

Ask HN: How long to wait between SEO tweaks? - paulsingh

I've been trying a bunch of things on a side project of mine (NotaryCRM.com) to have it rank higher for specific terms -- I've basically followed all the tactical advice that others have given about keyword placement, title tags, etc.<p>I know this is something that takes time, but how long do you guys usually wait between "tweaks" to decide if something worked or not?
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ScottWhigham
Generally for me I wait at least one "turn" of the PageRank and possibly two.
Closely monitor when Google does a PageRank update and check your PR then to
see if what you wanted occurred.

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patio11
Google recalculates most things that matter in close to real time these days.
Toolbar PageRank is not something which matters. Updating toolbar PageRank on
a once-in-several-months schedule is largely for historical reasons, does
nothing for your website, and is kept around virtually entirely to placate
people who know just enough about SEO to hurt themselves.

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il
Toolbar PageRank updates are done on a rolling basis too now, they stopped
doing massive updates every few months some time ago.

Patrick is right, PageRank is basically a completely worthless indicator.
Monitoring your position in the SERPS for lots of keywords(including long
tails) is the best way to see if SEO is paying off quickly.

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paulsingh
Any recommended tools for monitoring keyword positions?

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il
There was a startup posted on HN recently that did this, I can't recall the
name.

Honestly, it's super easy to roll your own and run it yourself. That way
you're not giving up (potentially very valuable) keywords to anyone in the
cloud.

Insider Tip: If you're only interested in the top 10 results, use the Ajax API
to get around query limits.

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garydrinksd
if anyone is waiting for the visible toolbar PageRank to increase or decrease,
i seriously doubt their high level knowledge of SEO. Toolbar PageRank is
simply a historical indicator. Many times it is weeks, if not months old. And
if you do any kind of research, you'll see that PageRank does NOT equal
rankings. It can help as a strength indicator of your site, but correlation
does NOT equal causation.

