How to Measure the Performance of Your SEO Campaign?

1. Analyze SERP Rankings

Continuously monitor your SERP rankings and keep track of it during your SEO campaign. SERPs or search engine results pages are a good criterion for measuring your SEO campaign’s health and performance.
If your SERP rankings are high, your campaign is doing well. You can monitor this accurately with platforms like Moz or Ahrefs. All you need to do is add the keywords you want to track and then let it do the work. It will track your rankings for these keywords over time.
This is perhaps one of the widest metrics for SEO performance.
A lot of other smaller metrics affect the outcome of this one. This is one reason why people consider it the barometer of SEO campaign health.

2. Monitor Organic Traffic

Regardless of the nature of your SEO or the niche, traffic is one of the most reliable forms of metrics today. The reasoning for this is simple - if there is no traffic, people aren’t interested in your website.
Keeping your traffic numbers high means that your website is relevant. Increasing traffic numbers over time is a sign of a healthy brand. And this is also another method by which you can quantify your efforts.
Attracting more people to a brand website is the ultimate goal of any SEO campaign. High traffic numbers also sign that you’re doing many things right with your content optimization and marketing.
But just high traffic numbers are not good enough. It also has to be high quality and more suited to conversion. You can easily monitor traffic using your Google Analytics account under the Organic Traffic tab.

3. Track Organic Conversions

Conversions determine how many people buy into the product or service. It needs to be stressed that this is a critical metric as well. This is the metric you need to inspect after you’ve checked off SERPs and traffic.
Conversions directly influence the quality metrics of your traffic numbers. Conversion happens anytime your prospective client takes affirmative action. This includes purchases, sign-ups, calls, or form submission.
You can correct flaws in your marketing pipeline by observing the conversion numbers.

• High conversions are good.
• Low conversion numbers mean you are not attracting relevant traffic. This could mean anything from bad keyword selection to lackluster content.

But a drop-in conversion is the quickest way to figure out if your campaign is heading the wrong way.

4. Check Page Loading Speed

Page loading speed is a metric that has gained significant prominence in recent times. Back in the day, a quick loading website was desirable. But today, it is a requirement.
Google Search assigns a lot of importance to websites that load quickly. They usually divide page speed into page load time and time to the first byte.
One factor for increased focus on speed is that people are a lot less patient now than before. This means that the chances for them to click away from a slow website have shot up.
The saturation of the market with brands is also another reason page loading speed is critical. People can always go to another website offering the same services.
Loading speed is not just critical for rankings, and it also improves user experience. A good website needs to load up completely in the space of about 8 seconds.

Relevant : Importance of UX for an eCommerce site & How it Impacts your SEO?

5. Review Engagement Metrics

Engagement occurs when people interact with your website. Every time a person visits a website, there are different types of events they can trigger.

• One is bounce rate - people who visit your website and leave without clicking any link.
• Another would be the average time spent on the website.

Finally, you also have the average number of pages visited before leaving your website. All these contribute towards the total of all engagement metrics.
Engagement metrics are more important now after the Panda update. The more bounce a website has, the more it is penalized. Like conversions, engagement numbers can give you a good idea of how relevant your website is to your target demographics. Every platform that deals with SEO has a method by which you can track engagement metrics.

6. Observe Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a part of the engagement metric suite, but it is important enough to warrant a discussion. Typically, we measure bounce rate in percentages. For a good website, it shouldn’t exceed 60%.
A high bounce usually indicates that the page is not relevant enough for the target keywords. This means that you need to overhaul the SEO profile for the page. Or perhaps even look at the content profile of the indicated page.
Monitoring bounce rate can give you hints about a much bigger problem, which is why it is so critical.

7. Study Landing Page Metrics

Another set of metrics that you need to track regarding SEO performance is for landing pages. There are several metrics that you need to consider here for a complete picture of your SEO campaign.
Landing page views are the most basic of metrics. It simply tracks how many people have visited and viewed your landing page. Average session length is how long each visitor has spent on your landing page.
Landing page conversion records how many people click on the sales page. Classification also happens according to the number of page views for each of your landing pages.

