Quantify Your Results: The 14 Most Important SEO Metrics

SEO is an integral part of any marketing campaign, but which metrics are the most valuable to help improve your website’s performance? In this article, we will explore fourteen different SEO metrics and their importance. Many SEOs, particularly those new to the field, have a continual sense of insecurity. They work for weeks or months, but it’s difficult to tell if the results are worthwhile. They (or you) eventually realize that without a mechanism to measure outcomes, there’s no way to determine if all of your efforts were worthwhile. So you begin meticulously measuring a particular measure, such as keyword rankings. After a few months, you’ll see some progress. However, a new issue arises: a single statistic is insufficient to explain your work’s outcomes.

Term rankings are just one indicator of whether your domain’s search authority is improving unless you’re monitoring every single keyword ever searched in your field. Search traffic may increase while rankings decline, or vice versa. So, what’s the answer? he answer is to keep track of a variety of measures.  f you’re presenting these findings to a group, these metrics may be referred to as key performance indicators (KPIs).  PIs, or key performance indicators, are concrete figures derived from your website’s data.  he majority of this information will come from your analytics platform of choice, whether it’s Google Analytics or something more complicated like KISSmetrics.  ’m going to show you 14 of the most significant SEO indicators in this article.  ou have complete control over which (if any) metrics you include in your regular reports.  ast but not least, bear in mind that most of these measures are only indicators of your achievement rather than precise measurements.  rganic traffic, for example, normally rises at an exponential rate.  fter you perform some specialized effort, an additional 100 visits in the first month might be worth thousands in the future.  etrics are often used as indications of your site’s health and growth

Most effective SEO metrics:

1.  nderstand your keyword rankings to see where your traffic is coming from.

Although there is no ideal method to measure your overall search engine authority, several data may be used to make educated guesses.  eyword rankings may be used to assess certain phrases for which you are attempting to rank.  hen attempting to outrank your competitors, they may also assist you to figure out whether you’re targeting the right keywords.  owever, there are some significant restrictions.  or example, I originally said that long-tail searches accounted for 91% of Quick Sprout search traffic.  imilarly, long-tail terms account for 91% of KISSmetrics’ search traffic.

So, why do we need to keep track of keywords?

Despite the fact that keyword traffic accounts for just approximately 9% of total traffic, monitoring rankings for keywords with high search volumes (anything above a few hundred per month) reveals a few things:

• if you’re targeting the proper keywords – if none of your blog articles are ranking for the keywords you want, you should focus on less competitive keywords for the time being.
• If you’re expanding over time — as you earn backlinks and your site gets more trustworthy, all keywords should gradually rise in rank.  f this is not the case, something is wrong with your SEO strategy.
• if you’re effectively transmitting “link juice” – When you get a new link to a page, the majority of its power is sent toward that page.  ome will, however, move to other sites you connect to.  ou can probably increase your internal linking if the majority of your older pages never improve their rankings.

This is how you keep track of keywords:

For each blog post or crucial page on your site that you’d want to rank for, choose one to five keywords.  f you’re not sure how to accomplish it, start with my keyword research guide.  here’s no need to manually verify rankings when you have so many tools at your disposal.  f you require a free solution, check Serpfox or Pro Rank Tracker’s free plans.  he majority of keyword monitoring programs function in a similar way.  tart with a URL in Serpfox, for example:

Then, on your dashboard, open the URL you just entered and choose the “add keywords” option:

Then, one by one, add the keywords you’ve already discovered.  f necessary, you may additionally monitor a certain search engine or country:

Once you’ve done that, the program will check every day to see whether you’re in the top few hundred results.  n your dashboard, you can view your ranking:

You may also use the graph icon to view how things have changed over time.

Obviously, free tools are more restricted than commercial products, but they’ll do for now if you’re just starting started.  ou should add keywords to track each time you publish an article.  ou should export your rankings at least once a month to examine how they are doing in regard to the three criteria I discussed before.

2.  rack your authority via backlinks and linking root domains.

