How to Gauge SEO success?

[maverick]

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Hi,

We get a reasonable amount of referrals per day from search engines but was wondering how we compared to other sites.

For example from Google we get about 2,500 per day for one site, is this good, average or bad?

Was gonna do a poll but wasn't sure what boundaries to set.

Cheers,

mav.

P.S. Good chance to brag which I know everyone loves

[BenKowaBunga]

It's all relative - 2000 is good for a small site but for Amazon it would be a very bad day at the office. Also depends on what industry you're in.

I would gauge your success based on;

Historical information - are you improving?

Spread - is Google your only referrer cause if they change then you could be shafted.

The number of referring phrases - if only one phrase is getting you traffic, then it's good but not as good as 2 phrases or 4 or 50 or 300, etc.

Having more phrases in more engines will also help soften any potential blows as a result of algorithm changes.

Also concentrate on converting your existing visitors as much as possible. SEO isn't the be all and end all.

[Aquanuke]

You might not be reffering to a site thats geared towards affiliate marketing, but I presume you are...

Therefore it dosent really matter if your getting 2500 visits or 2 visits. The only way you can judge effective SEO is by how much money your making.

If your making more money then you can spend your either real tight or your real good at SEO

[T.J.]

I had a site up last summer that received 100,000 visitors in a month and I made less than £50 on it.
I have another site up that barely gets 100 visitors a day and I
earn over £2,000 a month from it.
As Aquanuke implies, don't judge success by traffic, judge it by conversion rates.

[pricethat]

I think the posts above sum it up, SEO is not an exact science, and even if your number 1 for a set key word that doesnt mean anyones going to look for that keyword and even if they do how is that going to make you money.

Equally you can be really lousy at SEO and make money, its like anything, we all know the general route we should be taking but theres always some git that is better than you, and probably purely through luck as much as science.

SEO success can only really be gaged through the cash that you bring home. Even if you get 2 billion hits a day, some would say that the SE was a success, but in the real world you failed because you made nothing from it.

ps. i too have a site that generates more than 1.5 million unique hits per year, made £32.70 from it so far ;-) Maybe when they change the algorythms again suddenly it will be worth something ha ha ha

[Aquanuke]

Ive no idea how many visitors I have, I remember guess 2-3 years ago espotting wanted to know how many vistitors I recieved and I couldnt tell them, I really dont have a clue.

Whats the point in them knowing or even me knowing?

I can tell you I shifted 400Gigs of traffic last month, how much wonga I made yesterday, the day before and for the month and thats really all that matters.

[smn2]

Hi

Ive no idea how many visitors I have, I remember guess 2-3 years ago espotting wanted to know how many vistitors I recieved and I couldnt tell them, I really dont have a clue.

Whats the point in them knowing or even me knowing?

Far be it for me to question Aquanuke and I don't really check
stats that much myself, but...

Let's say you know you get 1000 users per day at
your sites and you make, say, £100 per day. Then one
day your income goes down to £10 per day, but your
visitor numbers are still 1000 users per day - well that
tells you summats up with your merchant!

Same goes for income going up to £1000 per day but
same visitor numbers.

And income staying at £100 per day but visitor numbers
increasing/decreasing.

Something's changed, and you need to know what to do
to repair/exploit the situation.

I think knowledge of basic sites stats (as provided by
Webalizer, say) just gives you a good feel, but agree with
Aquanuke (*) that how much you make is the most important
site stat of all!

(* Phew! Think I just got away with it!)


Steve

[Aquanuke]

Yep, good point. My brain dosent really work that efficiently, I have this daily struggle fighting with my own lazyness. Ive got a site that dropped from £6,000 pm to about £300pm been meaning to have a look at it.. that was 6 months ago.

I think I just felt like posting somthing as I havent for a long time.

Maybe long periods of isolation slow down the brain.

[Aquanuke]

Its been 3 days without a cigarette.. dont think I can take much more.

[Elaine]

Its been 3 days without a cigarette.. dont think I can take much more.

no - stick with it - hardest thing I've ever done - and I've had 4 kids and been married 30 something years.
stopped 12 year 4 months 3 days 2hrs 3minutes 10 seconds ago

and know if I had one now Id be back on 40+ per day tomorrow

but

I feel so much healthier - still have both legs and can make the bed without getting out of breath and am not laid up in hospital with a plaster and tube on my nose looking like pinochio.

but if you do give in - don't beat youself up - if you really want to stop - you will one day

best of luck

[Guswold]

Going slightly off thread here, but want to support Aquanuke - the best advice I had that helped me give up (almost 2 years ago to the day) was to correct two misconception about smokers that fuels a lot of the anti-smoking products/advertising.:

1) Smokers are not "weak willed" - they are in fact INCREDIBLY strong willed, because despite the fact that you know it's harmful and will kill you you keep on smoking! So, if you want to stop all you have to do its decide you want to
2) You are not "giving up" smoking - there is nothing to give up. You can sleep happily for 8 hours without going into toxic shock, because there is no PHYSICAL pain in the withdrawal of nicotine, so what difference does i make when the lights on?

Anyway, the other key thing is don't let people badger you into it - you've got to decide - so I'll shut up!

Good luck.

[Elaine]

there is no PHYSICAL pain in the withdrawal of nicotine

beg to differ - just ask Dave

[Guswold]

I suppose what I mean is - I had a horrible time during the first three weeks, and it felt like a physical withdrawal, but knowing that it wasn't (it was all just psychological) helped me to rationalise and deal with it. I certainly wouldn't say it was easy - I'd tried and failed several times before, but what finally did it for me was approaching it with the right frame of mind ie. this is not a bad thing because its's going to hurt, but a good thing because that's how I want to live the rest of my life (without the crutch of tobacco).

Apologies again, for going off the topic.

[Mogga]

Good luck giving up,

I gave up about 4 years ago (or is it 5?)

http://www.silkquit.org/
Get a quit meter from there and keep at it.

I found normal chewing gum great to take my mind off it but was on about 3 packs of that a day and it took me 4 months to give the chewing gum up!

[smn2]

Poor ol' Maverick. He's trying to gauge SEO success,
whilst everyone else is trying to gauge Aquanuke's
stop-smoking success.

Just hope Maverick's got the answer he wanted


Steve

PS My only (non-)tip about stopping smoking is don't start! (Sorry.)