place for this. Any location based website can ask their clients to write reviews for them on their Google Places page. It's easy to ask, and there's a special kind of emotional reward that only comes from being asked to "give" something nice to a company or brand you love. You'll be surprised how many people will do this for you, IF you ask.
6. Create a weekly goal, make a plan, & follow-through
Even if your competition knows all of the best SEO techniques, none of it matters unless you take the time to put it into practice. Setting a long-term and achievable goal might just be the most powerful tool in your SEO arsenal.
Set a Weekly Goal; make sure your weekly goal is easy to achieve, don't shoot for the moon. The hardest step is the first one, so make sure it's easy for you to accomplish your weekly goal in a short amount of time and that you have easy ways to measure the progress you're making.
Develop a Plan; great goals are nothing without a solid plan for how to execute them. Be sure to plan exactly how you'll have time to achieve your weekly goal and to be patient with yourself and don't expect perfection on the first try. The more you do it the better you'll get.
Follow-through; create an incentive and accountability system for yourself. Put reminders up where you will see them, and set consequences that help ensure that if you do skip a goal, that you can easily catch up and get back on track. If it means skipping a Friday night out, so be it, your business and brand is worth it, and once you make a sacrifice, you'll be less likely to skip your goal from that point on. Or tell your colleagues and friends that you're setting a goal and want them to hold you to it, make them a bet and get others involved.
Closing Thoughts.
At the heart of SEO there is a search engine trying its best to analyze webpages and bring the public the most relevant and valuable information according to each and every unique search that's performed. And if you use these tips wisely and develop them into habits that you put into practice on a consistent basis, you'll be guaranteed to start noticing significant and consistent improvements in your search engine rankings that will stand the test of time and make these search engine happy. And it goes without saying that you should always keep the need and experience of your end user in mind because ultimately the quality of their experience on your website will determine your future.
SEO can be complicated and overwhelming at times, and we recommend consulting a trained professional before starting any SEO campaign. If you need help implementing any of these techniques into your online strategy please contact us for a free SEO consultation and we'll be happy to assist you.