There’s no denying that on-page SEO elements and user engagement patterns are becoming more important in search results.  acklinks, on the other hand, are still one of, if not the most significant, elements influencing rankings right now.  hey will continue to have a significant impact in the future.  hat implies obtaining backlinks should be a significant aspect of any SEO strategy.  f you aren’t receiving any (or many), you have an issue that will stifle your progress.  ou can track the number and quality of new backlinks you get as part of your link-building initiatives to see how effective they are.  his is how you can keep track of fresh backlinks.  hrefs and MajesticSEO are the most prominent backlink monitors.  ou may begin with a restricted free plan to test the waters, but you’ll ultimately need to upgrade to a premium subscription.  lthough Open Site Explorer is a viable choice, it lacks the database size of the other two and refreshes more slowly.  ’ll be utilizing Ahrefs for the sake of this tutorial.  o begin, type your domain name into the search window as follows:

Scroll down a little on the main results page to view a graph that illustrates the number of backlinks and connecting root sites over time.  his should be on the rise (more important for the linking root domains than the backlinks).

Next, pick “Inbound links > New” from the top navigation menu:

This displays the new links to your domain for the time period selected:

You can check who has linked to you and even go to the URL.  lease keep in mind that on free plans, you will only be able to view a limited number of results.

• How do you keep track of link quality?

All link-tracking systems are based on the assignment of a few “scores” to links.  he greater the score, the higher the link’s quality.  ajestic makes use of trust and citation flow, whilst Ahrefs makes use of URL rating.  ou’ll get a URL rating and a domain rating when you first search for your domain name.

These, along with the rest of your findings, should be recorded on a regular basis.  hey’ll both go up if you’re obtaining high-quality connections.  nly links to the homepage will be included in the URL score, but the domain rating is more of an overall score.

Even if you get 10,000 links, if they are of poor quality and come from spammy sites, your rankings will not improve much.

Focus on raising your “trust rank” over time if you’re utilizing Majestic.

• Why should you keep track of backlinks?

It’s crucial to keep track of your backlinks’ general development, but there are three additional major reasons to do so on a regular basis:

1. To assign a fee per link — even if you get a few really high-quality links, if each link costs $1,000, it is unlikely to be profitable.  ssess the cost of connections resulting from various link-building techniques and approaches.
2. You may track how many links you receive from a single strategy, similar to how many links you get from a single technique, to determine how successful your methods are.  n an email outreach effort, for example, you may obtain seven links from 100 emails (a 7 percent link rate).
3. To establish possible partnerships — if someone connects to you, it’s likely that they like your work.  ou may start a connection with them by sending them a simple email, which might lead to additional links or other chances.

3.  o you get a lot of organic search traffic?

What motivates you to work in SEO?  ’m guessing you do it to receive free organic search traffic (which is an excellent reason).  ou should keep track of how much monthly search engine traffic you receive and make sure it’s growing.  t’s worth noting that you should look at it for at least a few months since seasonal changes might have an impact on traffic.  o begin, navigate to your site’s Google Analytics main dashboard (Audience Overview).  his first graph depicts your total traffic over the last 30 days.  ou are allowed to change it for a longer amount of time.  o bring up a choice of possibilities, click the “Add section” button.

Then scroll all the way down to “Organic Traffic.” Click “Apply” after checking the box.

After you’ve done so, a new line will appear in your graph, showing your organic traffic alongside your total traffic.

You may also segment your search traffic based on the search engine used.  avigate to “Acquisition > Overview” in the left sidebar menu, then click the “Organic Search” link:

Click the checkboxes beside each search engine, then click the “Plot Rows” button to display the traffic by day, not just the total traffic:

4.  re you hitting user intent with your average time on the page?  

When visitors arrive on a page that they aren’t interested in, what do they usually do?  hey depart.  f the page is really relevant and intriguing, on the other hand, they will spend time on it.  our page is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes in real life.  bviously, your objective should be to please as many of your viewers as possible in order for your page to rank well.  lthough the Audience Overview section provides an overall average time on page data for your site, it isn’t particularly helpful.  ather, you should dive deeper and see how much time visitors spend on each page.  egin by selecting “Behavior > Overview” from the left-hand menu:

This will display a couple of your most popular pages.  ook for the “see full report” link in the bottom right corner and click it:

This will display all of your pages in order of traffic volume.  or each page, look at the “Avg. Time on Page” column:

You may manually record the findings in a spreadsheet if you simply have a few pages.  therwise, return to the top of the page and choose the export option to get a spreadsheet of data to work with:

Once you have a few hundred visitors, the time spent on the page usually doesn’t vary much.  s a result, you only need to record this value once for most pages.  t’s not uncommon to observe a very short average time on a page.  eep track of the time you started and the dates you collected the data.  hen, when you’ve had enough visits, focus on improving your content and re-evaluating the worth.  or all pages, there is no definite “good” or “poor” time-on-page.  he visitor should not spend much time on your content if it is relatively brief since it solves a very particular problem (then you may look at other metrics like bounce rate).  f your material is lengthy, the average time spent on the page should be high.

