Step Wise SEO

This article is not just about producing a report, although certainly that’s important. It’s really about the thinking, planning, reviewing, and analysis that you do while you are gathering the information for your report.

Without a period of time for review, reflection, and prioritization for the future, your SEO campaign can go off track very quickly or just get lost in the busy day-to-day shuffle of the average workplace.

A smaller SEO effort will have a high documentation-to-”work” ratio. If you increased your SEO activities, this ratio would probably decrease: many of your reporting tasks would stay nearly the same.

Regardless of the size of your campaign, a commitment to tracking and documentation will always separate the pack leaders from the also-rans.

Check Organic Status
To learn more on how to establish a baseline level for your site’s visibility on the four major search engines, Click Here.

But at this time, you’ll find out how your standings have changed. We’ll ask you to check two values:

• Search engine rankings
• Indexed pages

Search Engine Rankings
For this task, you will perform the manual rankings check on the four major search engines for all of your top target keywords. To learn more on this, Click Here.

With your ranks for last month and this month (the month in which you made the optimization tasks) side by side, it’s easy to see any changes. We’re going to guess that there hasn’t been a whole lot of improvement to your ranks yet.

Don’t be alarmed-this is perfectly normal! After all, your basic site optimization has only been in place for a couple of weeks, and you may only have a few new inbound links.

If you were starting from zero or you had some easy fixes in your optimization, you may have noticeable improvement in ranks this month. If you already had decent levels of visibility, you’ll need to be patient.

Now it’s time to go beyond the numbers, but first you’ll need a document to do it in. Start with the “Site Visibility” section, and in a sentence or two, summarize your standings this month as compared to last month. Here are some examples:

• We gained top-30 listings on MSN for three of our target keywords.
• We have a new #2 listing for the term “novelty napkin holders” on Ask.

Next, put on your thinking cap and flesh out these bare-bones facts with some juicy analysis.

Why do you think that these changes occurred? What could be done to improve any less-than-pleasing situations?

You’re still getting your feet wet in SEO, so you might not feel as if you know how to do this, but we recommend you try. Possible analysis might look like this:

• We gained top-30 listings on MSN for three of our target keywords. Our text optimization probably had something to do with this.

• We have a new #2 listing for the term “novelty napkin holders” on Ask. However, since we already have top-10 listings on the other search engines for this term, I don’t expect significant rank changes on those.

Over the next couple of months you will become more and more adept at this sort of SEO rumination.

Indexed Pages
In addition to monitoring search engine ranks for your top keywords, we recommend checking in on the total number of pages indexed. To learn more about this, Click Here.

Now: Check the total number of pages indexed on your site in each of the four major search engines. Record the value on a Worksheet.

Why record the total number of pages indexed on a regular basis?

For one, if you previously had obstacles to robot indexing on your site, you’re likely to see a great deal of improvement here once those obstacles are removed.

And, if you monitor this number, you may be able to catch and resolve any indexing problems before they result in a major drop in traffic.

If any of your landing pages were not indexed when you checked last month, be sure to look back again and see if your efforts have made a difference.

Now: Check the indexing of any landing pages that were not indexed last month. Document status on your Rank Tracking Worksheet.

Looking to cut down on your workload? You can skip checking indexing if your landing pages were already indexed last month and you haven’t made any changes to your website in the interim.

Or skip checking the total number of pages indexed and focus only on your landing pages.

With a little sleuthing, you can see which search engine robots have visited your site. For more information, Click Here on “Extra Credit and Guilt-Free Slacking,”.

Check Links
Here, you’ll follow up on the link-building campaign that you may have started before. To learn more on link building, Click Here.

If you keep up with link building, each month you’ll be faced with an increasingly long and gnarly tracking worksheet that will be nearly impossible to assess at a glance.

That’s why it’s important to keep track of your link-building activities and accomplishments in a monthly summary report. You’ll document the following in both words and numbers:

• Link campaign activities
• Google PageRank

Link Campaign Activities
Most likely, you’ve already had some correspondence, possibly even several back-and-forth e-mail communications, with possible linking sites.

You may have also made directory submittals and explored many other linking opportunities.

Today, review your e-mails and your Link Tracking Worksheet and briefly summarize these activities. Here are some examples of this kind of commentary:

• I contacted 14 website owners seeking new inbound links, and requested updated URLs from four others. Of these, our site received two link updates and one new link.

• On (date), I submitted our website to the Yahoo! Directory in the category:…

• Surfing the Web, I found a long list of sites that may wish to link to our website. Links will be requested after our new landing pages are complete.

• Three site owners stated that they would not link to us because…

If you received useful feedback from any site owners, such as a rejection letter that stated specifically why you were turned down, consider quoting it in your report so that the idea doesn’t get lost in your e-mail inbox forever.

Google PageRank
Despite our misgivings about the usefulness of the Google PageRank value, we recommend that you track it for your landing pages on a monthly basis.

Why? It’s an easy way to gather “at-a-glance” numbers that can help you see changes in your status over time.

You can see Google PageRank just by browsing to your landing pages and reviewing the Google Toolbar if you have downloaded. Google PageRank is good to know, but it’s not essential.

