Maybe you’re trying to create a list of topics posted around the web about good SEO practices and metrics. This can be exhausting, so we provide you with everything on this topic, as well as an effective tool to measure the SEO optimization of your site.
You should focus on just a few metrics that really matter to your SEO performance and the results they bring.
In this article, you’ll learn about four SEO metrics that are everything you need to properly measure your SEO performance. We’ll also look at multiple ways to measure the impact on your SEO performance.
Let’s dive into the world of SEO optimization and improve your SEO performance starting today!
How to measure SEO performance and results?
In the big picture, there are only two ways to measure SEO performance and results: organic traffic and the profit of your business (Not to be confused with the net profit you get after business expenses, but the profit from selling products and services you achieved through organic traffic.)
Here, three main metrics for organic traffic come first, followed by the conversions that traffic brings.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is all unpaid clicks to your website or online store that come from search engines.
We all love to see the organic traffic curve rise, as this is usually a sign of better SEO performance. But keep in mind that not all organic traffic spikes automatically translate into more sales (unless you’re monetizing your website traffic by serving ads).
The Search Results report in the Performance tab of Google Search Console will give you the most accurate view of your organic traffic over time
Keyword positions
Keyword positions refer to a website’s organic positions in search results for specific keywords.
While we’re seeing the trend with organic traffic on GSC, the specific keywords you’re ranking for add to and give you all the context you need about the relevance and value of your traffic.
This is because you should care about ranking for some keywords more than others. Generally speaking, the more relevant a keyword is to your product and business, the more valuable it is for you to rank well for it.
Organic conversions (sales)
Organic conversions are important actions your search engine visitors take on the website, such as checking out, registering, or subscribing to a service.
Conversion tracking is the only way to directly link your SEO efforts to revenue generation. It’s probably the most important for your business, customers, or stakeholders.
Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4. You need technical skills to do it. The most important thing here is to make sure you’re tracking the right conversions
If you run an e-commerce store, the number of conversions, their value, and your average order value are the most important metrics for you. You will need to set up specific online store tracking to do this.
Have you collected the data correctly? In Google Analytics 4, go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions and filter the organic traffic sessions using the Edit Comparisons button:
- You use GA4 (every online business needs it).
- You use the data-driven attribution model by default (Administration > Attribution Settings > Attribution Model Reporting).
- If you have conversions it’s a good idea to set up Goals
This summarizes the metrics used to directly measure SEO performance and results. But we’re not done yet. You should also monitor SEO metrics that affect performance. Because if you neglect to improve SEO, there may not be much effectiveness.
How to measure SEO performance and results?
Here we need to focus on the three main SEO areas: content creation and optimization, link building, and technical SEO.
Note that improving any of the metrics mentioned here does not guarantee better SEO results – there are almost no guarantees in SEO. But these metrics are as close as you can get to increase your organic traffic and conversions.
Content metrics
There is no SEO effectiveness without quality content that Google is happy to push up in search results.
But measuring how good your content is and how well it’s optimized to rank at the top of the SERPs are factors that can’t be quantified using a single metric. We will have to rely on the amount of content.
Amount of content
Content volume measures the content you publish over a period of time. We advise you not to focus only on content made to drive organic traffic. Publish other content as well, such as product updates, company announcements, PPC landing pages, or social media pages and posts.
If you are constantly creating valuable content, it can be a good indicator of improving your SEO performance. Just keep in mind that you shouldn’t just focus on new content, as updating your older content is just as important
Building Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors in SEO.
You can achieve this by posting a link to your site on sites or social networks that have similarities to your business.
We can use this distinction between passive and active link-building to select the most appropriate metrics for evaluating link-building efforts.
Technical SEO metrics
Technical SEO is one important point in your good ranking. Your site pages must be crawlable and indexable to have a chance of ranking. Here it is very important to pay attention to the pages that have changed URLs and cannot be accessed by your customers. Also, last but not least, it is good to pay attention to pages with the same content, meta titles, meta descriptions, and most importantly, optimized for the same keyword or phrase.
Google Search Console indexing errors
You can find these errors in your GSC account in the Pages report under the Indexing tab.
The lower the number of unindexed pages, the better – bearing in mind that sitemaps should only contain URLs that you want Google to crawl and index. Of course, this should be proportional to the size of the website.
As you scroll down in your GSC account, you will see the reasons available for your pages not to be indexed.
You can click on these causes to see a list of URLs affected by this error with a link to learn more about it. There is usually also an instruction on how to fix the error on the page that is not currently crawled.
Here it is important to mention that it is mandatory for every online business to have an integrated GSC on their site and track the performance of their website and online store. If you need technical assistance with integrating Google Search Console into your site, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Which SEO tracking tool to use
We recommend using the ahrefs tracker, which provides detailed reports and tracks your keywords and the current positions of keywords on your site.
Of course, here is the time to point out that our specialists are certified by ahrefs, which is one of the best tools for analysis and reports.
Bonus point – it’s important to know
Don’t rewrite your content and the keywords included in it on a page or blog post you published a few weeks ago. Give your content and SEO efforts time to show results. According to our research, it takes an average of three to six months for your efforts to show results.
In this article, we have mentioned some of the main indicators of your SEO performance, which, if given special attention, will save you a lot of ad money.
Once you get comfortable with analyzing SEO metrics, create SEO reports customized to your business needs to take it to the next level.
