Methods for tracking changes?
-
Hi all,
I'm starting to make changes to our websites this week. I need to record every change made so I can compare the affect it had on the performance/ranking of the site.
I'm curious to know what methods those with more experience are using to keep track of everything.
Thanks in advance.
-
I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of half a dozen metrics, and I just add an entry for a date and list the things that I've done. Also like James, I use the annotations in Google Analytics, and that can really help.
Be sure to record any outside influences to the site to help keep track of things. Did the site get a mention in a print publication? Record that, so it can help explain an increase in branded search traffic and/or direct traffic. Did you start or stop a PPC campaign? Send out a press release? etc.
-
James,
Thanks for the suggestion. Like your method as it provides easy access from anywhere there is an internet connection.
-
I have a private blog that I use to record everything I do to the site. This is password protected and (obviously) not indexed by search engines, so it's literally a prvate journal that I often add results from mozbar to so I can compare month-to-month how my moztrust etc changes.
I also make notes inside my google analytics by adding "annotations" under the graph. This is useful to track if changes you make have any result on your traffic or conversion..
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?
Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!
On-Page Optimization | | Dreamrealemedia0 -
How do you think metatag author will change with google uncoupling them. Will they still affect bing?
With google removing the metag author functionality how do you think metatag author will be used if at all. will functionality change? will it have any use? and should resources being used to implement it? Secondly, will bing utilize it in some way much like they use keywords as a negative signal.
On-Page Optimization | | mycarpetking0 -
Will changing order of bullet points in product descriptions add some uniqueness?
We write our own unique product descriptions and have a unique product video for each color variation and multiple unique product images and display seperate user reviews per color variation. We prefer to have seperate product pages for each color variation for several reasons (targeting color searches and user experience seeing all color variations when browsing category pages). Product descriptions of color variations are quite similar.
On-Page Optimization | | lcourse
I was thinking about spinning dynamically order how bullet points of product descriptions are presented to add some more uniqueness. I am not expecting a massive impact, but do you think this increases a bit googles perception of page uniqueness?0 -
Changing Ttile Tags & 301's
I recently began re-optimizing my title tags site wide. Could this cause 301 redirects and the loss of backlinks?
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Changing the page a term ranks for
Hi all, I hope you can help advise me of the best way to change the page that is ranking for a particular keyword/term. Is it just a case of on-page optimizing the term/keyword on the new-page and getting good links/traffic to that page and leaving the old one as it is, or is some sort of "de-optimization" of the old page a something that could help? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | bunac10 -
Change Homepage internal Link from Image to Targeted Anchor Text -- Spam??
I am in the following situation: 1. Homepage is designed to target one main keyword. 2. All current pages link to the homepage with the image/logo, nowhere on the site do we link to the homepage with the target keyword. 3. It is an established page (Moz rank of 58) If I suddenly added text above and made the homepage link targeted anchor text, would Google consider this spam? We are ranked #13 in Google and our looking for ways to move up, but I do not want to risk any type of Google penalty.
On-Page Optimization | | MattAaron0 -
Which method should I use for my URL structure?
I have an existing site that is currently utilizing a structure that is like this: http://www.mysite.com/Ohio/City-of-Cleveland-PRODUCT-NAME Should I restructure it like: http://www.mysite.com/Ohio/City-of-Cleveland/Product-Name We are doing very well with very specific searches already but are sometimes coming in 2nd and 3rd place. For example: If I search for CLEVELAND PRODUCT NAME I always come up in the top three and about 60% of the time I am #1. I want to make it better. We have only launched in 4 states but plan on launching an additional 4 states over the next few weeks and I want to make sure we are building things properly. Any feedback would be wonderful. As usual, thanks everyone!! -Alex
On-Page Optimization | | dbuckles0 -
SEOMOZ suggested site optimzation change on 1 low level page
I asked this before, but did not really get an answer, so checking again. Really grateful for any help... My question is: Based on the PRO crawl Diagnostics – if we don’t make a recommended change on say 1 rather obscure page, does that just affect the SEO on that one page only, or does it potentially affect the SEO on all (more important) pages of the site? e.g. home page etc E.g. If we get a “Too many on page links” for a certain page that we don’t really want to rank for – does not fixing that particlaur page really affect the SEO for the site as a whole? Or just that 1 page (that I don't really care too much about) Hope someone is able to answer, thanks so much...
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0