5.  isitor pages: keep track of your usability.

You want your visitors to read further information on your site once they see the primary landing page for most (but not all) of your content.  ou should monitor pages per visitor to assess your internal linking techniques (both in content and navigation).  he average number of pages per visitor may be seen in your Audience Overview:

If your site and/or blog are still relatively new, a low number is OK.  ou should, however, keep a record of it, as well as the date it was made.  n an ideal world, you’d want to see this figure rise as much as possible over time.

There are two approaches to enhance this in general:

• First, include different links in your text.
• On your sidebar or after the article, add extra intriguing links

Using the same report as in point #4, you can look at the pages per visitor for each landing page (average time-on-page).  ook for any insufficient numbers and see if you can improve them with some good connections.

6. are you creating an impression on returning users?

The number of repeat visitors to your website indicates how engaging your material is.  visitors will not return if you just put together some substandard content. Ou won’t add them to your email list, which is another approach to encourage them to return.  having visitors that don’t return is poor, regardless of how you monetize the site. Ook in the bottom right corner of the main screen of Audience Overview for a graph that looks like this:

You may examine the proportion of new and returning visitors separately, as well as the exact numbers of visitors, by hovering your cursor over each segment of the pie graph. Once a month, keep track of the ratio and the absolute number of returning and new visitors. Oth sorts of visitors should see an increase in whole numbers.  The exact percentage isn’t essential, but returning visitors should account for a significant portion of your overall traffic (at least 20 percent ). Returning visitors are more inclined to purchase from you since they already know who you are and like you. Hey, you’re the most valuable visitors you’ve had.

7.  don’t frighten away visitors with a high bounce rate.

It’s debatable if bounce rate influences search ranks directly.  after all, a high bounce rate on specific sites may be beneficial. T might indicate that a person arrived on your website, discovered what they were looking for, and then departed. T is, however, our most significant indicator of pogo-sticking. Ogo sticking is when a user keeps jumping back and forth between search results because they can’t locate what they’re searching for:

Google aims to please its customers. Therefore, it doesn’t want them to feel irritated when they can’t find an answer. Our rank will drop if too many visitors to your website hit the back button and then pick another result.  hen, a person, arrives on your website but does not engage with it; this is known as a “bounce.” They may either shut it or return to it using the back button. Losing the page isn’t always negative, but returning to it is. E, look at the bounce rate since we can’t quantify this precise action—closing the page—because we can’t measure it.  because the bounce rate is essential on a page-by-page basis, you should look at it that way. Tart by going back to the left menu’s “Behavior > Overview” option:

Then, in the bottom right corner, click the link to access the complete report:

This report will show you all of your site’s trafficked pages as well as their bounce rates:

Remember that the bounce rate isn’t very accurate until you have a few hundred visitors to a page. Before making any conclusions, be sure you have a large enough sample size.  The issue will determine what constitutes a “good” bounce rate. F you’re attempting to deliver a simple response, such as “how many grams are in a pound,” you’ll have a high bounce rate since visitors will see the answer and go. F the query or subject is more open-ended, such as “how to minimize your bounce rate,” effective content should have a bounce rate of less than 50% in general. F you want to discover how to lower your bounce rate, check out this article, which has 13 suggestions.

8.  improve page load time: Bounce rate and page load time are inextricably linked.

The bounce rate is primarily determined by two factors: the quality of the material and its accessibility. Visitors will leave before they get a chance to view your website if it takes too long to load. Slow-loading web page is one of the most common causes of a high bounce rate, which leads to worse Google results. Our web page should load in under two seconds, but much less is preferable. F all of those blog entries load in less than 2 seconds, the remainder should follow suit. F you have cause to suspect a post is loading slowly, you may always check it (like a high bounce rate). Arning: If you’ve never done it before, optimizing a page’s load speed is difficult.  There’s a lot of technical jargon to learn, and it’ll take a long time to do so. F it becomes too much for you, try hiring a professional to assist you.

