How do YOU track SEO progress?

[seanyg]

Hey guys,

I have been studying SEO for about a year now but I have a rookie question to ask...

How do you track the progress you've made with SEO?

I keep reading in a lot of the posts "learn, apply and see if you get improvements".

How do you track your progress?

Do you actually print out and monitor your SERPs using webmasters tools OR do you just look at the overall Search Engine Organic traffic that is coming to your site using analytics?

Curious to know how you track your progress? What do you recommend?

Thanks in advance,

~Sean

[Brett_Tabke]

1- number of pages indexed. It is a good metric to follow. Does it match what you think is on your site?
2- number of inbound referrals to number of pages indexed.
3- number of inbound referrals and on-site-time.
4- exit method off site. Did they bounce back to google
5- bot activity. how many bot views a day do you get? Watch for significant changes in patterns. Changes will often proceed major ranking change events.
6- phrase variety. Are you getting "one hit wonders", or is your referral traffic mixed around? (You want 50 pages that produce 10 referrals each a day and *NOT* 50 pages with only 1 page that produces 500 referrals a day. Variety survives the whims of the algo)

[seanyg]

Brett. Thanks so much for the detailed reply.

Awesome stuff here.

Will start tracking these metrics!