So you’ve written a very easy to read and keyword optimized SEO press release. You get it all ready to send out and upload to your website so you can start raking in the dough, but you hesitate. Suddenly it occurs to you that you have no idea how to actually track this press release’s level of success.

How many eyeballs will the press release reach? How effective will your keyword placement be? Did you anchor your links properly for optimum SEO? So many questions, and they all make a huge difference to your company’s well-being. So how to track how well your SEO press release does?

Search Rank

The easiest way to tell just how great your SEO press release is doing is by how far up you’ve moved in your search ranking! If you started out buried on page four and suddenly find your website listed on page two, then you can rest assured your SEO press release is working, barring any extenuating circumstances.

Keep in mind this might not happen all at once, and not for every single web crawler. All use different algorithms to search the Internet and may provide different results. As a result, you’ll want to check each search engine to see where you rank. Over time this will change, hopefully for the better.

If there is little to no result, you may want to go back to the drawing board with your SEO press release. Again don’t expect everything to happen all at once, but if days and weeks go by and your site has gone nowhere, give it another shot.

Trackers

If you’d rather not spend half your day looking at multiple search engines, then you may want to give an SEO tracker a go. These automatically crawl around the web looking to see where your site ranks, and can even let you know when other sites and bloggers mention you.

They range from the inexpensive, like Sheer SEO, to the free yet a little more complicated, like Google Analytics. The more expensive ones are naturally going to be more in-depth and headache free, and most will do everything you need without you lifting a finger.

Remember when I mentioned looking at the different search engines to see where you are? Technically, that’s almost impossible to do by yourself, as there are over 700 search engines. You’d literally do nothing all day long if you tried to do that! However, it’s important to recognize that three search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) comprise more than 95% of all search traffic. Focus on these engines and don’t get distracted by the others.

Also, some higher end tracking software can suggest related keywords to use in the future to increase your page rank. This can give you a better idea how to get to that coveted “page 1,” which can often make a huge difference in how easily potential new customers find you.

This guest post is by Mickie Kennedy, the founder of eReleases – home of affordable, next generation press release distribution. Mickie also publishes PR Fuel, a PR-centric blog that showcases advice and articles on all things social media, PR publicity, and online marketing.