9.  eep track of crawl mistakes and fix them: fix indexing issues.

To understand what your pages are about and what you should rank for, Google (or any other search engine) has to crawl them. Imply said that it makes no difference in how excellent your content is or how many backlinks you have if Google can’t see your website. Og into your Webmaster Tools (now Search Console) dashboard to check for crawl issues.

Go to “Crawl > Crawl Errors” on the left-hand menu, which will bring up a report:

Most websites have a few crawl problems, and others have hundreds of them. Fixing these issues may improve your overall search visibility significantly.  You’ll probably see other tabs across the top as well. Google organizes the faults into categories to make them simpler to see and correct.  The following is a comprehensive guide on resolving the most frequent crawl issues. Rawl faults should be monitored regularly since problems may arise at any time, and sites that were previously accessible may become unavailable. Hose pages may be de-indexed if you don’t detect them in time.

10.  analyze traffic by device: SEO in 2015 isn’t picky.

Mobile traffic accounts for a significant share of most Internet users. T accounts for around half of all retail internet traffic.  google understands the value of mobile optimization. F your site isn’t responsive or mobile-friendly, your viewers will find it difficult to read your material, which will leave them dissatisfied.  google’s “Mobilegeddon” update was launched on April 21, 2015.  t wasn’t as significant as expected, but sites that were not mobile-friendly suffered a hit:

Consider this a warning shot. Google will almost certainly continue to emphasize the importance of mobile-friendly content, implying that the effects will only worsen.

You may use Google’s checker to see whether your pages are mobile-friendly:

If you’re having trouble, see Google’s mobile-friendly website guidance. Mobile-friendly content is vital for various reasons, including SEO.  f your readers can’t read your material efficiently, you’ll have a more challenging time pushing them through your conversion funnel.

Go to “Audience > Mobile > Overview” in Google Analytics to gain a broad picture of your mobile performance:

Examine the other data we’ve discussed (bounce rate, time on page) for each device type. Hile mobile data are often lower than desktop, the gap should not be significant. F this is the case, you should consider making your site more mobile-friendly.

11.  the number of pages crawled each day and spent downloading: search engines are invited to participate.

If a site is popular with Google, its bots will visit it often.  Does hat distinguish Google as a website?  t’s the result of several factors, including solid user metrics (bounce rate, time on page, etc. ), high page performance (optimized page size), and a lack of crawl problems. Ou wants your site to be crawled as often as possible. Hat way, Google will notice when you modify or publish new content right away. N most cases, a new Quick Sprout post gets indexed in minutes.

Navigate to “Crawl > Crawl Stats” in Webmaster Tools. Ou’ll see graphs for the number of pages crawled every day and the time spent downloading them:

You want your daily page crawling statistics to be as high as feasible while your time spent downloading is as low as possible.  You should review this report every few weeks or once a month for any unusual deviations. F the time spent downloading websites suddenly increases, you most certainly have a loading speed issue that must be addressed. Similarly, if the number of pages crawled each day drops, you may have some new crawl issues that negatively impact your site.

12.  ndex status: keep an eye on the health of your website.

Close Webmaster Tools for the time being. T’s time to look at your site’s index status, which is a tally of all the pages that have been indexed. You may think, having all of your pages indexed is beneficial since only indexed pages appear in search results.

Click on “Index status” under the “Google Index” category, then on the “Advanced” tab:

You’ll be able to view the number of pages that have been indexed.  You’ll also be able to view all of the major problems that resulted in your pages being de-indexed. Ou’ll be able to discover why your indexed pages began to decline at any moment.

13.  void losing your audience due to 404 pageviews.

Some website owners go to great lengths to acquire connections and traffic, only redirecting them to non-existent sites. I don’t believe I need to explain how wasteful this is. Ou’s not getting the most out of your visitors or backlinks. Hen you reach a specific size, 404 errors are unavoidable.  most of the time, other websites merely connect to the incorrect location. F you’re having trouble with this, consider investing on a bespoke 404 page. Hen you visit Quick Sprout and receive a 404 page, you’ll see something like this:

So that I don’t lose the visitor right away, there are two links to popular portions of the site at the bottom.  You have a few alternatives when it comes to locating broken connections.

