Succeeding in search engine optimization is always the goal, but tracking it can be a challenge.
So if you’re trying to get to the top of the search engines and are working with a skilled and experienced SEO service, here are the most vital keyword metrics they should be tracking.
Table of Contents
1. Organic Traffic
The most crucial goal of an SEO campaign is to get more qualified traffic to your website when users do Google searches. The idea is that organic traffic is free, so we want as much of it as possible. But how should you track your organic traffic?
That’s where Google Analytics comes in! You should look under Acquisitions to the Organic Search menu and concentrate on Sessions. Sessions, according to Google, are the contacts that happen on your site within a period.
To see how much organic traffic you’re getting, you should look at and compare various periods. For example, some SEO recommend looking at three time periods when seeing how successful an SEO campaign is:
- Data for week over week: This allows you to analyze web traffic that changed over a few weeks. You should check this metric when making significant changes on your site. For instance, if you publish five new blog posts per day, you should check performance by week to see if your content has an impact.
- Data for month over month: This is helpful information if you want to see how your SEO campaign performs over a more extended period. Search engine algorithms change every week, so just looking at weekly data may not give you enough information. Also, remember that SEO takes more than a few weeks to take effect, so looking longer term will help your analysis.
- Data for year over year: This allows you to compare apples to apples and tell you what you need to know about long-term SEO trends for your business. This information is even more critical if your business is seasonal. For instance, if your company sells beach clothes, you will want to look at yearly search volume; if you compare July to December, you will get the idea your traffic took a significant hit.
2. Organic Conversions
So you see that you are enjoying a bump in organic traffic from your SEO. Great! Now, is this high-quality traffic?
As most SEO people know, getting people to your site with organic search isn’t enough. You could get thousands of visitors per day from irrelevant search terms that will never produce a sale.
To measure your site’s traffic quality, you’ll need to watch organic site conversions. You can do this by establishing a goal in Google in Google Analytics.
For instance, you can track sales, email signups, telephone calls, or contact form submissions. Then, after you have your goal in mind, you can watch for it in Google Analytics.
When you see your site conversions rise, it can be exciting and motivate you and your team to continue with the excellent work.
3. Keyword Ranking
Keyword rank shows where your site appears in Google results for critical words and phrases.
For instance, if you sell aftermarket Honda car parts, a search with the word ‘automobile’ may only give you a page two or page three result. But if you use SEO methods that focus on ‘car’ and ‘SUV’, your site may show up higher in the rankings.
The higher your page rank, the more visible it is to your audience. However, to get better with this vital metric, your SEO team needs to research the phrases and terms your visitors want.
One way to do this is with the popular Google Search Console if you have a small budget. But there are other popular options with scaling pricing, depending on what your company needs.
4. Backlinks
Backlinks are when other sites link to yours. Many website owners have backlinks similar to old-fashioned citations, which show where they got their information. Google often gives preference to sites with many high-quality backlinks.
Obtaining backlinks takes a lot of work because you cannot control everyone who links to you. The most important thing to know is a high-quality backlink from an authoritative site is much more critical than 10 links from a low-authority website.
5. Click-Through Rate
Your CTR indicates how many visitors come to your site after they find your search terms in Google. So, if 500 Google searchers see one of your web pages in the results and 50 people click through, you have a 10% CTR for that page.
If you have a low CTR for some of your pages, you may need to tweak your meta description or title. Or, perhaps your blog content isn’t attractive to your visitors.
6. Rate Of Exit
This measures the last webpage that a site visitor looks at before exiting. The most popular exit pages are ones that make visitors lose interest and move on. These are parts of your site where interest wanes, so you should always watch exit pages.
If many visitors per day exit from the same page, you may need to update that page’s content, or perhaps the navigation links are non-intuitive.
7. User Experience
How easy and enjoyable is your site for visitors to use? Does it load fast? Does it look great on smartphones?
You should look at bounce rate and dwell time to gauge how much users like your site. Of course, these aren’t the only ways that Google watches how people use your site, but they’re critical benchmarks.
Some SEOs point out there’s a strong correlation between site visit time and getting on page 1.
This is a good thing to measure in part because it’s easy to make better. You can get people to stay on your site by offering value, which often means providing them the most helpful content you can.
If you measure each of these above metrics, you’ll have a much better idea of how people are using your site, leading you to higher Google rankings.
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