Wouldn't it be great if all you had to do once your site achieved high rankings were to sit back and revel in your upper echelon status of the major search engines? We wish it were that easy! In fact, your ranking in the search engines will constantly change for a variety of reasons, including the following:

The point is that search engine optimization is an ongoing process. It is essential to the success of your search engine optimization campaign for you to regularly monitor your search engine ranking.

Monitor Your Ranking on a Monthly Basis

Search engines (Google in particular) constantly change their ranking algorithms. Sometimes these changes can be minor and have little affect on some sites. And, sometimes these changes are major and affect (both positively and negatively) most Web sites. For more information on these changes, please read our article on the Google Dance and how it affects search engine optimization and ranking.

Not only can your rankings change as a result of these algorithm changes, but your rankings can also fluctuate based on what your competition is doing in regards to their search engine optimization efforts. Regardless of the reasoning behind your changes in rank, it is important to keep an eye out for these changes and react to them.

Rather than drive yourself crazy and check your rankings every day, we encourage you to monitor them on a monthly basis. Also, save yourself a lot of time by only checking the more popular search engines. After all, there are thousands of search engines out there where you are indexed. By all means, don't feel as though you need to check your ranking on every one -- that alone would be a full-time job! The most popular search engines are:

Alta Vista
AOL
Ask Jeeves
Fast/All the Web
Google
HotBot
Lycos
MSN Search
Yahoo

There may be months where you won't notice any changes in your search engine ranking. But, when you do notice a change, don't get flustered. Chances are, your search engine optimization specialist is already on top of it and working on ways to increase your ranking.

More Search Engine Optimization Articles

1. What Is Search Engine Optimization 2. Choosing a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company 3. Keyword Density 4. Using Keyword Density To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking? 5. Building a Successful Link Popularity Strategy, Part 1 5a. Building a Successful Link Popularity Strategy, Part 2 5b. Building a Successful Link Popularity Strategy, Part 3 6. Managing Expectations: Search Engine Optimization and Client Involvement 7. Site maps: A Force to be Reckoned With 8. What is the Difference Between Free Submission and Optimization? 9. Misconceptions about Search Engine Optimization 10. What is the Google Dance? 11. Search Engine Optimization Checklist 12. Boost your Search Engine Ranking 13. Search Engines and Directories: Playing with the Major Leagues 14. The Do's and Don'ts of Search Engine Optimization 15. Search Engine Optimization: Past and Present 16. Meta Tags and Search Engine Optimization: Friend or Foe? 17. Spam: Not the Search Engine Spiders Favorite Lunchmeat! 18. The FAQ Page: Your 24/7 Salesman 19. Optimizing Content in Your Web Site 20. Search Engine Optimization and Google PageRank 21. Monitoring Your Search Engine Optimization for Ranking 22. Analyzing Your Content for Maximum Search Engine Optimization 23. Search Engine Optimization and Google PageRank 24. Incorporating Inbound Links in Your Linking Strategy 25. Splash Pages: Don't Let Them Ruin Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign 26. You Can't Hide Behind Hidden Text 27. Managing Expectations II: Competitive Keywords and Optimization 28. What You Need to Know About Free Search Engine Submission 29. The History of Google: From Garage-based Business to #1 Search Engine

(Back to top)