How to Know if your SEO is Working

If you've been working on your SEO for a while, you’ve probably wondered if it’s making a difference. You may have some anecdotal evidence, like more calls or leads coming through, or you might have even seen an increase in organic traffic in your Google Analytics reports, but what should you be checking? If you've ever wondered how to know if your SEO is working, this post will help you figure it out. 

What do you need to track to know if your SEO is working?

There are three main metrics you should track to see if your SEO is working. 

Your website's Domain Authority

The first thing you want to track is your Domain Authority. If you’re trying to build links to your website, you want to see an increase in Domain Authority. You can track this using Mozbar and measure your DA from one month to the next. You don’t need to monitor this more than once a month. Ideally, you want to see your DA increase as you build links to your website. The higher the DA, the easier it generally is to rank for more competitive keywords. We generally start to see more traffic and rankings come as your website’s DA goes above 20. It takes a while to build your website's Domain Authority. 

Your website's DA is not a direct ranking factor but rather an indication of how authoritative your website is. It's a numerical score of 1-100, with 1 being low, given to all websites by Moz, not Google. It's thought to be based on information similar to Google's ranking algorithm, though we don't know exactly what goes into the algorithm. We know that Google's ranking algorithm includes high-quality content, the links to your website, and how consumers engage with your website content. 

Your SEO keyword rankings

The next thing you want to track to know if your SEO is working is to check your SEO keyword rankings. When you're doing SEO on a website, you choose a keyword to use for each page that you're optimizing on your website or blog. You want to track your SEO keywords to see if they're moving up or down in the search results. If your SEO is working, the keywords should be moving closer to the top of Google's search results, meaning your numbers get smaller and closer to 1. If your SEO keyword ranking is getting bigger, meaning your website is going further down Google's search results then something may not be working. 

You don't want to worry about your SEO keyword rankings daily; maybe just check them once or twice a month. It's best to use an SEO keyword research and reporting tool to track your keyword rankings. If you're trying to just check them in Google, you won't likely see the correct results because of your own personalized results. If you don't have access to a ranking tool yet, check your keyword rankings in an incognito browser window rather than your regular Chrome browser to be sure you're seeing an accurate picture of your SEO progress. 

Your website's organic traffic 

The final piece of the puzzle is your website or blog's organic traffic. You want to see the percentage of organic traffic increase over time. Ideally, at least 30% of your total website traffic should come from organic, but I've seen some small business websites with 50-75% of their traffic from SEO, which is great. 

In the beginning, you may not have much organic traffic. It can feel frustrating waiting for it to kick in. Rather than focusing on the percentage of traffic, start by looking for an increase in organic traffic each month or this year compared to last year. You'll want to use Google Analytics to track your website traffic so you understand how things are working and where your traffic comes from.

How SEO works, so you know what to watch for to see results 

SEO usually works in the following way – when your Domain Authority increases, you rank higher for your SEO keywords, and you start to see an increase in organic traffic. If your Domain Authority is already higher than your competition, then you may see an increase in traffic almost immediately after starting to do SEO on your website because you've already established yourself as an authority in your niche. 

If your DA is still low, under 15, try to choose keywords that are less competitive to help you have a better chance of ranking high and getting more organic traffic. As your DA raises, you can likely adjust your SEO keywords and choose more competitive ones. It will just take some time. 

How often do you check to see if your SEO is working?

I recommend checking all three of your SEO metrics monthly. I teach my students to run reports from their SEO keyword research tool, Mozbar, and Google Analytics once a month. Track your performance over time to see how SEO is working for your business. 

If you need to adjust your SEO strategy, you'll know in time because you'll see that either your SEO keyword rankings are dropping or your organic traffic is going down. It's all interrelated. 

How long does SEO take to work?

While SEO is a long game, you can start to see some improvements pretty quickly. If your website already has enough DA to be competitive in your niche, then you may start to see SEO keywords move up in the rankings within a few weeks or a month. Once the keywords start moving up in the rankings, you should start to see more organic traffic coming to your website, too. 

If you're doing your SEO the right way, you should continue to see improvements in keyword rankings and more organic traffic coming into your site for the optimized pages for years to come. You will want to go back and review pages and update them periodically to ensure your content stays high-quality, helpful, and relevant, especially over time, but for the most part, the SEO work you do today will continue to work for years to come.

What if your SEO doesn't seem to be working? How do you fix it?

If your SEO isn't working, you need to investigate to find the cause so you can fix things. 

Did your keyword rankings drop? If so, you're likely getting less organic traffic to pages than before. You'll need to dig into your Google Analytics data to determine which pages are impacted. Where did you lose traffic? 

If your DA isn’t rising, you need to focus more on guest blogging, being a resource for reports, digital PR, or link building to help increase it.  

If your rankings aren’t increasing, but your DA is, then something is wrong with the SEO keywords you're choosing. Finally, if your traffic isn’t growing but your rankings are, then your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions need to be rewritten because they’re not enticing click-throughs. Read the linked posts for more details on each troubleshooting issue. If you want help with this, join me in Simple SEO Content, and I'll teach you how to do it and help you figure out the best strategy for your business.