There is no doubt about it, website marketing is absolutely crucial when it comes to any sort of success online these days. Facebook type growth only comes around once every generation or so. These days, strategic marketing for a website is just as important as having a professionally designed website. With that marketing comes the need to measure how your marketing works which is going to be important if you want to understand just how well your efforts are being executed. I have seen people spin their wheels until they were blue in the face and still not a single positive result occurred from their actions. It is always important to understand what is working and what should be kicked to the curb.
Keep in mind that success online must align with your business goals. For some companies it is just branding, for others it might be rankings and for some they just want the phone to ring a bit more. Everyone has different goals and your website marketing efforts should always align with those goals.
Here are some ways you can measure your website marketing effectiveness:
Website Traffic
There is this great little program (sarcastic voice) called Google Analytics that can show you all your website traffic for free! If your website marketing effectiveness is heading in the right direction Google Analytics will show you. It identifies all your traffic, where it is coming from, what type of browser people are using and what geographic location most of your traffic is coming from. A wonderful tool that can give you an enormous amount of insight.
Google Analytics Screenshot
Rankings Increase
If your marketing efforts are directly executed with a rankings goal in mind there are ways to measure those rankings properly. Keep in mind that Google hates rankings driven marketing efforts because they take it as a direct manipulation of the search results. With that said there are numerous ways to still take a quality approach to increase your rankings utilizing good, solid marketing & branding efforts. There are even different software solutions that can help you identify where your rankings sit and how they move each month.
Here are a few:
- Hubspot
- SEOmoz
- Rank Tracker
- Raven Tools
- PowerMapper
- AuthorityLabs
- Advanced Web Ranking
- Getstat
- WebPosition
Industry Influence
Industry influence is something that is very important when it comes to website marketing effectiveness. How do people perceive your voice? Do they listen when you speak? These are important questions to ask yourself when marketing your website online. When you are marketing a website your voice is all you have. That voice either has weight or it doesn’t. One way to build up that weight is through content marketing, social media and having an active blog. Online influence is not something that occurs overnight but there are ways to measure that voice.
Here are a few ways to measure your online influence:
