Seo Services Spain Blog

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns, there are many different KPI’s that can be used, with some providing better insights than others. Some people measure the number of inbound links and indexed pages with others using Google toolbar page rank and keyword rankings.

But before using any metric, it’s important to know WHY you are using it and what each metric actually signifies. For example, you may say, “wow, my site has 10,000 links”, but when those 10,000 links come from 10 domains this doesn’t really measure popularity or reach does it? Besides, Google will probably have de-valued 9,990 of them anyway.

In my last post 7 Must-Do Inbound Marketing Practices For 2010 (and beyond) I spoke about some of the best inbound marketing methods you can use in 2010 and beyond in order to attract more visitors to your website. In this post, I will discuss some of the KPI’s you can use in order to measure the success of those practices and why each is so effective in finding out whether you are truly connecting with your customers.

1. Number Of Organic Keywords Found With
If you have ever looked at your traffic and keyword stats you will notice that approximately 80% of keywords used to find your site are keywords that you most probably didn’t optimise for. This is more commonly referred to as the long tail and is why it is so important that you create a site that has lots of textual content that can be indexed by the search engines.

So, the more content you have, the more keywords and search phrases you will be found with. Another great benefit of being found with these long tail searches is that they are normally very highly targeted and convert much better compared to broad keywords.

So, if the number of individual keywords you are being found with (and you can find this using any analytics program) is rising consistently, this is a good sign that you are creating a content rich site.

2. Number Of Linking Domains
Another great KPI is the number of linking domains. Many people focus on purely the number of links coming into your site from other websites, but this is wrong. It’s very easy to get a link from a site that’s placed in the footer which means that you may have a link on 10,000 pages. Do you think Google will count all of these? Dream on!

This is why a more important KPI is the number of unique domains linking to you, as this is a greater indicator to Google and the other engines that you have great link popularity. 500 unique domains linking to you are far more valuable than 20,000 links from 20 domains. Unless of course the 20 sites are extremely powerful.

3 . Number Of Pages Indexed
Another great KPI which is important to keep track of is the number of pages on your site that are indexed in the major search engines. The more content you have indexed, the more likely it is that you will attract lots of highly targeted long tail traffic.

4. Number Of Branded Searches
A strong indicator that you are starting to gain greater brand awareness are instances of branded searches within your logs and analytics. So, any search that includes your company name in it can be considered a branded search. Make sure you monitor these on a regular basis.

5. Number Of Blog Subscribers
If you have a blog and are using it in order to display your writing talents then you want to keep track of how many people are subscribed to it via RSS. This can be done by using Feedburner and can provide you with regular stats on how many people you have hanging on your every word!

6. Number Of Twitter Followers
Twitter has become a great channel for drawing visitors into your site. It’s a great way to build a community of followers for your business and also a great way of establishing a connection with your clients and becoming more “transparent”. The number of followers you have can be a good indicator of the kind of reach and “mind share” you are starting to build.

7. Number Of Facebook Fans
Like Twitter, Facebook is extremely popular, with hundreds of millions of users logging in every day. By creating a fan/business page on Facebook, you give your existing and potential customers the opportunity to not only get updates on your company, but also give them the opportunity to converse with you directly. Tracking and increasing the number of Facebook fans you have is another signal that you are gaining more influence and mind share within your market.

So remember. If you are tracking any KPI, make sure you know exactly why you are tracking it and what it signifies.

Related Post: 7 Must-Do Inbound Marketing Practices For 2010 (and beyond)