“Is my Google website ranking accurate?” is a question on the lips of many website owners. With the dance of the search engines (rankings bounce up and down all the time) well established, how can you be sure exactly where you are consistently ranking?

One other thing to be noted is whether you are logged into your Google account. See the thing is Google stores your search data as long as you’re logged into your gmail account. If you click on your own site to see the latest activity a lot of the time, chances are your site will feature higher up in the rankings. Let me illustrate as ever with an example and a few pics.

When I’m not an SEO consultant I also run a cricket website called World Cricket Watch that is attempting to rank for the phrase “world cricket“.  If I’m logged into my gmail account the SERPs look as follows…

Logged in

For a hyper competitive phrase such as “world cricket” the site sits at number 3.

But notice I’m signed in.

So to get the truest reflection of your Google website ranking, click the sign out button and test out your ranking again…

Logged out

You’ll see the site is still on the frontpage but finds itself in 8th position.

Search engine rankings will always fluctuate. A great way to get the truest reflection of your Google website ranking is to sign out of your Google account. But checking rankings is a very tedious undertaking, especially if you have a large e-commerce style site. There has to be a better way surely?

You’ll be pleased to hear there is indeed a better way. It comes in the form of Market Samurai. You can load all your keywords into market Samurai once and then whenever you have the need to check your rankings simply click a button and they’ll automatically generate. Furthermore, you can do much much more with Market Samurai. Keyword research, SEO competition and ranking checkers are just for starters. You can also track your backlinks and discover where you need to concentrate your energy to continually grow your web business.

2 takeouts from this are to sign out of your google account for truer rankings. And secondly if you have a big website it might be worth investing in one of the best SEO tools around – Market Samurai.

Site Reporting & Ongoing SEO

Unlike many traditional marketing methods, with SEO you are able to get a very clear, measurable result for your efforts through website analytics. You are able to see where you appear on Google, how many new visitors this brought to your website and how many of these visitors went on to make a purchase. And that’s just the beginning…

Once you engage in website analysis and start to see the benefits of a successful SEO campaign (through website analytics), it can become very addictive. You’ll look to identify new keywords, bringing you even more visitors, and then improve the rate at which your website converts these visitors into sales. That’s why SEO needs to be a part of your long-term sales and marketing strategy.

The fact is, you can’t improve what you don’t track… and that’s why we suggest you track everything! If you don’t currently have any tracking on your website, check out a free service called Google Analytics – it’ll provide you with more information than you’ll know what to do with.

The key metrics we like to follow, include:

Unique Visitors
It’s important to keep an eye on the number of unique visitors to your website. Be wary of any webmaster that talks in terms of “hits”. Hits really aren’t a very good representation as to the number of visitors to your site – it can make things appear busier than they really are. Instead, you want to see your unique visitors increasing month on month.

*By following the right steps you can very easily see increases of 300%+ but it all depends on how your site is currently performing.

Actual Pages Visited
Seeing where your visitors go when on your website can identify some easy opportunities to increase profits. Knowing what pages are most visited then gives you the opportunity to improve the rate at which those pages convert. This is often overlooked by those new to SEO, yet it can give you one of the biggest returns. And here’s why…

*Increasing a page’s conversion rate from 1%-2% will yield the same profit results as doubling your traffic. That is to say, you’re converting twice as many visitors from the same number of visitors.

Length of Stay
Have you ever visited a website only to leave almost immediately? Most likely you didn’t find what you were looking for and so you didn’t make a purchase. By analysing how long your visitors stay on your website (along with a few other tests) you can identify what made them leave. Obviously you want to give them what they are looking for and the longer they stay, the greater the chance they’ll purchase your product or service.

What Customers Are Buying
Many people tend to focus on their weaknesses, thinking they need to become stronger in that area. The reverse is actually true. It’s important to analyse where you’re already successful and do more of that. By analysing what’s already selling, you’ll be able to build your website (and profits) faster than you ever thought imaginable.

Want to find out more about website analytics, watch this:

• Are You Creating Blog Commenting Spam?
• The Simple Way To Increase Your Conversion Rate
• A Simple Search Engine Optimisation Technique To Target The Right Keywords
• Will Social Media Trends Kill SEO?
• Our Gradual Link Building Strategy