Whether you run a small apple farm or a large financial office, a well-planned SEO strategy can help your website rank high on search results pages.
Ranking high within search engine pages will give your company or brand more visibility online.
And while higher visibility usually leads to more organic traffic, that is only one piece of SEO strategy.
However, measuring and tracking your SEO can give you the big picture.
- Why is it Important to Measure SEO Performance?
- How to Measure SEO and Track Your Performance
- Wrap-Up: Tracking and Measuring Your SEO
Why is it Important to Measure SEO Performance?
While one of the primary goals of SEO is generating organic traffic to your website, do those “clicks” translate into meaningful business for your company?
Tracking organic website traffic is essential, but it’s only one small part of SEO.
When you track additional metrics, you can identify the components that are working (and capitalize on those) and note the parts that aren’t performing well.
Additional metrics can tell you what your users do once they get to your site. For example, do they hang out for a while and explore other pages? Or do they “bounce” after a minute or two?
Tracking and measuring your SEO lets you know if you’re on the right path.
You may need to tweak a few small things or decide to change your strategy altogether. But without reviewing these metrics, you are potentially flying blind.
How to Measure SEO and Track Your Performance
It can be overwhelming to determine which metrics to study because there are so many.
Many businesses collect SO much data that it takes a lot of work to glean any meaningful insight into how well their SEO strategy works.
However, no matter what type of business you have, these standard metrics will help you measure your SEO and track your performance.
These metrics will give you insight into how well your SEO strategy is doing, help you improve your strategy, and increase your rankings.
Organic traffic
This metric is one of the primary measurements for all websites, no matter your business type.
Organic traffic shows clicks from search engine results pages (without paying for ad placement).
Therefore, an increase in organic traffic means that your website’s visibility has improved.
Organic traffic is your site’s best type of traffic, more critical than paid traffic.
Keyword Ranking
Any word or phrase used to search Google, Bing, or Yahoo, is considered a keyword. Since you’re competing against other websites for a spot on the SERPs, you need to achieve a high keyword ranking.
Keyword ranking is one of the top five metrics for increasing visibility on search engine results from pages or SERPs.
Tracking your keyword ranking is easy:
- Search Google using keywords relevant to your industry or brand.
- Identify which companies or brands are at the top of the SERPs.
- Locate where on the SERPs your site is in relation to your competitors.
- Repeat the process as you change your SEO strategy to see how your ranking changes.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
The CTR is the percentage of people that visit your site after seeing it in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The average CTR for the first position on Google was 27.6% just recently, so expect numbers to be less than that for your website.
However, you can update your meta descriptions, snippets, URLs, or titles to increase a low click-through rate.
You can also increase your CTR by boosting your keyword ranking.
Conversion Rate
Some marketing professionals say that the conversion rate is the most essential metric in determining your SEO strategy’s success.
The conversion rate is the number of sales (or defined action) versus the number of leads or visitors on a website.
For example, if your website receives 100 visitors and ten users purchase something, the conversion rate is 10%.
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate will tell you what percentage of your visitors leave your site without exploring further. A higher bounce rate may suggest that your site’s layout or content is not appealing to your target niche.
Average Page Load Time
The faster your page loads, the better, whether it’s for the desktop or mobile. A slower site speed ruins the user experience and affects many other metrics, including conversion rate, rankings, and bounce rate.
Backlinks and Referring Domains
Backlinks are also one of the most important metrics for ranking websites.
There’s also a strong correlation between referring domains and high rankings.
However, it’s important to note that the quality of backlinks and referring domains matters more than the quantity.
While backlinks and referring domains are similar, backlinks are all links that come from external sources directing to your website, while referring domains are the number of unique sites that link to your website.
Wrap-Up: Tracking and Measuring Your SEO
While many companies implement a killer SEO plan, they often forget about measuring and tracking its effectiveness. If that sounds like you, don’t worry!
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