Yes! After all your work, that site has started to take off. It’s been trending up nicely, and suddenly it’s made a nice jump. What’s the first thing that you should do? Obviously it’s to go to your boss or client and show them the proof of the great job that you’ve been doing. Well, maybe not. The first thing you should do is to understand the reasons for the jump, and verify that you actually are the cause of it.

Indexing
Check your indexed page numbers, and see if you’ve had a jump there that may explain the increase If you’ve recently made optimization changes to your site, then you may be able to take the credit for the jump. Has new content recently been released to the site? Have pages moved from the supplemental index to the main index on Google? Check your link numbers, have they increased?

Rankings
Check your rankings, have they moved dramatically? If your main entry pages are now coming up even a few positions higher, that can be the difference.

Referrers
See where the traffic is coming from. Has your site been linked to by a major traffic site? Has something that you’ve done been written about, or just simply picked up a really nice link? Have you done any viral campaigns that may be pulling in the traffic?

Offline Marketing
Make sure that you’re aware of any offline marketing campaigns that may be running. If there’s a tv, radio, or print ad that’s running, that could very well be the source of the new traffic.

Just remember that if you take the credit for an increase in the traffic levels for a site, without truly understanding the reasons for it, and if the traffic drop back down to the previous levels, you’re going to have to be ready with an explanation and to take the blame…