SEO METRICSHow to know if your SEO is working

with @JohnCarcutt

Before we get started ….

Lets talk about Panda Famers

Big Changes at Google

1st JC Penalty – NY Times Article

Penalized for Buying Links

2nd Forbes.com – Webmaster World Forums

WMT Notification posted, Penalized for Selling Links

3rd Overstock.com – WSJ Article

Hit with algo update targeting aggressive link buys

4th Farmer update – Google Blog

Google algo change impacting 11.8% of all searches

5th Panda/Farmer – Wired Article

Updated to include aggressive advertising on sites.

Big Changes at Google

All this in the

Last 3 weeks !

You Need to Monitor and React

Were you hit?

How would you know?

Do you know?

What Metrics to Watch

Search Rankings

• Higher Rankings Mean Better Results …• Not so Fast …

• Personal Search• Geo-Modified Search• Universal Search Elements

• RavenTools.com

What Metrics to Watch

Universal Search

What Metrics to Watch

Geo-Modification

What Metrics to Watch

RavenTools.com

What Metrics to Watch

Analytics

• Traffic Volume• Always a good indicator of both positive and negative search changes.

• Number of Keywords Used• The more keywords your site is being found for, the more “reach” your site has into search

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

What Metrics to Watch

GoogleAnalytics

What Metrics to Watch

Google Webmaster Tools

• Direct communications from Google• Errors Google finds while crawling• Errors in Robots.txt and SiteMap.xml files• Malware Identification• HTML Suggestions

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

What Metrics to Watch

Google Webmaster Tools

What Metrics to Watch

Your Link Profile

• Number of Inbound Links• Percentage of Deep Links• Anchor Text Profile• Number of Unique Domains• Changes in Link Profile

www.opensiteexplorer.org

What Metrics to Watch

Your Link Profile

• Number of Inbound Links• Percentage of Deep Links• Anchor Text Profile• Number of Unique Domains• Changes in Link Profile

www.opensiteexplorer.org

Consolidated Metrics for WP

Consolidated SEO Metrics Plug-in AppliedSEO.com (Coming Soon)

• Is the current page Cached in the engines• Track changes in PageRank of pages• Track Current # of Pages Indexed• Monthly Re-Verification of Indexed Pages• Time Since Last New Page Indexed• Average Time till New Content is Indexed• # of Pages with Less than 200 Words• Average # of Edits per Page• Average Time Between Edits on a Page• Number of Inbound Links to Site and Pages

And much more …