Relevant : Benefits of Creating High converting Landing pages for Ecommerce

The more page views a landing page has, the more effective it is at capturing business. All these are different parts of the landing page metrics that you need to study.

8. Improve Search Visibility

Visibility refers to how often your domain shows up in search results for selected keywords. It shows how much of a chance your brand has to get people in from search results. This is also an important metric when it comes to SEO campaigns.
Search engine visibility is extremely important to draw in prospective clients. You can also use it to get feedback on general tweaks made to your website. This is also available on most SEO platforms and analytics. And on these platforms, visibility is called impressions.
Every time a user enters your website through searches, it generates an impression. Another aspect of this metric is that search visibility also translates into brand visibility.
The more visible your brand is on searches; the more people see it in real-life as well.

9. Evaluate Return On Investment (ROI)

This is essentially the chief metric of all metrics when it comes to accountability. All SEO campaigns should be centered around ROI.
By definition, ROI is the difference between the gain and cost of the investment divided by cost itself. This is the aim of all the processes around SEO.
Regardless of how much traffic, conversions, or visibility a campaign can deliver, none of these matters without ROI. That said, there should also be credible expectations when you measure this. It is common for campaigns to have low or even negative ROI numbers when starting. But through the course of the process, you will see it rise consistently.
This is especially true for organic methods because the setup costs are a bit high. But since their maintenance is low, you are bound to see better numbers later.

10. Inspect Average Session Duration

Session duration is a measure of how long visitors stay on your website. It is also referred to as dwell time. You will notice that longer sessions are more desirable. Visitors only stay for long if they’re interested in what’s on the website. This can help you understand which areas of your website need to be tweaked based on feedback.
Having low numbers here can mean several problems, from improper navigation to internal linking. There are many tools that you can use to inspect your visitor session details.
Advanced tools also give you heat maps of user interaction for reference. You can use it to figure out where exactly your website needs to work.
The industry standard for average session length is 2 -3 minutes. You need to focus on delivering as much as possible to your visitors within this timespan.

11. Curate Link Profile Quality

Backlinking is an integral part of SEO marketing. It is how brands can get a better flow of link juice to their website from high authority websites. While earlier, you could build backlinks without too many limitations, today, the story is different.
There are several aspects you need to fulfill before you can build a good backlink profile. The website you are linking from needs to be relevant. Another factor to check is the quality score of the website.
Backlink analysis tools can help determine the quality score of a target website. This can help you improve your selection of potential backlinking websites. Again here, Ahrefs or Moz can help get you the right websites to links from. The higher their metrics are, the better choice it is for you.

12. Examine Cost Per Click (CPC)

Some people tend to confuse organic cost per click with the paid variant. Some people think that organic traffic generation does not have an associated cost per click. Both groups are mistaken.
The cost per click of an organic SEO campaign is the cost involved for each visit to your website. You can get a CPC by dividing the total budget spent by the number of visitors to your website.
For a good SEO campaign, the CPC gradually decreases. This is partly due to the lower cost of organic SEO and the increase in visitors’ number.

13. Explore Click Thru Rates (CTR)

Click-through is one of the newer KPIs that are part of the modern SEO ecosystem.
CTR is a performance metric that records the ratio of clicks to your website or link to the total number of users. That is to say, if you have a high CTR, your traffic numbers to that link are high.
With the last few updates, CTR has gained a lot of importance when ranking high for search queries is a priority.
Search engine spiders prioritize high CTR websites for their crawling operations. This means if your website has a good score here, spiders will crawl more often. It can be the key to getting better rankings and the SEO campaign’s long-term health.

14. Tabulate Money Keyword Rankings

Money keywords are the ones that have the highest chance of getting the most results for your brand. And in an SEO campaign, this is what you should focus on rather than others.
The entire internet is shifting towards better personalization to attract customers. And tailoring keywords is a huge step in that direction.
Tracking the performance of your money keywords is the best metric to success. The selected keywords can also be long-tail keywords, which brings in a lot of relevant traffic to your website. You will find several tools in the market that let you keep tabs on your keyword list.
They are powerful tools that can let you know current rankings and what you need to do.