• Option 1: The quickest and most inconvenient technique.

This isn’t the most efficient way, but it offers you a brief picture of the problem’s scope.  navigate to the Behavior Overview tab in Google Analytics:

Then, in the bottom right, go to the complete report:

Sort the pages now by bounce rate or time spent on-page.  however, click again to arrange it from worst to best.

When someone visits a page that doesn’t exist, the bounce rate is almost 100% or zero seconds spent on the page. F you have a 404 error URL, you can also check the number of people that visited that page. In neither case, you’ll know how significant the issue is—but not what’s causing it. S a result, one of the other two ways is preferable.

• Option 2: Make use of the tools provided by the webmaster (Search Console).

Return to your Webmasters Tools and choose “Crawl > Crawl Errors.” This time, we’re searching for “Not found” pages specifically:

A pop-up window containing error information will show when you click on one of these URLs. Under the “linked from” tab, you can check which sites connect to it.

After you’ve corrected the link on those sites, you may mark the issue as solved.

• Option 3: Use Ahrefs’ broken link checker.

Search for your site in Ahrefs to see whether anybody has linked to your pages inappropriately. Then, choose “Broken Backlinks” from the “Inbound Links” dropdown menu.

This will provide a list of sites linked to a page on your site inappropriately.  You may email someone from the site and politely request that the link be fixed. If you don’t hear from them, you may use a 301 redirect to the proper URL.

14.  oal completions (conversions): see whether you’re getting the most out of your visitors.

Traffic from search engines is fantastic, but you want traffic that converts.  You can determine how much you can afford to spend on content and link development once you know how well your search traffic alters.  n Google Analytics, a goal is a particular action or occurrence that you can monitor. User accessing a specific page that is only accessible after completing a purchase, for example, might be a goal (like a thank-you or receipt page).

Go to the “Goals > Overview” option at the bottom of the left menu to make one:

Then, for your aim, choose a template. I’ll usually be anything like making a payment or subscribing to an email newsletter:

Then choose a goal type, which is generally a destination (a specific URL they visit). The last step is to provide the URL for that destination and a value for that event.  For instance, if you know that each email subscriber is worth $20 to you, you may calculate the value of your search traffic.

You may return to the “Goals > Overview” page after some time has passed, but this time you’ll see a graph of your goal completions:

Then, at the bottom left, pick the “Source/Medium” option to check how effectively your search traffic converts. His statistic is helpful if you need to pitch your work to your supervisor to maintain your job or receive a higher budget. Demonstrate how much money you’re earning them. Ou can also check whether any specific pages are converting well by returning to the Behavior tab and selecting the site content option, followed by landing pages:

Conclusion

It’s hard to tell what’s working and what isn’t if you don’t measure data. F you don’t know how successful your SEO effort is, you risk wasting time and money on projects that don’t pay off.  It t’s possible that you’ll lose your job or your company due to this. Metrics aren’t glamorous, but they’re necessary.  You can’t just leave it to chance. Determine which metrics are most relevant and vital for your website’s SEO (it won’t be all 14), and then determine how and when you’ll measure them. Maintain a monitoring plan and take deliberate steps to enhance each measure over time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most important SEO metrics to track?

A: The most important metrics to track are the ones that indicate a user’s interest in your website and its content. His includes click on links, bounce rate, time spent reading pages, conversion rates of different types of traffic on your site, etc.

What are SEO performance metrics?

A: Many different metrics are used to measure websites performance, including the number of impressions (how often your site is visited), clicks (how often people visit a specific page), and rank in search engine results.

What is the best measure of the effectiveness of an SEO campaign?

A: The best way to measure the effectiveness of an SEO campaign is by comparing it with other forms of marketing. F you have a website that ranks well, but your competitors don’t, then your efforts are likely working as they should. Conversely, suppose all sites rank relatively similarly in the search engine rankings, and none appear to be higher than another. In that case, there could be many factors at work here, such as poor link building or outdated content on each site.

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