Tracking Ranking Progress for Huge Websites

Measuring rankings and traffic for large websites can be a daunting task. Ecommerce and content management-based sites can have hundreds of thousands to millions of pages, products and keywords. Understanding the behaviors of search engines and how to sample and measure search engine data will lay the groundwork for effective rankings management and tracking.

Determining Rankings and Base-lining Analytics

A large ecommerce site can easily be targeting thousands to millions of keyword phrases. However, it is not realistically possible to run a ranking report with this many keywords. Search engines will not allow it and the report would be indecipherable. To make tracking progress across this many terms manageable, it is necessary to establish a structured process incorporating rankings, trends and reporting.

Step 1: Setting up ranking categories

The primary goal here is to determine your keyword rankings and their baseline information as well as your search engine traffic and its baseline information. The first step of this process is to set up ranking categories or levels. Whether you have an ecommerce site or a content management system, there are generally levels of pages on your website. We will use Amazon.com as an example. An ecommerce site like Amazon.com typically has four levels:

Level 1: The home page
Level 2: Category pages
Level 3: Subcategory pages
Level 4: Product pages

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