Eat Your Vegetables and Monitor Your Search Engine Positions

August 9, 2007 in Search Engine Optimization | Comments (0)

Hopefully, your search marketing strategy is part of an overall marketing plan that involves regular testing and measuring.  It’s like eating vegetables when you’re a kid….you gotta do it because it’s good for you, even though it’s not your favorite part of dinner.  The same is true for monitoring your search engine positions – you gotta do it to know if customers can find your business in the search engines, and to know when to act or react to the changes that are bound to occur from time to time. 

Consider these numbers:

  • More than 74% of all consumers check the web FIRST before they make a purchase (either online or in a brick-and-mortar store), so the importance of being on the web is pretty clear.
  • Reports also show that more than 80% of all web traffic comes from search engines, because that’s where most people begin the research/buying process.

So if your business can’t be found in the search engines, how will people know about you? And if you don’t monitor your positions in the search engines, how will you know if you are on page 1 or page 1001, or if you show up at all?

Of course, there are many ways to help build your search engine rankings, like publishing lots of good quality content on your site, regularly updating your site’s content, sending out press releases on the web (for inbound links), listing your business in quality online web directories or on industry-related sites, optimizing your web pages for the search engines, plus many others.  If you are already doing these things but not monitoring your rankings, how will you know if your efforts are working?  

Optimizing your web site for the search engines is only part of the job; you must also track and monitor your search engine positions in order to have a healthy, well-balanced search engine strategy.  Because it is so important, you should include search engine monitoring as part of your regular marketing activity each month.  By keeping tabs on your positions, you can watch the effectiveness of your current search marketing strategies, and also take the steps necessary to stop any negative trends that could threaten your hard-earned rankings.  So go ahead and eat your vegetables, monitor your search engine positions, and maybe you can have some dessert.

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