SEO Data: What is it? And Its Importance for Your Business

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We often hear that SEO is a long-term strategy. And one must have the patience to witness results through SEO efforts.
Search engines may take over a month to display considerable changes in your rankings. And even when the rankings are updated, you might not rank exactly for the keywords that you are targeting.
So, how do you track your SEO performance, or how do you assess your SEO efforts? Are you moving in the right direction? Or does your SEO strategy require an essential tweak?
To answer all the above questions, you need to understand SEO data or SEO metrics.
So, in this article, we will understand what SEO data is and why it is important. Next, we will check some critical SEO metrics and see how these can benefit our business.
Let us start learning!

What is SEO Data?

SEO data or SEO metrics is the measure of your organic performance in the search engines. Now, you cannot measure your organic performance as a single entity. Although you can see your organic traffic (with sources and mediums), it represents only your organic data.
But it is measured in a variety of SEO metrics, right from your rankings to the no. of backlinks.
Your SEO data helps you measure and track the results of your SEO efforts. Based on this data, you can make tweaks in your SEO strategy to deliver the best results.
Regularly monitoring your SEO data helps you establish the right direction for your SEO campaigns.

12 Crucial SEO Data Every Business Must Monitor

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One can measure his website's organic performance in a variety of parameters. However, measuring and monitoring each of these parameters can be tedious. Moreover, one would find it confusing to put several types of SEO data to use at once.
Therefore, here we will list down 12 crucial SEO metrics that every business must monitor. And we will understand how it can benefit your business.
Free tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console also produce enough SEO data. Search console lets you monitor site issues, resolve errors, security issues like malware and hacking.
And one can measure most of the important SEO metrics using these tools.

1. Organic Traffic

It is the foremost SEO data every business would wish to track for their website. It is the measure of all the website visitors you get through your organic listings in SERPs. Now, this traffic also indicates your rankings in the SERPs. Usually, the higher your rankings are, the greater is the overall traffic on your website.

How can we benefit from tracking organic traffic?

Optimizing the landing pages for higher traffic :
Now, overall organic traffic is a measure of sitewide visitors. But, you cannot optimize the overall website at once. And therefore, you need to measure organic traffic on individual landing pages. It will help you check the performance of these individual pages in the SERPs.
You would know which page gains the highest traffic and where you need improvement. You can tweak your SEO strategy for low-performing (low-ranking) pages. And you can optimize the high-traffic pages for higher conversion to traffic ratio.
Analyzing and optimizing for the right target location :
You need to analyze the geographic location from where you are gaining the highest traffic. You can get this data in Google Analytics -> Audience -> Geo.
Now, see if the locations that are catering for the highest traffic match with your target locations. If it doesn't match, you might wish to optimize your content and keywords for the target location. Optimize for the locations which are profitable for your business.

2. Keywords Ranking in Google Page Results

Another important metric that you need to analyze is – your ranking keywords on Google. You can use a tool like Ahrefs to check the list of ranking keywords for your business.
Based on this list, you can analyze the positions of your targeted keywords as well. It gives the search volume and incoming traffic that a keyword is generating for your site.
Moreover, you can analyze what your top-performing keywords are.

How can we use keyword ranking data for our business SEO strategy?

If your target keywords are not performing well on the results page, optimize their use. Analyze your top-performing keywords and continue using them smartly.
Check if you are ranking for keywords that are irrelevant to your business and tweak them.
See how you can expand your business for more profitable keywords.
Since you know which keywords work the best for you, you can use this data in SEM ads.
Optimize the landing pages featuring top-ranking keywords for conversions.
Optimizing your keyword strategy is crucial for your overall SEO performance.

3. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate describes the percentage of visitors that bounced away from your website. So every business aims for a lower bounce rate on their website.
You will get the data of pages with the highest bounce rate on Google Analytics.
A higher bounce rate is generally due to irrelevant content, poor page design, or poor UX. A website with a high bounce rate features low conversions. And it usually doesn't perform well in search engines.

How can bounce rate data benefit our business?

