As I've gotten deeper into my site's SEO, I find that my method of tracking my methods (links/dates/URLs) and trying to track that back to effects on rankings has gotten pretty messy with some ugly spreadsheets. I was wondering if anyone has found any tools or databases or just best practices for tracking their SEO? I would like to have an easy way to take a look at all of my activity for a month and see which tactics provided the best results (optimizing my optimizing, I guess). Anyone care to share what works for them? Thanks.
I think the only way to truly measure SEO success is traffic from search engines. Google Analytics has this ability. Keep your eye on the top key words for SE and see if it is matching your SEO work. The ones that are providing the best ROI on your time and money are the ones you need to keep working at.
Tracking the effectiveness of any seo efforts can be extremely difficult. Really the only way to do it accurately would be to try one technique, wait a month or two, check results, and then repeat with a different technique. In the real seo world, it's not possible to work that methodically. Instead you need to keep up with a few techniques being used together. As DanPonjican said, just focus on traffic from search engines. If your traffic and rankings increase, you can assume that your current or recent strategies are working. Some techniques take a while to fully benefit a site though. For example, articles gradually get distributed around the internet but it can take months.
Make a spread sheet and track your keywords right from first day, from position whaterver to your recent position. (Keep track of your keywords like your weight loss program, if you don't know weigh yourself before the diet program, you will not know if you lost or gained after awhile). Check your keyword density, each search engine is different, and see which one works for you. Hope this helps.
For most of my work I use Excel. Don't become too obsessed with stats, links, etc. What's more important is your monthly revenue. If your comfortable with it - everything is OK