When doing search engine promotion for your site, you should keep a pulse on a few key metrics. The metrics include the total number of pages indexed by Google, the number of pages in Google’s “included index”, the number of backlinks to your site, the number of .edu backlinks, the number of .gov backlinks, and your search engine rankings for various keywords.
Search engine promotion is all about maximizing your potential traffic from the various SEs. Keeping up with each search engine’s algorithm is probably a good idea. There are a number of blogs & twitterers you can follow on the topic of SEO to keep abreast of the latest changes. For the most part, algorithms don’t change much over time. Inbound links, length of domain name registration, site history, quality content, and number of pages have always been the major factors. Minor things will change from time to time, and keeping up is important, but the key elements have remained the same since the late 90s (thankfully, or keeping up with the industry would require a lot more work). With social media for example, the industry evolves at a much quicker pace, and trying to keep up means you spend your entire day reading blogs and accomplishing nothing but treading water in the industry so you can speak the lingo.
Search engine promotion involves more than just SEO and CPC. It can also involve using tools like Google Local, as well as creating presences on the various social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIN, and so forth. SE promo is vital to your business.