You need to analyze data for various important landing pages.
The landing pages with the highest bounce rate require immediate attention. Because a high bounce rate generally results in a lower conversion rate. You need to optimize the relevancy, user experience, and engagement potential.
Optimizing for a lower bounce rate can help you increase your conversion rate.
Moreover, the pages that are featuring a lower bounce rate need can be used as a reference to optimize other pages.

4. Organic Conversion Rate

Another important SEO data is the conversion rate. It is the ratio of organic conversions to organic traffic on your website. Every business aims for a high conversion rate.
Define your conversion goals through GA admin access, and it will fetch data on real time conversion rate.
It also refers to the measure of results you draw from your SEO efforts. The aggregate conversion rate displays how many people bought from your business to the total visitors.

How conversion rate metrics help you optimize your business?

Optimizing your landing pages for high conversions :
You need to analyze the conversion rate for different landing pages. It will help you sort the high-conversion pages and the pages that are not performing well.
If some of your important pages feature a low conversion rate, you need to optimize them. The reasons for low conversions can be irrelevant content, high bounce rate, poor UX, etc.
You need to find the exact reason for lower conversions and resolve it. This practice will help your business increase the overall conversion rate.
Analyze the high-conversion pages to see what works the best for your business. And use this information suitably to grow overall conversions or sales.
Finding the right target locations :
Akin to landing pages, you can analyze the locations that offer you high organic conversions. Now, these are the geographic locations that offer you the best returns for your SEO efforts. Optimize your content for these areas and push more marketing efforts in these areas.
Optimize for the right platform :
You might notice that your website features a higher conversion rate for the desktop version. It hints that it is not optimized well for mobile devices. In that case, you would have to ask your developers to make the website mobile-friendly.

5. Number of Backlinks and Referring Domains

An important measure of your off-page efforts is the number of referring domains. Referring domains or inbound links are the links that a business acquires from external domains.
If a business has abounding inbound links from quality sources, it has a high domain authority. Moreover, domains with a high number of backlinks generally rank high in SERPs. But these backlinks should come from high-authority sites. Low-quality backlinks do not have a significant positive impact on rankings and DA.
Tools like SEMrush help you analyze your overall link profile. You can see the number of backlinks and referring domains. Moreover, you can track backlinks and see the list of no-follow & do-follow links. Gaining new quality inbound links can display an improvement in ranks.

Relevant : Legit Ways to Earn Backlinks to Your Site

SEMrush also allows you to check your competitors' backlink profiles. You can take inspiration from their outreach and link-building strategy. You can also connect with their referring domains to request valuable inbound links.
You can also use free Link Explorer from Moz to get this data, as we have shown with an example of backlinks to Pfizer.
The more quality backlinks you build, the higher grows your rankings in the SERPs.

6. Top Exit Pages

The top exit pages for organic visitors is an SEO metric that people often overlook. These are the pages that organic visitors last visited before they left your website. And probably these are the pages where they lost interest in your business or found it irrelevant.

How is it important for your business?

You need to analyze the top exit pages of your website. The chances are that these are the common exit pages for multiple visitors. And these pages are somewhat off-putting for your website visitors and potential customers.
So, you need to analyze the off-putting elements on these pages. And optimize these pages to retain your organic visitors. If your "Contact Us" page is among your top exit pages, reconsider the CTA and contact forms. Optimizing your top exit pages will help you grow overall conversions for your business.

7. Local Visibility for Local Businesses

Local SEO is crucial for local businesses. If your business serves as a local business, you need to analyze your local SEO performance. And local visibility is a metric that helps you track your ranks in local searches.
You need to check if it appears in the local 3-pack for your targeted local search queries. Or if it appears in local search results when someone searches your target area + your niche. For example, if you’re a dentist in Fillmore district, San Fransico, then search as “dentists in Fillmore district” or “dentists + Fillmore district.”
If not, you need to rethink your local SEO strategy or check your local SEO efforts.
You might also like to check local brand mentions to analyze your brand reputation. Brand reputation plays a significant role in your local visibility and rankings. And there are free and paid tools to track your brand mentions and reputation. Google Alerts, Social Mention, Mention, and BuzzSumo are few popular ones.
Use these metrics to grow your local visibility, thereby boosting traffic and conversions.

