Although there are many automated tools to measure your company's search engine optimization (SEO) performance, sometimes the simplest approach is the most effective. This post will walk you through a relatively simple process that can be used to measure your core search terms effectiveness.
How does it work? A marketer saves a series of Google searches that include terms that measure a product's or brand's optimization efforts. The results are available in real time. As a bonus, this approach also quickly shows who else is using your terms -- a valuable bit of competitive intelligence.
In this example, we are trying to gauge the effectiveness of the SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) efforts that support the Pleo dinosaur and its parent company, Ugobe.
Step 1: Define a set of "core" search terms for your organization
Most SEO/SEM experts will try and convince you that you need to have a multitude of search terms and keywords to support your campaigns and results. That is sound advice ... but only if you have established credibility with the basic terms. The simplest kinds of terms you should "own" are:
- Your company name
- Your product name
- Key executive names
Step 2: Organize your saved searches
Start the process by creating a new bookmark folder in your browser (Firefox, in our example). Let's call it: "PLEO SEO/SEM Test."
Step 3: Google the obvious term
Go to Google and enter your search criteria for the most obvious results -- in this case, "pleo."
Step 4: Save and bookmark
Save the search results page as a bookmark in your "PLEO folder."
Add other search examples prior to going to the next step.
Step 5: Running and save
Now that you have a series of saved searches, it's time to run them all at once.
You should see a series of tabs open automatically in your browser, with each tab displaying the search results for your saved query. At any point in the future, you can simply repeat this step -- "Open All in Tabs" -- and compare your search effectiveness over time.
Step 6: Analyze your findings
As you move through each of the tabs, understand the relevance of both the paid and organic results. To help judge your SEO effectiveness, consider the following questions:
- Are the results relevant to potential customers?
- Are any of the results being sponsored by your company? If so, are they pointing to the most appropriate pages?
- Are any of the results being sponsored by our competitors?
- What improvements can you incorporate into your site copy to improve your position in the results?
- Compare these results with your Web site analytics (Bonus points for those who save a Google Analytics bookmark for your site in the same folder).
Final thoughts
Although there are a number of factors that influence the results of these saved queries, following this process will serve as a somewhat crude but useful guide to the stickiness of your "core" corporate search terms. In addition, the results will enable you to make data-driven, quick, tactical modifications to your Web site and marketing campaigns.
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