“Hey, our website got 2,000 visitors last month!”
Congratulations…maybe.
Did you have to pay to get that traffic?
Were those unique visitors? New or repeat visitors?
How long did those visitors stay on your website – and what pages did they visit?
Did they make it to the pages that matter most to conversions?
Oh, and did those visitors take a desired action (e.g., fill out a form, place an order) while they were on your site…or just bounce?
Okay, enough with the questions. Honestly, you should be excited about driving traffic to your website (we’re not trying to burst your bubble!). But to determine if your SEO efforts are headed in the right direction – and helping achieve your marketing and business goals – you need to answer questions like the ones above.
And to do that, you need the right data.
What are the top SEO metrics you should be tracking?
- Organic traffic. Organic traffic is your number of website visitors coming directly from search engines like Google and Bing. It’s incredibly important for measuring SEO – because at its core, SEO is about driving people from search engines to your website. To measure organic sessions, use Google Analytics to filter your traffic by source. If your traffic from search engines is increasing year-over-year, you’re making progress.
- Ranking on voice search. As we explained in this earlier post, voice search adoption has taken off. With Siri, Google, Alexa and other home assistants becoming ubiquitous, voice search is transforming the SEO landscape. How can you tell if your site is optimized for speech search? Get 10 tips here, or check out Alexa.com for relevant SEO analysis.
- Improvements in organic keyword rankings. Organic keyword rankings are the terms and search queries that your site shows up for when a user performs a search in a search engine. There are two types: the keywords you actually rank for, and the keywords you want to rank for (monitor your performance for both types on Google Search Console). While you may not rank #1 for “best [insert your product or service]” today, the higher your website ranks for a range of relevant keywords over time, the more organic traffic you’ll receive.
- Page speed. While load time might be at the bottom of your SEO priority list, it’s actually an important metric. Here’s why: If it takes a long time for your pages to load, visitors will become impatient – and bounce (i.e., navigate away from your site). And to Google, bounce rate indicates how well the content on a page satisfies a user’s search. To evaluate your site’s speed, check out Google’s Page Speed Insights. And get tips to speed up page loading here.
- Organic Conversions. Once a visitor lands on your site, do they opt into an offer? Fill out a form? Buy something? That’s the end goal of SEO, right? By setting up goals in Google Analytics, you can track progress in key performance areas like: which pages drive the most leads; whether conversions are higher on mobile or desktop; and which demographics have the highest conversion rates. Over time, improving conversions will really move the needle in your sales.
Related posts:
5 Key Indicators That Tell You If Your SEO Is Working
Bad Marketers Think SEO Lasts Forever
Want more business? Track your SEO progress!
BARQAR, employs a strategic, 6-step approach to keep your SEO headed in the right direction – so you dominate search results and ultimately achieve your goals.
Let our experts conduct a free audit of your SEO strategy. We’ll review what you’re doing right and provide practical suggestions for improving your search rankings and driving more qualified leads.
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