5 ways to know what’s happening with your site
SEO is as much about what you do as knowing what’ going on. This monitoring and webmetrics part of your website is perhaps the most critical part of SEO and also the most neglected. In my view a SEO exercise is incomplete without taking this part into active consideration. Most of us know that the algorithm used by search engines is a closely held secret, so much so that even the insiders don’t know exactly how it works. But, the intention of Google and other guys is not to complicate and obfuscate the search process but to ensure that users, by which I mean those who conduct actual search, get what they are searching for. And there are hints and detailed guides if you only care to open your eyes and listen (pun intended). What then are the five critical elements of web monitoring?
Fixing un-crawl able web pages
Sometimes we optimize our sites beautifully but are frustrated by the results. In most cases the Googlebot is unable to crawl through some of your pages. But how are you to know this? Simple actually. The Google webmaster tools are very handy when it comes to analyzing problems with your web pages. This simple diagnostic tool (which is a free download and takes seconds to install) tells you why Googlebot is unable to crawl through your site. With this data you can then make necessary changes to your web pages and …….. bravo ,you find light at end of the tunnel.
Indexing stats
I cannot overemphasize the importance of indexing stats. Many a times we may be violating some of the rules of Google search engine and may be penalized for it by not showing up in search results. You may never know what’s going on unless you have Google webmaster tools. Google are a nice bunch of guys and are eager to let us know why they are penalizing you. This gives you ample opportunity to correct the mistakes and resubmit the pages for reindexing. Let me tell you that this has saved many of my clients from doom. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes – everyone makes them. But not understanding the dynamics of SEO is certainly a crime. You must know how to get out of problems quickly .That’s the only way you will learn.
Link data
Another important stats which you would like to see. There are many tools available out there which can give you the stats. But the Google tool is way ahead . It gives you a list of links, external and internal. You can then analyze who is linking to you and what impact they have on your SEO activity. Visitor behavior can better be understood from analyzing this data. Obviously you cannot do much about external links but tweaking internal pages and creating helpful user friendly links from within the site can result in more traffic to your site.
Top queries
As I mentioned earlier, Google guys want to help webmasters tune up their site – Google helps those who want to help themselves. Are you interested in the statistics of how and why visitors visit your website? What are the search words and queries which bring you that much needed traffic? I personally would give my soul to know how my user reaches me. I would say that people who are not interested in user behavior and analysis will never become SEO specialists. The entire gamut of SEO is dependent on this single factor- what do visitors really want? This tool is really simple to use and does not require a degree in rocket science. In fact less nerdy you are the better. That’s what I always say- people skills are still critical when it comes to SEO, for technology we have Google.
Page analysis
This is another aspect of analyzing user behavior. Other sites link to yours using some specific words which you can gather from using this tool. Analyzing your competitors site makes sense since you learn from it. This is called reverse engineering. The Japanese have excelled in this art and have defeated American car makers at their own game. Sony reverse engineered the best of US technology and now owns more than half the tech companies or maybe more. What are your rivals doing? You can get some of the answers by using this tool.
Gathering facts and figures about your website is an involved process. Some websites hire specialists to track and monitor theirs as well as competitor websites. Google webmaster tool is only the tip of the diagnostic process. Not knowing what’s happening behind the scene is not only ignorance but a SEO crime.
