You’ve been working hard on your SEO, but you’re not sure if it’s actually making a difference.
It can be tough to know whether your SEO efforts are paying off, and it’s tempting to just give up if you do not see results.
This guide will show you how to evaluate your SEO efforts so that you can make sure they’re being effective.
We’ll walk you through the steps of tracking your progress and identifying what’s working and what needs improvement.
Why Track Your Progress?
With Google having more than 200 ranking factors in its algorithm, it can be challenging to know which area carries the most weight.
And while Google hasn’t made it easy by keeping their algorithm a closely guarded secret, there are metrics that we can measure and track to see if we are on the right path.
A lot goes into SEO – time, energy and money!
With all of this effort, it’s necessary to know if your SEO efforts are paying off.
SEO Metrics
To ensure your business is successful, you need to know what metrics are the most important.
The best way of doing this would be by tracking the ones that matter and focusing on them regularly to give an accurate representation for future decisions made within the company and provide feedback.
The ones that matter depends on the business and its goals.
1. Organic Traffic
This is a crucial metric since the point of conducting SEO is to increase traffic to your website.
Organic Traffic: The number of people that found your website through a Google search.
This is a valuable indicator for tracking your SEO efforts because it shows:
- The content you created matches their search intent.
- The content targets them specifically for your product or service.
- Which will likely increase your rankings in SERPs.
There are a few ways you can evaluate your organic traffic:
Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you measure and track the data on your website.
Semrush is a tool that helps you check the traffic of your competitor’s websites.
2. Keyword Rankings
Keywords are what users type into search engines like Google or Bing to search for information online.
Keyword rankings shows your position on search engine results pages (SERPs) for a specific keyword.
Since most people don’t go past the first page or even the first few results, everyone tends to aim for that coveted #1 spot.
Evaluating where you currently rank for a keyword and where you desire to rank can help you track your progress.
3. Search Engine Visibility
This metric calculates how many users see your website in their search results.
This shows you how many have seen your site but not clicked on it.
4. Click-Through Rate
This metric calculates how many searchers clicked on your website when it came up in their search results.
This can help determine how persuasive your titles, snippets, URLs and descriptions are at getting them to head over to your page.
5. Backlinks
These are the links that are being directed to your site.
According to Google Support, “in general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”
Quality backlinks signal to search engines that there is something of value here and that your content should rank higher.
Google Search Console can provide data on how many backlinks (and internal links) your site has.
Now that you know how many backlinks you have and how many you need, you can create a strategy to improve this metric.
6. Conversion Rate
The percentage of subscribers who completed your call to action.
The conversion rate isn’t necessarily monetary; it can be any action you desire your subscriber to take.
It’s an important SEO metric because, without high-converting sites, you won’t be able to communicate what you have to offer effectively.
The higher your conversion rate, the more profit you’ll make from each visitor.
It’s important to know how many people are converting on average so that when new ones come in, they have a better chance at being one of them!
Google Analytics can help you see what your conversion rate is.
7. Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who left your website without clicking on additional pages.
Your bounce rate is a great measure of how well you’re communicating with your audience.
If it’s too high, then there may be something wrong in either content, design or load time.
8. Pages per visit
This metric helps you identify visitors’ interest in continuing to engage with multiple pages on your site.
The more web pages people visit, the more this tells us that the content is engaging and resonates with them.
9. Time Spent on Page
This metric shows how long a visitor spends on your page.
The longer a user spends on your page, the greater their chance of being converted.
When this metric is low, this could suggest that something is not resonating with them on your page.
10. Scroll depth
This metric shows how far a visitor has scrolled down a page on your website.
This helps you gauge a visitor’s interest to continue reading the contents of the page.
Evaluating your SEO efforts on a regular basis is essential to making sure you’re getting the most out of your time, energy and money.
By following the steps in this guide, you can track your progress and identify any areas that need improvement.
Keep up the good work, and don’t give up – with a little effort, you’ll see results from your SEO strategy!
Now that you know how to evaluate your SEO efforts, you can proceed to the next section of the KAMG SEO Content Hub and see which tools you need for SEO.
Need help with SEO? Contact us today for a free consultation!
