Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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few new inbound links. If you were starting from zero or you had some easy fixes in

your optimization, you may have noticeable improvement in ranks this month. If you

already had decent levels of visibility, you’ll need to be patient.

Now it’s time to go beyond the numbers, but first you’ll need a document to do

it in. Most of your Baseline Monthly Report, with the exception of the Quick Refer-

ence sheet, can be repurposed for your ongoing monthly reports.

Start with the “Site Visibility” section, and in a sentence or two, summarize your

standings this month as compared to last month. Here are some examples:

• We gained top-30 listings on MSN for three of our target keywords.

• We have a new #2 listing for the term “novelty napkin holders” on Ask.

Next, put on your thinking cap and flesh out these bare-bones facts with some

juicy analysis. Why do you think that these changes occurred? What could be done to

improve any less-than-pleasing situations? You’re still getting your feet wet in SEO, so

you might not feel as if you know how to do this, but we recommend you try. Possible

analysis might look like this:

• We gained top-30 listings on MSN for three of our target keywords. Our text

optimization probably had something to do with this.

• We have a new #2 listing for the term “novelty napkin holders” on Ask. How-

ever, since we already have top-10 listings on the other search engines for this

term, I don’t expect significant rank changes on those.

Over the next couple of months you will become more and more adept at this

sort of SEO rumination.

Indexed Pages

In addition to monitoring search engine ranks for your top keywords, we recommend

checking in on the total number of pages indexed. You learned how to do this in Chap-

ter 6 using a special search shortcut.

Now:

Add your summary and analysis to the “Site Visibility” section of your current Monthly Report.

Now:

Open your Baseline Monthly Report, and rename it (by choosing File

Save As) with the current

date. This is now your current Monthly Report.

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