Check Conversions
Conversions, especially if you’ve defined them properly so that they match the overall goals of your organization, are truly the bottom line of Your SEO Plan.

If you don’t have a conversion tracking method in place, you may not have much to write in this section.

Make your best estimate-next month you’ll devote an entire week to establishing conversion tracking.

If you have made a conversion tracking, take a look at this month’s conversion data as compared to last month’s.

If there are differences, what caused them? Separating out all of the different factors that contribute to your bottom line-SEO efforts, seasonal effects, even regular month-to-month fluctuations-is almost impossible.

Your mission over the coming months will be to separate out the effects of your SEO campaign as well as you can.

If there are any results that you can attribute directly to your SEO efforts today, make a note of them in your report. Here are some examples:

• Listing our site in the Outdoor Lifestyle Directory has resulted in a branding boost and a 7 percent increase in page views.

• Since we succeeded in getting the Quilting Supplies page indexed in all four search engines, we have seen a 27 percent increase in cotton batting sales.

• Four hundred click-throughs on our PPC campaign resulted in 16 sales of wine gift baskets.

Monitor PPC ads
Your report need to include important information about your spending and accomplishments with your PPC ad campaigns. Be sure to touch on these points:

• Campaign setup info
• Monthly PPC performance data
• Top performing keywords
• Changes to campaigns

Here are some guidelines for making the most of the data you get from your PPC engine.

Campaign Setup Info
The first month that you have a PPC campaign, you will have a lot to say. Which service did you choose and why?

Are you focusing on a small number of popular keywords or going with a longer list of less-popular but more targeted terms? What is your goal for this campaign?

Monthly PPC Performance Data
You have a lot of flexibility to create comprehensive, customized reports using your PPC service.

Later you’ll use these to monitor, finesse, and drop the duds in your campaign. But for this Monthly Report, you just want to boil down the most important data for a 2-minute scan. At a minimum, this data includes the following:

• Total number of click-throughs
• Click-through percentage
• Total cost
• Average total cost per click
And, if you’re able to track conversions using your PPC service:
• Total number of conversions
• Conversion percentage
• Average total cost per conversion

We left the information brief, but you can go into a lot more depth here if you desire. Adjust your spreadsheet to suit your needs and preferences.

Top Performing Keywords
Looking through long lists of keyword data should be banned by OSHA! Whether it’s a large PPC campaign with hundreds or thousands of keywords or a smaller one with a couple dozen, your keyword performance data can give you a major migraine.

That’s why we like to pull out some of the top-performing keywords for an eye-pleasing review.

First, you need to decide what you will consider good performance for your keywords. Some options are highest number of click-throughs, highest total number of conversions, best conversion percentage, best click-through percentage, highest total dollar amount spent, highest profit (dollar amount spent minus cost per click), and even a combination of multiple factors.

Once you have chosen your preferred performance measure, browse through your PPC service’s campaign report and pull out the top 10 or so keywords based on performance.

You will list them, along with their performance values, in the Monthly Report. See anything interesting or striking, like a new or unexpected performer? This information may lead to new strategies in your ongoing campaign.

Campaign Analysis
Here is the place to record any changes that took place in your PPC campaigns: keywords bumped up or down the totem pole or changes to ad copy.

This is also the place to make your recommendations or plans for future changes: “Based on the success of our Purple Lampshade promotion, we will add a purple lampshade ad starting next month”

or “Thirteen keywords with high click-throughs but low conversion rates will be dropped from the campaign.”

With your PPC campaign monitoring complete, you’re ready to finalize your Monthly Report with some forward-thinking analysis and action items.

Action Items
Here is the section that everybody on your team will turn to when they get this report. And even if you’re working alone, this to-do list will be an indispensable reference as you move forward into the next month.

One of the challenges that we’ve faced time and time again in our SEO efforts is writing reports that are complete and meaningful, readable, and most important, actionable.
Yes, actionable-it may be a made-up word, but it sure is an important idea in SEO.
Pearl of Wisdom: The best reports are not just repositories of information, they are also tools to guide your team through the next steps.
To assemble your action items, review each of the previous sections of the report. How is your organic search engine status?

Do your pages still need basic optimization? Are there keywords you want to drop or add to your PPC campaign?

And what are the next steps in your link-building campaign? Try to cover all activities, even the mundane ones like “Continue gathering inbound links.”

You’re a professional, so we’re betting you’ve seen an action item list or two in your lifetime.

We bet you’re used to seeing the following columns: Action, Person Responsible, Target Completion Date.

Now, here’s a curveball for you: We want you to add a column called Reason to your action items list.

The Reason column will be the hardest one to write. This is where you must provide a concise explanation of what good this action is going to do for your company.

It hearkens back to what you learned in Chapter 5, “Get Your Team on Board”: Educate your team for best results in SEO.

Giving your team a quick explanation of the reasoning behind your requested change will eliminate the “Why in heaven’s name am I being asked to do this extra work?” or “Why should I allot this extra budget?” reaction.

And, being forced to write a reason for every action item will help you keep your own ducks in a row as well.