If you’re committing time and resources to SEO, you’ll want to know how successful your efforts are. This is where measuring SEO performance comes in. It lets you determine the impact of your optimizations.
So, while measuring SEO performance, you are ultimately determining where you rank. However, there are other crucial aspects to consider and assess.
We recommend tracking these 8 variables to assist you analyze your SEO success.
What is SEO Tracking?
SEO tracking is the monitoring and analysis of organic search performance using quantitative data.
SEO tracking makes it easier to assess whether certain improvements or SEO efforts are helping you achieve your business objectives. Discover key insights that you may utilize to better in the future.
If you’re performing SEO for a company or customer, measuring SEO performance may help you demonstrate the worth of your efforts to important stakeholders. This might lead to increased acknowledgment of your efforts. And perhaps even more resources for future SEO projects.
8 Metrics to Measure Your SEO Performance
The KPIs you measure for SEO should be directly tied to your company’s objectives. To get you started, here are some of the most popular SEO KPIs analyzed by marketers:
a. Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings indicate where your website ranks in search results for certain keywords.
For example, the following website ranks first for the term “puppy barking in crate.”
Many SEO initiatives try to achieve higher rankings for certain keywords. Because the better your keyword ranks, the more likely you are to obtain organic traffic (unpaid traffic from search engines).
So it’s a good idea to keep track of your target phrases.
Ideally, you should keep track of your target keywords constantly. This helps you to detect variations and respond appropriately.
b. Position in SERPs
As part of your measuring SEO performance, keep track of where your website ranks in SERPs (for relevant search queries). Each page has 10 blue links (organic results that do not include featured snippets, information boxes, or advertisements), and your goal is to appear as high on the page as feasible.
When viewing reports, the results at the top of the page will be represented by a lower number; for example, the top result on the first page will be reported at position 1, but a result halfway down the page will be shown at position 5.
You can track your average overall position (but keep in mind that lower page rankings for less relevant keywords can significantly lower this metric), the rank of your website for specific keywords (that you know are important for your brand), the position of branded keywords compared to unbranded keywords, and even the distribution of your SERP rankings, all to increase your first and second-page rankings.
c. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the number of people that come to your website by clicking on unpaid search results (i.e., not through a sponsored ad).
To check the overall number (measured in clicks), go to the “Search results” report under “Performance” in Google Search Console:
This is a typical measure used for measuring SEO performance. Because it indicates how many people are visiting your website.
So it’s a good idea to monitor how your organic traffic varies over time.
There are several ways to accomplish this. Depending on the purpose of your campaigns:
- Organic traffic by page: This is the number of organic visits to a certain page on your website. If you’re optimizing content or creating backlinks to a certain page, you should maintain track of this. To determine if your optimizations were successful.
- Organic traffic by keyword: This is the number of organic visitors to your website resulting from a given search keyword. This is necessary to determine if your SEO strategy targets terms that are likely to convert or drive profitability.
- Organic traffic by domain: This is the total amount of organic visits to your domain. You may use this to assess the impact of SEO actions on your entire website. Consider modifying the structure of your website.
Evaluating organic traffic based on these categories will help you understand which optimization efforts are most effective.
d. Impressions
Impressions are another metric you should consider measuring SEO performnce. When you appear in search results for a user’s query, you get an impression. While many SEOs focus on achieving the greatest places in SERPs, keep in mind that you’re just looking to boost your chances of being noticed by a user.
Impressions might be useful in determining the efficiency of the keywords for which you appear. After all, having a first-page position for a certain query is nothing if it does not bring your website in front of potential visitors.
If you have a first-page position but few impressions, it’s possible that the term you’re ranking for has low search traffic and isn’t the most beneficial for your website.
You can simply track impressions with Google Search Console. However, if you simply want to track the impressions of a certain set of keywords, you will need to collect this data manually.
e. Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is the percentage of people who connect with your website by remaining for more than ten seconds, clicking on anything, or submitting a form. If you are acquainted with bounce rate, engagement rate is the inverse of that number.
The goal is to have a high engagement rate (between 60% and 70% is a decent engagement rate), as a low engagement rate indicates that people considered the page unrelated to their search query and were not interested in learning more about what you had to offer.
A poor engagement rate might have a detrimental impact on your SERP rank, thus it’s an important measure to consider when analyzing SEO effectiveness.
f. Backlinks
Backlinks (links from other websites pointing to your own) are a proven ranking factor.
That means that getting high-quality backlinks can result in higher search ranks and more organic traffic. So it’s worth keeping track of them. Especially if they originate from reliable, respected sources.
Backlink Analytics will help you rapidly find fresh backlinks you’ve acquired.
Keep in mind that you might potentially lose backlinks. You should keep a watch on those cases as well.
Tracking the backlinks you’ve lost might help you identify which content needs to be enhanced. Alternatively, consider where to focus your link-building outreach initiatives.
g. Technical Site Health
If you’re already utilizing third-party tools like SEM Rush, you’ll have access to site audit data that can give you a technical site health rating. This score is derived using the number of technical SEO problems you have, such as missing Meta descriptions, broken links, and duplicate title tags. Fixing these flaws can enhance a site’s SEO performance, making technical site health ratings a common metric to monitor.
There are several ways to measure your SEO performance, but these are a fantastic place to start if you’re new to it.
Conclusion
Having well-defined objectives and a clear plan of action for optimizing your website will make it easier to identify what metrics to use to measure SEO performance. If you want assistance with either of these, please contact our staff.
FAQs
a. How do you measure organic search traffic performance?
To assess organic search traffic success, utilize tools such as Google Analytics to monitor total organic sessions, new users, bounce rates, and conversion rates. Assess SEO effect by analyzing keyword ranks, organic click-through rates, and engagement data. Regularly analyze traffic trends and adapt strategy based on performance data.
b. What are the key metrics used to evaluate SEO success?
Organic search traffic, keyword ranks, click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, bounce rates, and backlink profiles are all important criteria for determining SEO performance. Analyzing these data helps to determine visibility, user engagement, and website authority. Regular monitoring and optimization are critical for maintaining SEO success.
c. How can you track keyword rankings and their impact on SEO performance?
SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console are useful tools for tracking term rankings and their influence on SEO performance. Track keyword placements, search traffic, and click-through rates (CTRs). Analyze trends over time and adjust content based on data to boost ranks and organic traffic.
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