Just because your site is indexed and may even be found on certain terms does not necessarily mean they are the terms you want to be found for.  It is important to evaluate if these terms are generating the type of traffic you want.

Check your logs.
Take a look in your analytics application (like Google Analytics) to see what terms are actually delivering traffic to your site.  Do any of these terms line up with your marketing and/or business strategy?  There are many data points that you can use to evaluate this traffic:

• Bounce Rate (percentage of visitors who leave after only visiting one page)
• Percentage of New Visits (percentage of new visitors that have never been to your site)
• Pages Per Visit (the average number a pages viewed during a visit)
• Average Time On Site (the average time a visitor spends on your site)

By looking at this statistical data from the keyword level, you can interpret whether or not that term is of any value to your business.   This is a great place to start to evaluate the traffic you are getting (or not getting) from the search engines.  From this evaluation  you can then determine whether or not you want to invest your time in developing a search marketing campaign or if you should invest your money in a professional that can help you.

(Over the years I have received many questions from clients and often they are the same questions.  So I am going to begin to answer some of the basic ones here and build a simple online resource some of you may find useful.  If you have a question you would like answered, drop me an email and I will do my best to answer it.)