There are a million businesses out there, and each one has one goal in mind: to gain more customers. A strong digital business is critical for any brand to emerge successfully. SEO becomes a vital aspect to consider.
To see success in digital marketing for your business, you must implement and curate the right SEO strategies.
These are the 20 most important SEO metrics you should start tracking right now if you wish to grow your online business.
The most important metric to track for SEO is the page load time. This is also because it determines the bounce rate. According to Google, when page load time increases from 1-6 seconds, bounce rate increases to 106%. Besides, a slower website can also impact your ranking.
Tools to track page load time:
Here’s a screenshot of a page load report by Uptrends:
Read: Tips to Increase Page Loading Speed
Backlinks are not all created equal, and in trying to accumulate them faster, you might end up adding some toxic ones. Too many backlinks of this type can negatively affect your search engine optimization. It is always advisable to start from the basics and work your way up in SEO than shortcuts.
A few things to remember while adding doing backlinking are:
Here’s a screenshot of SEMrush auditing a website’s backlinks:
Top keywords keep changing with changing trends, and this is why you have to keep a tab on this particular metric closely. Last month, what was ranking might not still be in its first position in the listing.
Keywords help you benchmark your content, directly affecting its rank on the search engine pages. Branded and non-branded keywords make up to give you the best results. For instance, 'running shoes for women' is a long-tail keyword that influences customers in decision-making.
Here are a few tools you can use to monitor how your keywords are constantly performing:
Here’s a screenshot of AnswerThePublic showing what questions people are searching on the web:
Local visibility is very important, especially if running local SEO campaigns. Under these metrics, you will track if enough traffic is coming from the right sources or the right audience that you are targeting. You can do this by keeping track of the following:
Here’s a screenshot of Google My Business:
Read: Step-by-step Setup Guide for Google My Business Set up
Organic traffic is the best indicator of how well your SEO techniques work. The essence of SEO is organic traffic, and the more you work on this metric to rank naturally on search engines, the better your online reputation will be.
Another incentive to track this number is that you'll be able to see which pages are ranking first. For example, if one blog's page ranks on page 1 and another rank on page 6, you'll know which one requires more SEO.
When weighing this metric, keep the following in mind:
Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics assessing traffic metrics:
Your online and offline reputation determines the value of your company. For many brands, reviews and feedback serve as social evidence.
Many shoppers ponder about this before ever picking a brand. Not only do reviews and ratings help your business grow, but they also help you rank higher in search engines.
Here’s a screenshot of ReviewTrackers:
If someone is leaving your page, it is because of a certain piece of material or a particular page that they do not like. It is critical to evaluate this measure regularly to ensure accuracy and identify the problematic page.
Exit pages are the pages that a consumer looks at last before leaving the website. Visitors lose interest in the site because of these pages or their material.
These four easy tactics will help you improve the ranking of your departure pages:
Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics showing exit page metrics:
Even before a search engine indexes a page, it crawls the page. There are three basic crawling issues - the page that you want the search engine to crawl does not crawl at all. This could happen if you have accidentally prevented it from being crawled.
Second, when the search engine crawls too many unimportant pages and content. Third, when a search engine faces an error or issue while downloading a particular URL. Not monitoring these can negatively impact your position in search engines.
Use these tools to fix various crawl errors:
Here’s a screenshot of Fetch as Google:
Scroll depth is how far the visitors scroll down on your web pages. It is essential to know this as it helps you figure out the exact point where they are losing interest.
This could be a piece of content, how the UI works, or anything else. It is important to measure this metric because it will help you make necessary changes in your webpage as it is the first interface that your visitors and customers encounter when it comes to knowing a brand.
Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics displaying scroll depth:
When it comes to website content, duplication is a big NO. When multiple pages on your website ahs similar or the same content and description, it prevents Google from crawling any further as the search engine will identify and group them as similar pages.
This can negatively affect the topical authority of your domain, which will dilute your position in search engine pages.
Here’s a screenshot of Copyscape looking for duplicate content on the web:
If you want to know how many people are influenced by your content, you must keep a close eye on this metric.
