3 Ways to Measure SEO Success
If you’re a business owner looking to maximize your online presence, you probably know the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Using the right keywords and phrases to get your site ranking higher in the search results is key to getting you found online by your target customers. But how can you tell of your SEO campaign is working to your advantage?
Evaluating your SEO campaign’s performance involves three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Rankings
- Traffic
- Conversions
Gathering information on each of these KPIs will enable you to measure performance, as well as provide data that you can use to improve your SEO over time. Let’s look at each of them separately.
Rankings
Did you know that websites that rank in the first page in Google search results get the vast majority (over 90%) of search traffic? A study performed by the online ad network Chitika confirmed that the top listing in Google’s organic search results receives 33 percent of the traffic, compared to 18 percent for the second position, and the traffic only degrades from there.
So tracking whether your keywords and phrases are appearing in the top of the search results can reveal a lot about their success. If some of your keywords are ranking high, but others aren’t, you will need to evaluate why and whether or not it’s beneficial to invest more effort into further optimization of the latter. You may decide that those low-ranking keywords are just too competitive, so dropping them and focusing more SEO effort on the high-performing keywords would be more advisable.
Traffic
Once you determine how your keywords are performing in the rankings, you need to determine the type and volume of traffic you are generating. Measuring traffic is based on the number of visits to your site resulting from organic searches. The desired volume depends on the type of business, what it’s offering and the target audience. For example, the number of users looking for a local orthopedic surgeon would be significantly less than those looking for discount printing on a global level.
The quality of your traffic is just as important, if not more so, but is more difficult to measure. Some metrics that can be used for this are:
- Pages Per Visit
- Average Visit Duration
- Bounce Rate
You will need to evaluate the results of these metrics and adjust your SEO campaign accordingly.
Conversion
Conversion rates are the most valuable factor in measuring your SEO campaign effectiveness. You will need to measure based on your specific goals.
For example, if you are selling a product online, you can determine how many sales you’ve made against the number of actual visitors to your site. But you may also want to track visitors who don’t buy, but subscribe to a newsletter, share your content, submit contact requests or request downloads. This indicates that they are interested in your service or product and will likely return and eventually buy.
Putting conversion tracking in place on your organic search results will reveal which keywords are generating conversions, and why.
Just as the quality of traffic is at least as important as traffic volume, the ROI of your conversions also matter greatly in measuring your SEO campaign performance. This requires tracking the monetary value of conversions. Don’t just concentrate on new customers or initial purchases; you should also consider and project future repeat business that customers may incur.
Philadelphia SEO for Growth Offers a Free SEO Audit!
Philadelphia SEO for Growth offers a free audit of your website. We will provide you with a report on how your business stands for local SEO. We can then help you develop a strategy to improve your local SEO to improve your local search rankings.