SEO Strategy
SEO Benchmarks and KPI
How to measure SEO success
Recently we learned that most SEOs still consider that rankings are a performance indicator, just less of a value than in the past. Or at least according to a recent poll we held. This all begged the question, what ARE the metrics of measuring SEO success?
Well, in short, there is no cookie cutter approach that is going to work in all situations. What follows are some notes that we (Dojo warriors) put together over some forum threads and chat sessions. And the question was….
What benchmarks and key performance indicators are worth watching?
As we made our way through the various potential benchmarks and KPI metrics, it became clear; all is not at it first would seem. Right away you should understand that each website, each business model and market creates new challenges. This is where the art of SEO comes into play. What is a key metric in one situation may be of secondary value on another.
Using KW research to diversify link profiles
Your guide to creating natural link profiles
Using your keyword research when crafting link profiles is extremely important for both internal and external tagging. Crafting link profiles is all about related diversity. What I mean by that is we want to have a diversified link text collection that is made of up related phrasings and creates a theme in the eyes of a search engine.
A full featured link profile for a given page or website should be diverse in links texts as well as timing of the links. Search engines look for anomalies in these areas and can discount or devalue your links if it believes them to be artificially crafted. I would say the thresholds are likely reasonably high (for major link spammers) but it is still an area of interest and potentially concern.
Beyond the fact that there is the potential for running afoul of the search engines, creating diversity and themes will ultimately create a stronger link profiles and naturally create long-tail traffic opportunities as well.
Keyword or Phrase research and targeting practices
This article is not aimed at the advanced level reader here folks. I talk to many people that don't even spend a passing thought on the KW/P research - this posting is written to give the reader a foundation - not as an advanced guide. Of course, this being an in-exact science, there could be some gems in here for the ragged SEO warriors as well.
Link Building
Getting the idea
I have since updated this post with; Link Building Ideas for 2008
No matter how you look at it, links are a very important part of the SEO process. To what degree, varies over the major engines. They each have their own particular flavor as to how they apply weighting and filtering in the treatment of links pointing towards your site, known as Back Links or In-Bound Links.
Basics of a Link Profile
What’s a link profile? I get asked that question a lot. For the most part I attribute it to the fact that it is not exactly a common everyday SEO term. Even I was ‘turned on’ to it by an industry friend that used it. While I had a strong understanding of the many implications of Link Building Programs, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time in viewing the results in a structured way. Once you can start to understand and quantify the linking factors affecting ones over-all rankings, .
