SEO (search engine optimization) can deliver enormous benefits once you’ve mastered its intricacies. SEO can land your website at the top of search results. For a business, that top spot means revenues, profits, and authority. Businesses can’t ignore SEO.
There is no point being on page seven in page rankings. The top spot guarantees an advantage over the competition. Good SEO will make it easier for you to connect with your clients, customers and generate local leads. Successful SEO also means that your current customers will find your website more easily since they won’t have to browse further down search results. Tracking these 10 crucial metrics will help your company reap the full benefits of SEO.
Organic Search Traffic
You shouldn’t blame your SEO efforts if you have a dip in traffic, and you shouldn’t celebrate your SEO when you experience a jump in traffic either. Unless you track organic search traffic you can’t blame or credit SEO.
Checking your sources of traffic once a month will show you whether you are gaining or losing organic traffic. Examine targeted traffic, not just any visitors. If you’re a business in LA seeking local traffic, it does no good if your traffic comes from Canada or Washington. Find both the percentage and exact numbers of targeted traffic to help identify weaknesses and give you a basis for comparison over time.
Keyword Rankings
The consensus declares that keyword tracking has little benefit because there are so many variables that affect your site ranking. However, keyword rank tracking can provide great value for your website’s organic search ranking.
Keyword tracking, or keyword rank tracking, involves monitoring the position of your website and webpages for targeted keywords. With this method, you can see if your keywords are in position one of the first page or at least on the first page. Knowing how your organic rankings change over time can provide valuable information about your website’s SEO performance. By tracking keyword rankings, you can better understand how SEO impacts search visibility. You will also learn where to focus on future search optimization strategies to generate more leads. Don’t just track your main keywords; track the full range including longer phrases often referred to as long tail key words.
Conversion Rates
Conversion is one of the most important metrics for measuring the success and profitability of overall marketing efforts. Conversions can happen in many ways and are often viewed as a quantifiable victory for marketers. You can measure conversions directly on your site or set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics. Low conversion numbers may be due to bad design, poor offerings, or otherwise disinterested visitors.
Bounce Rates
Bounce rate is important because it shows the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page and don’t further explore your site. Suppose a visitor comes to your homepage and leaves the page before clicking any other links. This is considered a bounce. You want your bounce rate to be as low as possible because the more time a person spends on your website, the more likely they are to convert.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic describes the visitors that come to your site from direct links on other websites rather than from searches. When website visitors click on a link and are taken to another site, software such as Google Analytics considers them referral traffic.
Referral traffic can improve Google’s rankings as well as provide a steady source of traffic outside search engine results.
Visitors driven by links on other websites are more likely to purchase a product or service and eventually become loyal customers.
Total Visits
Both marketers and SEO pros monitor total visitors, the number of people who visit your site daily or over another time period. Examining the total number of visits can give the full spectrum of how well your campaign is driving traffic. But you can also measure total visits to any location on your website depending on your strategy. You can, for example, measure visits to your landing page, such as a sign-up page from a pay-per-click campaign.
If you notice that your numbers are dwindling from one month to the next, investigate your marketing channels to determine the reason. In a healthy, steady campaign, your numbers should grow steadily.
New Sessions
The number of new sessions tells you whether your site is engaging enough to encourage repeat visitors as well as how effective your outreach efforts are.
Customer Retention Rate
Determine how many customers you retain by calculating the percentage of customers who return to your business to buy again. A low customer retention rate can be a symptom of a product or service that isn’t engaging enough. In these cases, find out the cause and increase your retention rate to get better numbers.
Customer Value
Find your average customer value by calculating all the sales the average customer initiates during your relationship. If you are just starting, this may be impossible to calculate but you can make an estimate based on the number of transactions you expect from each customer per year.
Projected ROI
The most important factor to consider is your ROI because it demonstrates the profitability of your SEO campaign. The traditional definition of ROI (return on investment) is Gain minus Costs/Costs x 100. To calculate ROI correctly, you must include all costs, including labor costs, material costs, and all other associated costs. You also need to determine the actual revenue produced. A higher ROI means that your strategy is effective, while a lower or negative ROI means that you need substantial adjustments to your tactics.
Meggie is one of the LA marketing experts and a data junkie with more than six years of experience in the field. Aside from being a marketing nerd, she loves taking her life to the extreme with bungee jumping and skydiving when she needs some freedom.
