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How to Track if your SEO is Working

How to Track if your SEO is Working

Owned by debbie.m (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 07, 2021 by Tom Mulhern (Deactivated)
3 min read

5 Ways to Track the efficacy of your SEO Efforts

Google Analytics

Google analytics is an excellent tool to review and track your customers’ activity so you can serve them better.  

Google Analytics tracks website activity, showing your site’s bounce rate, conversion rate, and views.  

Analytical reports that are useful:  

  • Acquisition report 

  • Google Ads 

  • Organic landing page report 

  • Purchase-to-view Report 

  • Conversion Funnel Visualization Report 

  • Customer journey 

There is a basic free Google Analytics version available as well as a premium version that charges a monthly fee. 

Google Tag Manager

SEMrush describes Google tag manager as a tag management system that offers an interface to create and track all the tags your site needs.  

Here is a complete beginner’s guide to Google tag manager: 

Google Search Console (GSC)

GSC identifies, collects and tracks data that will help you run your business from your target audience’s perspective. You can delve into this tool to gather a ton of information or only select data points to understand. For example, why people are visiting your website and what they’re doing when they get to your landing page versus your home page.  

  • Tracks up to 16 months of comparative data: queries, impressions, clicks, average position, click-through-rate (CTR) 

  • Tracks website pages that have the highest traffic 

  • Ranking strategy 

  • Domain selection 

  • Sitemap report

A guide to understand your Google Search Console tool is below. There are many features you may want to learn about in more detail. The article also takes you through easy-to-follow steps on how to set up your business account.  

Google My Business

A snapshot of your brokerage, including summary, Q&As, reviews, product offerings, and more.  

Learn more about this tool in the Google My Business section of the whitepaper. [link to GMB section here.]

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker allows you to track your website pages’ ranking and the pages of your competitors. Specifically, you want to ensure your web pages are performing for the selected keywords.  

Some rank trackers can be inaccurate, so do your research, sign-up for free trials, and always do some manual checking to make sure the rank tracker tool is pulling accurate SERP data. 

There are many SEO rank trackers to choose from, including HubSpot Marketing Hub, SEMrush, Yext, and SE Ranking to name a few of the more popular rank trackers. 

Site analyzer (site audit tool)

Do you need to audit the SEO performance of your website? A great SEO auditing tool helps to discover any issues with your website and SERP rankings.  

A SEO audit looks at three areas of your website related to search engine optimization: technical, on-site, and off-site SEO.  

SEMrush and Ahrefs are two of the top 10 auditing tools to use.  

Internal Link to Site Audit Section above. 

Backlink Analyzer

One of your goals as a brokerage looking to improve your search engine optimization may be to increase the number of quality links to your website. Part of this process will include finding a backlink analyzer tool that works with your SEO strategy. 

There are several analyzer tools to choose from. We discuss a few below.

Moz's Link Explorer:

Shows you the quality of inbound links using metrics.

  • Understand how and why your website is ranking the way it is. 

  • Reduce spammy links back to your website 

  • Reviews Link Metrics 

  • Page authority 

  • Domain authority checker (Domain authority, spam score,  

  • Compare your competitors' backlinks to yours. 

  • Find and fix broken links. 

  • Discover your pages that are ranking 

  • Free version and upgraded paid version.  

Other backlink analyzers: 

  • SEMrush backlink analyzer 

  • Ahrefs Backlink Analyzer 

  • Uber Suggest 

  • Linkody 

Useful Tips on SEO tools

Understand that not all tools are equal, some are better than others for specific functions.
It’s good to know there are limitations to free tools. If you want to get serious about SEO, you’ll need to invest some money into some of the subscription-based tools. 

Don’t feel like you need to buy all the tools out there. Start with a few and assess if you need to upgrade or purchase another tool when needed. Many tools have a free trial that will help you figure out which tools are the best for your SEO strategy. 

Keep in mind that some tools, like SEMrush and Ahrefs, are more expensive but have multiple functions (e.g., rank tracker, site audit, backlinks).