google webmaster tools

Now more than ever web analytics is a big part of evaluating your search engine optimization. With great free options available, such as Google Analytics, no website should go live without it. In the past most SEO marketers have been using the search engines to determine how their SEO is doing but with personalization of search results here to stay it is a necessity to use your web analytics to evaluate your SEO efforts. Here are some my SEO metrics I suggest you track using your web analytics:

• Percentage of referral traffic from each search engine – you want to see Google being 80-90% of the referrals but business can run and survive on Yahoo & Bing traffic alone.
  
• Keywords that drive traffic to your site AND convert – you can send a ton of traffic to your site but does it convert for you? I would rather have 1/3 of the traffic that converts 3 times as better and you should to.
  
• Branded vs non-branded keywords – the majority of us won’t have this problem but if your client or brand has awareness then you want to closely monitor this. I like to see a 30/70 split on brand/no brand keywords as I am a big believer in non branded keywords moving your business to the next level. Yes branded keywords will convert higher but I feel you will only go so far with them.
  

Here are some of the metrics which have become less reliable:

• Rankings – since personalization plays such a big part of what YOU see in terms of organic rankings you really need to take this for what it is.
  
• Pages Indexed – Google has over 700 datacenters that are used to produce your rankings. Doing the “site:” search query and depending on what datacenter you hit will make your reporting of indexed pages change.
  
• Sites linking to you (backlinks) – Yahoo Site Explorer has always been the SEO marketers choice and with all indications that YSE will go away when the Bing merger is final there really is not a free tool out there that is as complete. Google Webmaster Tools will be your best choice.
  
• Toolbar PageRank – you know the pretty green bar that is on your browser. PageRank has been devalued for years now and the one you see on your toolbar is updated quarterly at best. I still like the PageRank method of valuing your link building strategy but not as strong as it used to be.
  

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