5 SEO metrics I gotta have

I'm on #seochat tonight. I'm super-excited about it, so I've been scribbling notes for anticipated questions.

The topic, which I've actually talked about before, is SEO analytics. For me, there are five crucial SEO metrics. If you don't have these, hang it up:

Key phrase diversity. The number of unique phrases driving traffic to your site. Greater diversity means you're probably doing better in the long tail, and that you're less vulnerable to algorithm changes.Visitors from organic search. It's nice to know my overall traffic from organic search, too. Hopefully this one's a 'duh' for you.Visitors from non-branded organic search. This one's subtly different from #2. Non-branded organic search are all visits from organic search, minus any brand names associated with you. So, if you're Ford, you'd filter out 'Ford', 'Mustang', 'Pinto', etc..Visit quality. The data used for this metric could be average pageviews per visit from organic search, average time on site for visits from organic search, or even better, conversion rate from organic search. You could also use something like bounce rate for visitors from organic search. The idea? Figure out if you're getting the right people to your site. If organic visit quality is really poor compared to your other channels, you need to rethink your strategy.Crawl quality indicators. This one's a lot harder, but necessary. You need to find any pages on your site that aren't getting crawled at all. You can do that by using GREP on your log files (my favorite method). You can also look for pages that get zero visits from organic search and try to use that as an indicator. If you have a log-based web analytics tool, then you can also check the 'bots' or 'spiders' report and see if any pages are left out.

Notice that I left out rankings and PageRank. Please don't make me explain why here. If you need to know, post a comment and I'll do that in another post.

Some of these ain't easy to find, I know, but you have to try. Your boss/client/whatever will challenge SEO the same way Tea Partiers challenge global warming, so you'd better have data ready when they do.

If you want to learn more about these metrics, c'mon in to SEO chat tonight. You can follow along by using the #seochat hashtag on Twitter, or by going to the SEOChat Tweetchat room.

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5 response codes you gotta know: Learn to speak server

Whether you're an internet marketing wonk, a top IT geek or an SEO pro, you need to know how to speak web server. Not fluently, of course. If you can do the equivalent of asking where the bathroom is, you'll be in good shape. That's what I'm going to go over now.

When you visit a web site, your web browser has a whole conversation with the server hosting that site:

Browser: Hey man, can I get the page that's located at... lessee... www.gibblegibbet.com?

Server: Let me check... Yup, looks fine.

Browser: OK, thanks! Send it over!

Server: Here you go.

That entire conversation is encapsulated in a single response code. Response codes are simple, 3-digit codes that a server sends back to visiting web browsers. Web servers send the same codes back to search crawlers, so it's very, very important that you know what these codes mean.

Yeah, I know, I just oversimplified. If you reaaalllly want all the details of http headers and such, I could write it all down, but you'll have to pay me. It's really boring stuff.

There are a lot of 'em, but I'll stick to the 5 you really need to know:

The 200 code is a server's way of saying "everything's fine, here's the page or file you asked for".

That conversation would match the one I wrote above.

301 - also called a permanent redirect - means that the page the browser/crawler requested is no longer around, but there's a new page now, and the server will provide the new URL instead. That conversation goes like this:

Browser: Yo, gimme www.gibblegibbet.com/default.aspx

Server: Nope, no can-do. It's gone. But we've put up a new, permanent page at www.gibblegibbet.com/index.html. You can go there from now on.

Browser: Ah, got it. I'll make a note.

Use 301 codes when you delete one page and replace it with another, or when you rebuild your site and your entire site structure changes. That'll make your site visitors and search engines happy.

302 means the requested page is not around right now, but it'll be back:

Browser: Yo, gimme www.gibblegibbet.com/default.aspx

Server: Nope, it's gone for now. Took a vacation. But we've got an alternate up and running at www.gibblegibbet.com/index.html. Use that for now, but remember, we'll be switching back to the original soon.

Browser: Stupid detours. OK, fine.

Server: Don't get all persnickety. I just do what my webmaster says.

I embellished a bit. But you get the idea. A 302 redirect - also called a temporary redirect - tells a browser or search crawler not to look too closely at the new page, because the old one will be back.

It's rare that a 302 is a good idea. If you're using 302 redirection, make sure there's a good reason, because it could wreak havoc with your rankings.

404 means the page is gone or never existed, and the server has no idea what happened.

Browser: I need to see www.gibblegibbet.com/cheepwareznow.html

Server: Yeah, right. Sorry, that page doesn't exist. It may have once, but it's gone now.

Browser: WTH?!!!

You should fix 404 errors when you find 'em on your site, or do a 301 redirect from the missing page to a relevant one.

There are actually a lot of different 50x options: 500, 501, 502, 503, etc.. But they all mean the same thing:

Browser: Hey, can I have a look at www.gibblegibbet.com?

Server: OK, I'll aaaaaaaaaaaauuuugh.

Browser: Auuuuuuuuuuugh?

Server: thud

The server is kaput. It's dead, unconscious or just taking a break, and it can't even respond to any request. If one of our sites starts delivering 50x errors, that's my time to panic, 'cause it means something went really wrong.

Congratulations. You now speak preschool server, and can ask for basic directions when necessary. Truth is, only 1% of 1% of people involved in internet marketing need to know more than this. You can wow your tech folks in the next meeting.

If you do want to know a huge range of status codes, look at the W3C site.

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