The majority of SEO companies cringe at the thought of empowering their clients to evaluate their work. An ethical search engine optimization company does the opposite. There are four tools we recommend using in tandem to assess a search engine optimization company’s work performance.
1. Real Time Statistics / Conversion Analysis Software
Being able to see traffic gains and conversions in real time can be a useful window in evaluating how your SEO Firm is performing. Having the ability to see who is coming to your site, from what SEO they are coming from, and the exact keyword phrase used within the search query is an essential tool.
2. Positioning or Visibility Reports
Being emailed bi-weekly positioning reports on the specific keywords that you are interested in ranking highly for can be incredibly useful. A visibility percentage, which is the percentage of people that are finding you for keywords that are relevant to your business – on the Major Search Engines – Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN is also important. Make sure your firm doesn’t overdue the automated search engine queries, however, the search engines may consider this is spamming their databases.
3. Alexa Rating:
You can download the Alexa Toolbar right now from alexa.com. This gives you a solid summary of the general traffic trend over the last three months for your website when compared to other existing sites. If you have a brand new website, odds are you will not even have an Alexa rating or visible data at all. The Alexa rating also shows you, in general terms, how your website stacks up- traffic wise- in comparison to your competitors or industry affiliates. The lower your Alexa rating, the more traffic your site is generating when compared to other sites in the Alexa universe. Please note, if your site has an Alexa rating of “1” this doesn’t mean you are the most visited site on the internet- it most likely means you are operating a Yahoo Store- in such a case, it is identifying Yahoo’s overall traffic, and not your individual site. A general tool like this can give you a quick overall impression of traffic growth and trends. Be careful, though, the numbers are generalities (similar to the television Nielsen Ratings) and not absolute figures.
4. Google PageRank
You can download the Google Toolbar right now by going to google.toolbar.com. Click on the options tab and check off the “display PageRank” measure. You will be able to see how Google is rating the importance of your site on a scale of 0-10. As the SEO Company proceeds with your campaign, you can check periodically to see how the number is increasing. The typical website might see a PageRank increase of one to two points over the course of an optimization campaign. Keep in mind that it is easier to increase your PageRank at the lower ends of the spectrum. As you approach higher PageRank, it becomes challenging for your rating to balloon.
