Search engine optimisation is the process of improving a website in hopes of getting a higher rank in the search engine result pages.
Business owners and marketers know this is not an easy thing to achieve, and it can often take months for a good SEO strategy to show its effects. But how do you know when your SEO is done?
Well, SEO is an ongoing process, and you can’t really be 100% done. But there are ways to check if your SEO efforts are paying off.
Why Is an SEO Expert’s Work Never Done?
Search engines need a way to rank all the potential web pages they deliver to users in the SERPs. One of the main factors it relies on to make their list is, of course, relevancy. It’s why if you make a Google Search right now all the websites are directly connected to your query.
However, search engines also need to ensure people come back to use their service time and time again. For them, it’s all about user experience, and considering they have no control over how you create your website, the search ranking is a way to encourage these sites to step up their game.
So apart from relevancy, search engines also care about:
- Site speed
- Navigation
- Backlinks
- Relevant keywords and content
- Mobile-friendliness, etc.
Websites need to always make sure they are up to par with Google’s standards when it comes to websites. For instance, if your website has a lot of broken links, you’ll likely not improve your ranking unless you address this issue, even if you check all the other boxes.
An SEO strategy is usually made up of lots of different components:
- Social media posting
- Website improvement
- Keyword research
- Content marketing
- Link building
And there’s another layer to consider here. We don’t exactly know the specific formula search engines use to rank websites, we just know they focus on elements that have to do with user experience. But the expectations of the users are continuously changing, which means that the search engine algorithms do as well.
This is why SEO is a continuous process. Even if you improve your website rank in search results today, it doesn’t mean you’ll keep that spot forever. If the algorithm changes and Google or other search engines decide to use other ranking factors, it’s possible to lose your spot.
How Do You Know If Your SEO Strategy Works
While you should work continuously on your website SEO, it doesn’t mean you should be working without analysing the results. You need to review and improve to stay on top of the SERPs.
Here are a few different ways you can check if your SEO strategies are paying off, or if you need to make some changes:
1. Check Google Analytics
Checking Google Analytics daily should be a part of any marketer’s routine. It’s the best tool to see your website performance, from traffic data to bounce rate, your visitors, and your conversion rates.
For most businesses, the purpose of an SEO strategy is to increase search traffic to their website, so you should check your traffic report to see if there are any changes in the number of visitors coming from Google.
If all goes to plan, you should see an increase in search traffic. If not, then your strategy isn’t working out just yet.
Note that it can take 6 months to a year for a good SEO strategy to show any meaningful results, so if you’ve only started your SEO journey recently, don’t get discouraged if you don’t see any improvements. Head on to the next items on this list to see other methods of testing your SEO efforts.
2. Run an SEO Audit
You probably ran an SEO audit at the beginning of your journey to identify any issues in your approach. However, it’s important to run this analysis recurrently to remain on top of your strategy and continuously improve it.
You can use a free SEO checker tool like Moz, or the Search Console tool from Google Webmasters to run a quick diagnostics. Apart from the information you receive in Google Analytics, these tools can provide further details regarding broken links, site speed, if a specific keyword is generating any results, and more.
3. Test Your Link Building Strategy
Link building is the most important part of your off-page SEO strategy. Having a lot of links on high authority websites redirecting users to yours is a great way to improve your ranking in organic search, as Google sees each link from reputable sites as votes of confidence.
You can check your links using the SEO tools, or you can do it manually. If you type your URL in Google search with inverted commas (“www.mywebsite.com.au”), the search engine will provide all the different pages where your website is linked.
This way, you can see what are the websites where your site is linked, and what Google’s ranking of them are.
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, SEO strategies are complex, take time, and require a lot of effort. The fact that you’re going head to head with many different websites that have similar selling points makes it all the more difficult to set your apart and improve your rankings.
SEO is one of those things that is never done, in the true sense. A good strategy may end up bringing the results you want, but moving forward you might lose it all if you’re not constantly re-evaluating your strategy and changing it.
If you need some assistance in the SEO strategy department, we can help. Book a free 30-minute strategy session with Search Engine Optimisation Expert at Australian Internet Advertising to get started on your strategy.
