Search engine optimization (SEO) is a core part of most startup web marketing strategies. The content marketing component is talked about frequently with people cranking out blog posts, articles, white papers, ebooks, webinars, and more. Along with content marketing is the SEO work for on-page and off-page factors, inbound links, etc. To understand the results and progress on these efforts it’s important to do some basic tracking of data.
Here are some basic search engine optimization tracking items for startups:
- Keywords – the search engine ranking position (SERP) of the most important search terms should be tracked for your site on both Google and Bing/Yahoo
- Competitors – common information like the number of Google indexed pages, the number of inbound links, traffic rankings, and more should be tracked for your site and your competitors’ sites
- Keywords of Competitors – how the competitors’ rankings compare to your rankings for keywords as well as the keywords competitors rank well for should be tracked
There are an unlimited number of data points that can be tracked around SEO but focusing on keywords and competitors is a good, simple start.
What else? What are some other basic search engine optimization items that startups should track?
David Cummings on Startups 