Website and business owners who spend money on optimizing their websites in the search engines want to know they are getting a good return on their investments. SEOs need concrete numbers to show these people to prove that the campaign is working, and that they should continue to invest in optimization. But how do you get these numbers? Jacqueline Dooley explains six metrics to use that are helpful indicators for letting both business owners and SEOs know whether a website's optimization campaign is working, and how well.
There are several good reasons why you should measure your SEO efforts:
To justify how much you're spending to management, your client, or whoever holds you accountable for getting traffic to your website.
To make sure that all the time and money you're spending on SEO is actually working.
To secure more money for next year's SEO budget.
To stay competitive.
It doesn't hurt to place some industry statistics in front of your boss or client. For example, an article on MarketingSherpa.com titled "How Much Should You Budget for Search Marketing in 2005? (Paid Ads vs. Site Optimization)" states that, on average, a website's traffic increases by 73 percent within six months of site optimization. This is a powerful statistic, and it can be made even more powerful by combining it with metrics specific to your site.
Understanding industry averages, such as how much the average website owner spends on outsourcing SEO ($100 - $500 per Web page is not out of the question, according to MarketingSherpa.com), and what sort of return you can expect to receive for paying top dollar, are both critical when formulating a plan that will convince the higher-ups to spend the dough on SEO.
The goal here is to lay out some key metrics in a simple monthly report that brings together the entire SEO picture, including how keywords, search engines and search engine ranking affect your website's traffic and (whenever possible) conversion. Here are six metrics you can track and easily chart which demonstrate the importance of SEO to your bottom line.
Search Optimization 