Click-Through Rate or CTR is a metric showing an average number or percentage of people that clicked through your links after seeing them on the search engine. This tells how appealing your content is to readers.
Here are quick tips to achieve decent CTR.
Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics showing Click-Through Rates:
When someone sees your website for only one page and then leaves, this is known as a bounce rate. This suggests they aren't finding anything else on your website to keep them interested.
Bounce rate is a critical issue because it signifies fewer visitors, which might hurt your search engine ranking. To lower the bounce rate, you must provide an exceptional experience for your visitors.
Here are some helpful tips:
Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics showing bounce rate:
You should monitor this metric to discover how strong your SEO is. Backlinks, content quality, referring domains are factors that impact these indicators.
While domain authority is not a direct ranking factor, according to Google, it is an important component in determining other aspects that contribute to your SERP ranking. A website authority checker can assist you in determining this number, which you can then use to make SEO decisions.
Here’s an example of Moz showing the Domain Authority of a website:
Read: Best Practices to Earn High-Authority Backlinks for Your Website
Another indicator to keep an eye on is website engagement. Because your website will not rank in SERPs unless there is a sufficient level of engagement, you can determine how well your website works by focusing on a few key criteria.
Examples are page views, average time on page, conversion rate, top exit pages, and bounce rate.
The top three tactics for increasing page interaction are listed below:
Here’s a screenshot of a chatbot:
Now more than ever, it is important to have this metric tracked from time to time. People are interested in reading only quality, creative and original content.
But how do you exactly measure the quality of your website content? Clear takeaways and actionable content is the key to this.
Here’s a screenshot of Yoast showing content readability:
Google has made user-centric performance metrics a vital yardstick when ranking a webpage on its search engine. It has become essential for brands to make user-centric websites and provide a breathtaking user experience while they are on the website.
Poor UI & UX is also a major reason some websites don't rank. The three main aspects of core web vitals defined by Google that is responsible for better ranking are:
You can use GTmetrix to optimize your core web vitals:
Read: The Role of UX in Enterprise SEO
Organic clicks can be measured in a score that determines how much your search traffic is organic compared to the total number of clicks available. This is calculated based on your website's ranking position and the total search volume for a targeted keyword.
You can use tools to determine where your website ranks for all the intended target keywords. There are many ways to calculate your brand's organic market share. Here are a few tools you can use to find the same:
Here’s a screenshot of SEMrush analyzing a competitor’s domain:
This metric will tell you how many pages a user explored on your website. Holding on to these metrics is important as it'll help you redefine your web pages so that your visitors can get through the conversion funnel.
While driving more traffic is the first step to better ranking, convincing the same visitors to take call-to-action is just as necessary and important.
This again drives down to how engaging your pages are and how interactive your website is.
Here’s an example of internal links that link to other pages of the website:
When creating your website and optimizing it, you should consider adding geo targetted keywords. This is a very crucial part of local SEO.
For instance, if you own a vegan restaurant in Brazil and add the right geo-targeted keywords, you can ensure that people searching for the same come across your restaurant.
If they type either vegan restaurants in Brazil or Brazil, your food business pops up. You have to add the same in website content and tags.
Remember these:
Here’s a screenshot of Google’s Keyword Planner showing geo-targeted keywords:
Google is, after all, a bot. While it does all it can to crawl and index your pages, there is no harm in doing your part as a brand to fetch that information to the bot. This makes your ranking process faster and better.
When you hyperlink two pages to the same website, it is internal linking. Internal links organize and structure your website's architecture. It enhances the content context and helps Google understand the content hierarchy.
Some tools that you should use for this task are:
Here’s a screenshot of Interlinks manager:
Read: How Internal Linking Affects Your SEO?
Brice has been handling marketing projects for more than 12 years and he is providing consulting services on SEO, Social Media and PPC. He has a huge expertise in working at large corporations including Accenture Interactive & PwC Digital Services.
Brice has been handling marketing projects for more than 12 years and he is providing consulting services on SEO, Social Media and PPC. He has a huge expertise in working at large corporations including Accenture Interactive & PwC Digital Services.
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