Tracking Search Engine Placement
If you’ve been following the preceding steps, you’ve probably given some thought as to how you might track the results of your efforts and what you might expect. My personal recommendation for keeping track of placement is with Web CEO‘s rank checking utility. Run it about once every week using your master key term list and a handful of the more important search engines. At the very least, you should check Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and you may want to give ODP a quick check every few weeks to see if you’re listed.
If your site is brand new, it will probably take awhile to get listed, especially if your key terms are competitive. Don’t be surprised if your site fluctuates dramatically from one week to the next. Search engine indexes occassionally “dance,” meaning that they are reindexing and may produce strange results for a short period of time. You should only be concerned if your site shows a significant drop for longer than a week or two. Ideally, you should see a very gradual increase as your site gains visibility from inbound links.
Remember, optimization is a lengthy process that may take weeks or months to show any impact, so there’s no use sweating it in the short term. Keep an eye on it, maintain your records, and continue optimizing. You will eventually see the fruits of your labor.