8. Click-through Rate or CTR

Google Search Console helps you track the click-through rate of your organic listings in SERPs. CTR is the percentage of users who click on your listings after seeing it in the search results.
For example, if your page has eight clicks and 100 impressions, the CTR is 8%.
Now, your business might have high rankings for some keywords but still have low CTR. CTR lets you assess if the users find your content engaging enough to click on it and continue reading the rest of it.
If you have a low CTR, you need to create a more engaging Meta title and description. But make sure these tags are relevant to the page content to keep the bounce rate low.

How the CTR data benefit your business?

Attracting more traffic to your landing pages : It is advisable to measure the CTR for individual landing pages. It helps you assess the landing pages that attract the highest traffic per impression. With this, you can collect the data of the landing pages that have low CTR. You would need to optimize the organic listings of these landing pages.
One can also measure the CTR on various important ranking keywords. If one of your ranking keywords brings you the highest CTR on a particular landing page, you must make this page more relevant to this keyword. It can help you increase the conversion rate through this landing page.
On the other end, you must analyze the ranking keywords that fail to offer you good CTR. Find how you can optimize this keyword or use it with a more engaging title or description. The goal is to increase your CTR and conversions for your top landing pages and keywords.

9. Total Pages Indexed

You cannot find your page in the search engine results until Google indexes it. In some cases, search engines might take longer than usual to index your webpages.
Google Search Console will help you assess the no. of pages on your site that aren't indexed. If you find any such pages, use the Crawl – Fetch as Google option of Search Console to index the page manually.
Look for the difference between the no. of pages submitted and the pages indexed. If this difference is significant, there are high chances that it is taking longer than usual. Therefore, you must index the pages manually so that you can see your SEO results faster.
Also, it’s a good practice to submit your sitemap often to keep the pages indexed in search engines.
Unless you index your pages, they will not start performing in search engines. And you cannot assess other SEO metrics or start drawing results from your SEO efforts.

10. Crawl Errors

The easier it is for the crawlers to read your site, the faster they can index it. These metrics tell you about any crawling-related bugs that might be present on your website.
Errors like missing pages and broken links fall under common crawl errors. They impede the readability of your website, and Google is not able to index it.
Therefore, you need to check for crawl errors using Google Search Console. And if you find any errors ask your developers to resolve these as fast as possible.
Crawl errors can stop Google from indexing various pages of your site. And it means delaying the results of your SEO efforts.

11. Time on Website and Pages Per Session

Time on the website and pages per session are two crucial user metrics that matter for SEO.

• Time on website is the average amount of time visitors spend on your website.
• Pages per session refer to the number of pages a user visits on your site on average before leaving.
• In particular, this SEO metrics is calculated by the total number of pageviews divided by the total number of sessions.
  

Both these user metrics are essential to evaluate your website user experience. Google appreciates growth in these engagement metrics. After the Panda algorithm launch, a higher engagement metric is generally associated with good quality content.
Websites with higher engagement metrics generally rank higher in the SERPs as well. Therefore, it is crucial to understand user metrics and optimize for highly engaging content.

12. Website Page Speed

Page speed is an important website element and SEO metrics. It is the amount of time required for a page's content to load.
Your website's page speed is directly associated with its user experience. And a higher page speed is appreciated by both the search engines and the users.
Therefore, it is advisable to analyze page speed for your important website pages. If some pages are taking a higher time to load, you need to optimize them.
You can optimize by compressing images, minifying CSS, HTML, upgrading your hosting, activating browser caching, etc.
Higher page speed generally exudes a lower bounce rate and higher engagement. It also helps you grow the conversion rate of your website.

Summing Up

The SEO world is becoming all the more competitive with each passing day. And businesses are investing abounding efforts for SEO success. With that said, you cannot expect organic rankings without optimizing your SEO efforts.
SEO data gives you a comprehensive picture of your SEO performance. And there are extensive types of SEO metrics that one can analyze to optimize better.
However, it would be almost impossible to track all these SEO metrics at once. So, above are 12 SEO metrics that are the most critical to your SEO success. Once you have optimized for these metrics, you can dive deeper into the analysis game.
Further, if you wish to optimize your SEO strategy or opt for result-oriented SEO services, please connect with us.