Too many webmasters only look at the small pixels of SEO such as fixating over link building, page rankings, squeezing out specific keywords, etc., instead of looking at the big picture. Here are a few vital tips that can enable you to take a step backward, view the big picture, and implement improved seo strategy to get back into the optimization game.
Your first step should be to please major search engine robots to consider indexing you on a higher page and tools such as those offered by Google and Yahoo should be used. Google’s “site” command is an excellent tool to check your index ranking and additional tools such as Xenu’s Link Sleuth and Crawl Test from SEOmoz can help you monitor and improve your rankings. In addition, including a XML sitemap will certainly help in easy indexing by robots.
You need to constantly monitor your page rankings to locate shortcomings and improve rankings. Turning off personalization temporarily after signing out of Google is a small tip with big benefits. You should also utilize the Rank Tracker page ranking tool from SEOmoz to keep an eye on your page rankings at regular intervals. Ignoring long-tailed keywords is another mistake that could prove to be costly and you need to use the Webmaster’s Top Search Queries report to locate these vital keywords to help optimize your own SEO.
Monitoring reports for improved results should also include setting up of conversion tracking in your analytics tools and tracking the conversion funnel in great detail. Another key tip is to keep on segmenting metrics until you can so as to locate stumbling blocks and uncover hidden opportunities for improving future strategies.
While you might have worked hard to attract relevant traffic towards your website, you also need to ensure that your seo strategies are on the same wavelength of search engine robots. Thus, tracking organic web traffic in detail by using tools such as web analytics will help you confirm if your chosen keywords are indeed ones preferred by most search engines. Launching a small PPC campaign will provide further reports that indicate relevance and also help you to test web traffic volume.
The above tips are basic-but-critical in helping you improve your SEO strategy. Use them while keeping an eye on the bigger picture to happily inch towards the elusive No.1 page ranking on each related query.