As a writer, you spend the majority of your time researching, revising and optimizing your content to be successful, but what happens after you hit the "publish" button? How can you tell your writing efforts have been successful?
Rankings
If you’ve written a great landing page that has been strategically crafted with keyword rich h1 and h2 tags, image alt text, internal linking and metadata, you’re in a front row seat to watch your page climb the SERPs. The spiders are now advanced enough to appreciate your quality prose, and will index your page as such. If you’ve chosen your keywords wisely, you will hopefully see the first page of the search results over time.
Traffic
An increase in organic traffic is a great indicator that your content is adding value to your website. Now that your work has more visibility in the search results, there will definitely be more clicks! If your pages are insightful and informative, more visitors are likely to spend time learning about your products and services. Watch in amazement as bounce rates lower and site traffic spikes as each new gem of your writing is added!
Links
Social media and “sharing” in general is arguably the most important factor in the success of your content. You’ve written a piece of solid gold, but instead of sitting and waiting for your Pulitzer Prize, you need to share it! Social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin and Pinterest are the perfect arenas to show off your content. You know you’ve done good work when the re-tweets, shares and links back to your piece come rolling in.
One thing I try to remember is that SEO is almost never black and white. There is no clear cut “win” in our business. The search engine algorithms are endlessly adapted, trends come and go, and not every quality piece I write is going to drive traffic to write home about. Sometimes it seems like ages before I see measurable results, but that too is the nature of the industry. So don’t let the inevitable “misses” get you down, just keep writing great content and getting it out there for the world to read--the rankings, traffic and links will come!