If you’re looking for a sustainable online marketing strategy to grow your business, SEO is the way to go. It’s an excellent way to transform your brand and attract high-quality prospects.
But…
One of the biggest challenges with SEO is knowing if your plan is actually working. Because by following the wrong tactics and not implementing quick change, you’ll miss out on many growth opportunities if you’re not monitoring SEO KPI’s.
That’s why monitoring SEO performance is essential to maximizing your success.
In this article, you’ll learn five important metrics to track your SEO progress and enhance your growth.
Let’s get started.
1- Organic Traffic
Whenever a prospect lands on your website via Google, that counts as a single organic visit. So, organic visitors is the number of visitors your website gets from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is one of the most crucial SEO metrics because it directly reflects how your site is performing. It summarizes your SEO progress by showing how many people find your content on Google and read it.
You can check your website’s organic traffic for free using Google Analytics if you already have an account.
All you need to do is go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Organic Search. You’ll then get a full report on how many organic visitors you received over time and which of your keywords are driving them.
2- Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings refers to how your website ranks for specific queries and keywords. The more ranking keywords you have, the more visible your brand is going to be in the SERPs. Which eventually results in higher organic visitors and better conversions.
The reason you need to keep track of this metric is that keywords can drive a huge amount of your website traffic and lead to phone calls and contact form submissions. So your aim should be to optimize your content with smarter keyword placement to maximize rankings.
There are various ways you can check how your keyword rank in Google:
A budget-friendly technique would be to use Google Search Console once it has indexed all your pages. The tool will check where your pages rank in Google and for which keywords.
Or you can try Semrush using the free trial for more specific details about your keywords. For example, you can use position tracking to compare keyword ranking positions during a specific period of time.
3- Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the number of single-page sessions divided by all sessions. In simpler terms, it’s the total of users who only visit a single page on your site and leave without taking any action.
Just by reading the definition, you can tell the importance of this metric and how it affects your online growth. So what is an ideal bounce rate for your business?
It depends.
The optimal bounce rate depends on your industry, target audience, and marketing objectives.
For instance, if your website showcases details about the menu and location of your restaurant, you shouldn’t worry much about the bounce rate. Because people are likely to leave the page and visit your physical location anyway.
However, if the bounce rate in your shopping website is too high, you might want to optimize and restructure. You may also display more persuasive offers to keep prospects engaged for longer with your brand.
You can check the bounce rate for any of your web pages using Google Analytics. Just go to the admin dashboard, then click Behavior > Overview.
4- Conversion Rates
A conversion occurs when a visitor completes a desired action while browsing your website. Which could be as simple as filling out a form or downloading a case study.
Now:
Tracking conversions is an excellent way to evaluate your SEO progress and optimize your marketing plan. For example, if your conversion rate is too low, you may want to rebuild your marketing funnel and improve your site structure.
Conversions are also essential to assessing the quality of your organic traffic. An accurate measurement of that allows you to create audience-focused content and make more appealing offers to your target prospects.
The easiest way to monitor conversions is by using Google Analytics to set up custom goals. Create a custom goal for each action you want to track and see how your organic traffic performs.
5- Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is the latest major page experience update launched by Google. It focuses on three new metrics to assess page quality and monitor user interactions.
In May 2020, Google had given webmasters a year’s notice to optimize their websites for Core Web Vitals. Then it started to roll out the update as of June 2021.
Why Core Web Vitals you ask?
Because they’re the new face of user experience and a vital ranking factor in the future. In fact, Google has stressed the importance of optimizing sites for Core Web Vitals because of how they affect SEO.
To check Core Web Vitals, you can use the free PageSpeed Insights by Google. Or you can access the Core Web Vitals panel in Google Search Console.
Based on your scores there, you’ll receive detailed instructions on how your site can improve. Implement them and watch your SEO results go through the roof. Those are our 5 top website metrics to monitor.
Houssam Bouchakour is a freelance writer for hire who offers blogging, ghostwriting, and copywriting services to B2C and B2B digital marketing agencies. He has five years of experience crafting top-notch content that demonstrates expertise, boosts search engine visibility, and attracts quality leads. He specializes in a wide variety of online marketing topics — including SEO, SMM, PPC, Email Marketing, Web Analytics, and more.
