Are You Doing SEO Effectively On Your Site?
People are commonly asking if we have something to help them recover after they realize their site is not doing well as expected. Even with slight drops, people panic that may be their site will continue dropping in rankings. In most cases, the drop is actually legitimate facilitated by the search engines. In some cases however, there is actually nothing wrong with the rankings or site traffic. Below are a few steps outlined by myself and my friend Marcus. These steps are a well described explanation unto where you should be looking as well as where not to in order to determine your site performance.
You claim your traffic dropped
Many of the website owners live in panic that the site traffic will drop any time. Most of our clients too come claiming that they have observed some traffic drop. After our assessment, we are not able to find anything like a drop. Everything is usually intact most of the times. This is a result of the clients being misled by wherever they check for the rankings. Google Analytics is the only place you need to go when checking for the rankings.
Google however is not free from ambiguity. There is another perfect way that we use and trust. When you are doubting your SEO and want to check the drop, goo to the âacquisitionâ tab, then âall trafficâ and lastly click on channel section.
A line chart is provided for you here. Furthermore, the full overview of your traffic in the criteria of channels is also provided. The channel is the combination of several visitor sources. This makes it easy to see your entire traffic. All the search engines are included in the channels whether Google, Bing, yahoo and others. This is in a channel called âorganic searchâ. A channel called âsocialâ also combines the traffic usually from the social media including Facebook, twitter, Pinterest and others.
With such data provided you can confidently determine your performance. If no changes are observed, then you are far much performing as expected. If there is a drop noticed, then donât worry as a result. You need to determine the cause of the drop and if it is the SEO with a problem. This can be done using several methods.
Use of Google analytics will enable you to view the search enginesâ traffic. You can do this by use of two methods. The easiest and most common is to click on the tab âorganic searchâ found in your list shown at the top. This is a channel on its own and you will be able to view statistics and also a line chart after clicking. This can be of great use to you. However, there are disadvantages that come along. Comparison with other channels from your channel is hard.
The second method is hence better as a result. You can first select your check box prior to selecting the channel you wish to view. After that, you click on âplot rowsâ tab found on the top. This option will give you another second line that you will be able to compare the total traffic with your traffic.
A blue line and an orange one will be visible on the line chart. The blue one represents total traffic while the orange one represents search enginesâ traffic. Some spikes are visible in the total traffic and they have no relationship to the search enginesâ traffic. This literally means that our SEO is not affected in any way. They are usually associated with social media and also newsletters.
It is not a must that a drop in the traffic you will receive will be caused by search engines. There are some other reasons unto why your traffic can decrease. Things may mess up on the social media accounts or even the newsletters you send to customers end up dropped in the spam folders. It is hence advisable to check other causes other than directly blaming the SEO.
Look out for your operational timeframe
Businesses are different on the internet. Some will do better during some periods of the year and will perform poorly during some other periods. The graph you get on the Google analytics will have the time limits that will depend on how you want them to be. When the timeframe is about two or 1 and a half months, it is very appropriate for the traffic in your site is steady at all times. For the seasonal business, it is better when you increase the timeframe to more than 6 months or up to a year.
For the timeframes that include the current week or month, it is expected that the last point will be lower always on the line graph. This however does not indicate a drop in your traffic. It shows that it is today which is the last point and not much is known yet about today.
This method is more difficult compared to the method of just clicking. Searching in Google is generally personalized. It recognizes the users differently whenever they search for the same thing. What shows up for one person may not be shown on another person. This is usually because of personal behavior when browsing together with other several factors.
Clients come claiming that they were doing well online and were ranked high previously. One of the causes for your drop can actually be click on your site often. This basically means that it is not effective to use your Google account to determine your ranking performance.
Many of the people are still targeting to use PageRank these days. This doesnât mean much and most often means nothing. Google belittled or strongly disapproved its use. This was as a result of need for Google to encourage use of other metrics e.g. Google analytics. It will give you a better understanding of your siteâs performance.
The rises or drops in the PageRank will not necessarily mean that there is an actual rise or drop in your rankings. It is meaningless as much as rankings are concerned these days.
We at Yoast do not embrace use of ranking trackers. These usually give the general ranking idea. Some of these rankings may not even concern your industry. The most appropriate way to check for rankings is to do it on your line of work. Comparing your site to all the other sites in the world is just not appropriate.
Trackers are also known to track your entire rankings. This is not an issue of concern to everyone. It is our issue which will mean that the fluctuation in our rankings will be very frequent. The fact that we rank very well for âGoogle analyticsâ will be the main cause for the fluctuation. Searches for the âGoogle analyticsâ are many and the rankings will fluctuate more often. This means that whenever we rose or drop just a little, the trackers will do the same even for the cases where users never intended to search for us. The best way to use ranking trackers is for general indication and not more than that.
Use of webmaster tools from Google
This is a method that we recommend for use when checking your siteâs performance. You need to get the proper metrics to use these tools effectively. The section of âsearch queriesâ will help you view the number of impressions your site has and also the number of clicks that has been brought up out of the impressions. The term impression shows you the number of times that the website you own has been visible to the users on the search results. When any of the metrics involved decreases, there is something wrong. Time-frames are also of importance in this section because this is a serious problem.
The section of âindex statusâ is also of importance. It will show the number of pages that Google indexes. This metric is hence of importance and we all expect a rising or a steady line. When this is not the case and is dropping, there must be a problem. Donât disallow the pages and expect a rising or steady line also.
You can hire an SEO expert to do the SEO assessment for you. When this is not the case and you are involved in the assessment, the best methods to do this include use of webmaster tools from Google and Google analytics. All the other tools will only give you general indications and ideas. The other point to note is that you have to make sure that the problem is cause by SEO for sure before you complain to your SEO expert.
