SEO World:

Ranking has been, and always will be, important.

I mean, ultimately, if no rankings exist (I’m talking about the first page of search engines) for keywords that are searched for (try Google Suggest), you are not using natural, organic results to drive traffic, or you have just started.

You may be employing other strategies for driving traffic, which is good–you should have a blended approach–but you *must* track everything you do, and Google Analytics is most often the starter analytics package of choice. In fact, since it’s easy on your wallet (free), many opt to use this system. It is used on websites from static to dynamic. There are even free Wordpress Analytics Plugins, easy to set up. Check out Joost De Valk and his wordpress Google analytics plugin (he’s a great SEO tool builder in the Netherlands; contact him if you are reading from Europe).

Rankings are important. But after ranking and traffic comes the critical (and often underused or misdiagnosed) web analytics. What questions should you ask? What’s important?

Recently, at a publishers convention, I discussed SEO, search marketing trends and tracking (wpa-online.org), and it was apparent that many knew the basics of SEO and had analytics running on their sites, but did not necessarily know what were important metrics to track.

Learn more about page views, user behavior tracking, average time on site, importance of understanding bounce rates, unique visitors, referrer traffic and optimizing landing pages here.

Search Engine Optimization using proper KPI (key performance indicators) analytics is a must-do, don’t-miss situation.

Many SEO firms are now ROI-based (not just rankings anymore), like my new friend and SEO expert Gab Goldberg. I recommend you check him out.

What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web-analytics package that offers compelling features and benefits such as keyword comparison, custom dashboards and AdWords integration for everyone from senior executives and advertising and marketing professionals to site owners and content developers.

More information is at Google Conversion University. The informative site talks about:

• Acquisition,
• Onsite behavioral patterns and analysis,
• Results and conversion goals, and
• A set of additional, useful videos on (Google) analytics.

Also, how about those privacy concerns–where Google might use your data (for/against) in some fashion? Read the industry and benchmarking trends report that recently came out for more on that.

So I recommend you look at these videos in the following order:

Overview Analytics video 1: “A Small Business Approach to Web Analytics: John Marshall” (Ex-ClickTracks);

Google Analytics Video 2: “Google Analytics Interface Tutorial”;

Google Analytics Video 3: “Optimizing Customer Experiences”; and

Google Analytics Video 4: “Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric” (this guy is a guru in this industry).

In the field of search marketing, specifically search engine optimization, watching and tracking your website rankings, performing detailed and ongoing keyword research and managing link programs and competitive analysis are vital to your business and building search engine rankings.

While much of this can be done manually, you simply don’t have the time.

Perhaps you can keep up for a while on one domain, but if you are smart - you have applied a multiple domain strategy, supporting your niche market place with a domain ring and rich branding via URLs in PPC campaigns. Under this model, you’ll be more strapped than ever - but you need to continue building.

What do you do now?

Start by using a basic, but powerful SEO toolset that will do the job for you. Here are some tools that I use, and consider them indispensable search tools:

• WP4 - a tool developed by the Webtrends folks - to help completely automate the tracking of your search engine rankings and related keywords. Used by many search engine marketers, there’s a free download, (aff) and you can selected between the standard edition and pro edition. Search engines don’t like abuse from tools like these, so make sure you run it responsibly, and use the “search engine friendly” settings. It’s nice to wake up in the morning - to detailed rankings reports with all your competitors listed next to you.
• Keyword Research Super tool - Wordtracker. There is a free version you can start with now, and you can sign up for their paid version also. You must select the right keywords, or all your efforts will go wasted. Extensive data mining from ISPs and meta crawlers provide massive amounts of keywords for your research. This is the easy and professional way to remove all the guessing, and super-sizes the old overture tool (which hasn’t been updated in a while, and dying slowly, but used by many).
• For link analysis and competitive research, you will do well with the Optilink system from Leslie Rhode, the SEO Overlord and stellar search programmer. As you probably know, link popularity (how many links are pointing to you) and link reputation (what those links say about you in the anchor text) are key to moving up in search results. Add also a strong relevancy factor, and you got a winning formula for success. (I recently tripled my traffic in less than a week with a recent site I’m testing - just from using this tool and building the right links the first time).
• Keyword density has been discussed too many times in forums and search engine blogs about being a key factor to rankings. While having content on a page with the right keyword distribution is important, I still use this free tool to make sure I’m capturing the right keywords. I also look at keyword proximity and prominence, both from the copy and supporting tools like this. The keyword cloud concept can be quite useful.

I have compiled a list of additional tools that you may use - some free and paid - on this comprehensive SEO tools list page.