15. Classify Referring Domains

We’ve established that quality content sells and improves the performance of your SEO campaign. But much before content, referring domains have had considerable power in the SEO world. And the surprising fact is that they still do.
Referring domains and backlinks have been the de facto standard for SEO specialists for a long time now. It is also a fact that quality backlinks can help websites rank established websites quickly and easily. So, a lot of SEO experts focus on getting the best referring domains rather than the number.
Getting authority websites that are relevant to your business can be a tremendous boost in SEO strength. You should also remember to link different websites and not just stick to one. The more there are, the better chances of your website being ranked higher.

16. Evaluate Authority Metrics

Authority metrics are a blanket term given to several metrics in the SEO space. The most important of them here are domain authority and trust flow. Domain authority is a term first coined by Moz.
DA refers to how authoritative a domain is in the niche on a scale of 0-100. It considers several other factors like backlinks, brand mentions, and more.
The higher the score of the website, the better-ranked it usually is. Another one would be trust flow, created by Majestic. This is also another similar mechanic that uses different data points to calculate a website’s “trust.”
This number gets frequently updated by them, so it is accurate.

17. Gauge Local Visibility

A few people are mistaken about the power of local visibility. They mistakenly assume that unless you run a brick and mortar, you don’t need local visibility. The fact is that local rankings affect total rankings as well.

Relevant : Benefits of Local SEO for Your Local Business

Regardless of the scope of the business, local visibility plays into the SEO strength of a website. Doing well in the rankings means you will be eligible for local features such as Google My Business and Maps.
Doing well can help you figure in on the local 3-pack, which features ahead of the first result on Google. This can be a huge boost to the SEO power of your website. It can also bring in a lot of traffic without even having to rank in the top three.

Relevant : Benefits of a Google My Business Listing

18. Analyze Mobile Metrics

Mobile devices are a huge part of the audience and account for more than 50% of all traffic. And this is only going to increase as more people have access to better devices and internet speeds. Updated figures state that over 60% of all searches come through a mobile device.
These are numbers that are too large to ignore. This makes optimization for mobile a critical step to get better rankings and more SEO strength. Another factor is the popularity of voice assistants of late.
As a brand, you need to optimize your website for including voice search keywords. These are usually long-tail keywords and need to be processed (Natural Language Processing). These keywords tend to be more focused than typed searches.
Mobile-friendliness is another aspect to be considered for rankings. The more mobile-friendlier it is, the more traffic your website can accrue.

19. Record Unique Visitor Count

While traffic is an important part of the SEO process, the metrics have now advanced. Today, you also need to keep track of unique visitor count to optimize your SEO profile. This helps you categorize your traffic into new and returning visitors. You could then translate into unique website interactions for both categories.
Good examples of custom interactions are landing pages and popups. It can also help you sort between how effective your sales copy and your marketing funnel are.
If you get many new visitors and your conversion rate is high, you know that your funnel is working well. You can also use this data to streamline your exit pages. How you handle visitor exits also contributes to improving traffic.

20. Compare Competitor Metrics

As a business, it is always important to keep an open mind about your client’s competitors.
Tracking their metrics and their SEO campaigns can give you valuable insights about your own. It can help you discover new keyword opportunities that you might have missed. Or it could even open up new possible keywords that you might not have known through analysis. You also get new ideas about how to upsell services.
Upselling presents a unique opportunity to improve sales. This is where a lot of businesses focus on. Finally, you can also compare backlinks and referring domains between the two brands. Getting high authority domains to link to can be a huge boost to SEO strength.
You will find that several tools let you track competition metrics and results. SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Mozbar all have features that let you do this.
Do you need any help in measuring the performance of your SEO campaign? Speak to our SEO experts now!