When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), you want to keep improving. If your SEO efforts stagnate, you will not generate new customers and will fall behind your competitors.
But how can you improve your search marketing results? You may be unsure of what steps to take to reoptimize. The good news is that by tracking SEO key performance indicators, you can determine what needs to be optimized (KPIs).
But what exactly are SEO KPIs, and which ones should you monitor? We’ll look into the answers to both of those questions further down, so keep reading to find out more.
What exactly are SEO KPIs?
SEO KPIs are specific metrics associated with various aspects of your search engine marketing. These metrics inform you about your search rankings, the audience you’re reaching, and how your SEO affects your website.
Most SEO KPIs can be found using a tool like Google Analytics or Ahrefs. These tools will not only provide you with the necessary SEO metrics but will also present your data in graphs and charts, allowing you to view it in a variety of ways.
Why should you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for SEO?
What is it about SEO KPIs that makes them so important? Why bother tracking search metrics at all?
The answer is that SEO metrics are essential for determining the success of your SEO campaigns. You’ll never know what results in you’re driving if you don’t track your search marketing performance. That means you won’t be able to reoptimize to improve your SEO.
By monitoring KPIs, you can determine when a piece of content is failing to rank or attract clicks. You can then improve that page to attract more visitors.
What are the most important SEO metrics to monitor?
There are numerous KPIs for SEO, but not all of them are critical to the success of your campaigns. Don’t worry if you’re not sure which metrics are the most useful to track; we’ve listed some of the best ones below.
Here are six search metrics to pay attention to in your campaigns:
- Search engine rankings
The first and most important metric to track in your SEO is search rankings. This metric simply indicates how high your content appears in search results.
This metric will, of course, vary depending on the page, search term, and day. On one day, a page may rank extremely high for a specific keyword, but a few days later, it drops significantly. Alternatively, a page may rank low for one keyword but high for another.
Because of this variability, it’s critical to keep track of your search rankings on a regular basis. To find out which keywords each page ranks for, use a tool like Ahrefs. If you notice a page ranking poorly for its target keyword, take the time to reoptimize it.
To be clear, you should not track rankings solely for their own sake. Having your site rank high in search results is meaningless if those rankings aren’t resulting in other outcomes such as leads and conversions. So, keep that context in mind when tracking rankings, and track them alongside the other metrics listed below.
- Search engine visibility
Search visibility is another important SEO metric. The number of users who see your pages in search results is referred to as search visibility. In general, higher rankings will result in greater search visibility — 75% of people never look past the first page of search results.
It’s important to remember that just because people see your content doesn’t mean they’re engaging with it. As a result, you shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about search visibility.
Instead, search visibility is most useful when calculating other metrics such as organic click-through rate (CTR).
- Organic click-through rate (CTR)
Organic CTR is the number of people who click on your content in search results. But it’s not just the total number of clicks you get; it’s your total clicks in relation to your search visibility.
Assume you want to know the CTR for a specific page on your website. On any given day, your visibility is defined as 15 people seeing that page in search results. Assume three people click on the page.
In that scenario, the total number of clicks is three. However, to calculate your CTR, divide your visibility by 15 and multiply by 100 to get 20%. You’ll notice that if your search visibility had been six, you’d still have had three total clicks, but your CTR would have been 50% rather than 20%.
This is an important metric because it indicates whether your pages are generating clicks. If your pages have high search visibility but a low CTR, you should rewrite your title tag and meta description to make them more compelling.
- The bounce rate
The bounce rate differs slightly from the other metrics on this list. The higher the number for the majority of these metrics, the happier you are. However, bounce rate is one metric you want to keep low because it represents the percentage of visitors who leave your site shortly after arriving.
In other words, if 10 people visit your site but four of them leave after only a few seconds, your bounce rate is 40%. A high bounce rate indicates that your website isn’t doing a good job of retaining users’ attention.
That could indicate that your title tag was deceptive, or that the page is poorly designed. In any case, you’ll want to spend some time identifying and resolving potential issues that may drive people away from your page.
Other times, a high bounce rate does not indicate poor content, but rather that you delivered exactly what users needed in a short period of time. You can, however, reoptimize to keep users moving to other pages on your site.
- Organic traffic
Organic traffic is one of the most important search metrics to monitor. Organic traffic is the number of people who visit your site after finding it in search results. It’s critical to track so you can see how much of your traffic comes from SEO, which will help you determine how successful SEO is in comparison to your other strategies.
Keep in mind that organic traffic is distinct from total traffic on your website. Some of your site visitors may have arrived from somewhere else; for example, they may have clicked a link on another site or typed your URL directly into the address bar.
Organic traffic, on the other hand, focuses solely on traffic derived from search engines. This allows you to easily see how much traffic your SEO efforts are generating.
- The rate of conversion
The conversion rate is the final search metric on this list. The conversion rate, as the name suggests, measures how much of your organic traffic converts.
Begin by isolating your organic traffic to determine the conversion rate. For example, suppose your organic traffic on a given day is 50 people. Then consider how many of those people converted — let’s say there were five conversions in our example.
Subtract your conversions from your organic traffic and multiply by 100. In the preceding example, the conversion rate would be 10%.
You want your conversion rate to be as high as possible, as you might expect. The more conversions you generate, the more revenue your company generates!
Allow Digital Gorkhaa to assist you in optimizing your SEO KPIs.
Tracking your SEO KPIs is one thing, but reoptimizing your SEO to improve those metrics is an entirely different task. Don’t worry if you need assistance with SEO optimization — Digital Gorkha is here to help! We are SEO experts, with over 10 years of digital marketing experience.
When you work with us for SEO services, you will receive assistance in improving all of the metrics listed above, as well as others. We’ll help you improve your rankings and drive more organic traffic to your website, resulting in increased revenue.
Prem Rai
Prem Rai is a Digital Creator, Entrepreneur, and Online Marketing Consultant. I am helping people grow businesses DIGITALLY. My Digital Marketing experience includes SEO, PPC, Social Media, Website Conversion, Content Marketing, Email, Partnerships, and Affiliates. I have also recruited entire digital marketing teams, each member with their own expertise.