Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be one of the most profitable and effective ways to generate leads and sales online. It increases the visibility and perceived authority of your business and its products or services, showing your website to more potential customers and in better light.
SEO is a long-term investment with multiple processes involved. These processes focus on optimising your website to rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when potential customers search for keywords related to your business.
Because there are so many tasks involved in SEO a lot of companies engage an SEO agency, like Big Wall Consultancy, to work for them. It’s advised that you track the efficacy of your SEO processes regularly with your SEO agency to ensure you’re making good progress and growing your website’s authority.
In this article, we’ll share some of the most important metrics your business should look at to measure your SEO performance.
Important Factors to Consider When Measuring SEO Performance
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the number of visitors who click on your webpage after entering a search query into a search engine like Google.
This unpaid website traffic indicates how many users who see your webpage on the SERP find it relevant enough to their query to click on it to find out more.
Google Analytics is one free analytics tool that you can use to track the organic traffic your website is generating. From your organic traffic data, you can infer the amount of traffic, where your traffic is coming from and is it reaching your intended audience.
Google Analytics also breaks down the data for organic traffic to your website according to landing pages, country, device, browser, and more. This allows you to analyse your consumer behaviour and preferences.
From there, your SEO agency can analyse the results and determine the next steps to optimise your website for existing and new users, as well as track the progress of their ongoing SEO strategies.
Another tool provided by Google is their Search Console. The information there is specifically tailored to SEO and comes directly from the search engine so the data available to you is invaluable. Please make sure you and/or your agency monitor this regularly.
Keyword Rankings
You want users to find your website when they search for certain keywords relevant to your business. Users turn to Google in search for helpful information, so anything you have on your site that provides value and is relevant to their search can help you gain some visibility and traction.
SEO agencies use several keyword research and analysis tools to determine what popular search terms are used for a search query related to your business. Following which, incorporate the best possible keywords into your website and content to help you rank higher on the SERP. The best places to put in these specific keywords include meta titles, descriptions, titles, and even in your article introduction. These best practises help your article to get crawled for relevancy and stand a chance to rank higher for them.
For example, a Singaporean telecommunications company could ideally like to rank near high on SERP for keywords like “broadband service in Singapore”, “SIM card Singapore” or “best home wifi services” amongst its potential customers.
The keyword research is just the beginning. Your SEO agency may look for answers to specific questions related to your products, or create guides for users to aid them in their selection and shopping process.
To make sure that you stand out against competitors and other websites, monitor the keyword ranking for these keywords using SEO tools.
It’s important to get an update on this periodically from your SEO Agency to see if your SEO efforts are paying off.
If the rankings are stagnant or declining, you might want to think about optimising the content on your website further. Look into refreshing and improving your content regularly, using more relevant and engaging trending keywords, and providing valuable content that users may be more interested in.
Looking at competitor websites that rank high on the SERP as well to compare differences and infer what keywords they are strong in and might be working for them.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links on other websites that lead to your web pages.
Backlinks from relevant and high-authority websites lend credibility to your website and tell search engines that your website is an authority for users in this niche.
More backlinks from other trustworthy websites in particular can help to improve SEO performance. It’s important to check on the number of backlinks leading to your website, as it directly affects your website’s visibility on the SERP.
You should note that not all backlinks are the same. SEO value comes from dofollow links, which are the best links that gives you what they call “link juice”, helping Google associate you better as a website, which in turns helps your site rank higher in the SERP.
Nofollow links, however, are links with little to no SEO value. These are often in places like social media, affiliate products pages or blog comments, to prevent spamming to “hack” SERP rankings.
Keep in mind that dofollow links from low-quality, spam or blacklisted websites can harm your ranking too. The effect on your rank is determined by the quality of the site linking to you, so keep that in mind as you work with your SEO agency to get more backlinks.
There are several ways of increasing the number of backlinks for improved SEO performance, such as creating and promoting engaging content on your website or serving as a guest author on other websites of similar industry and thought leadership.
Conversion Rate
Even if your organic traffic rate skyrockets, it’s important that your conversion rate grows with it as well.
After all, clicks don’t mean much if they aren’t profitable by turning into enquiries and sales.
Organic traffic rates can indicate the growth in brand awareness and visibility on search engines, while conversion rates can show how your SEO strategy performs in terms of generating leads and sales in the longer run.
High organic traffic volume with adnominally high bounce rates (definition in the following paragraph) and low conversion rates could indicate that the content on your website may not be relevant or meeting consumer needs. This may mean that there is a need to review the reasons for it, work on a better click-through rate, or even introduce an attractive giveaway to get them to share their details to attain it.
Analysing which landing pages have the highest conversion rates can also help you to infer what type of content customers like and are drawn to. Replicating this can help push potential customers into engaging with your services further or eventually buying your products.
This data and analysis provided by your digital marketing agency can help you evaluate your business’ growth and highlight content that works to increase your online sales.
Bounce Rate
Last but not least, the bounce rate of your website is another key metric you should look at when evaluating SEO performance.
The bounce rate is the percentage of users who exit your website after accessing only one of your company’s webpage.
As the general user attention spans get shorter over time, users spend less time on a site assessing before deciding whether to explore more or exit.
Ideally, your bounce rate should be as low as possible, as a lower bounce rate indicates that users find your website engaging and relevant to whatever they’re looking for, as they find themselves browsing other pages to read more.
Conversely, a higher bounce rate could signify that your content is boring or there is a mismatch between the user’s intention and what your website information provides. Relook at improving the content on those pages.
You can compare the bounce rate across your pages to see which ones are doing better with customers. Then, implement those working strategies on the pages that have higher bounce rates.
Tools To Measure SEO Performance
There are several tools that you can use to measure and analyse the above metrics, such as Google Analytics, which provides a detailed overview of your website’s digital performance over time.
It’s important to ensure that you track these metrics periodically in your SEO journey. Keyword data can change rapidly, and seasonal topics that could be relevant at the beginning of the year may not be as important toward the end-of-year holidays.
Google also updates its search engine algorithm frequently, which can affect your website’s visibility on the SERP. Hence, on top of the monthly review you do with your SEO Agency, you should have a website audit and review every 6-12 months to make sure your strategy stays effective and updated.
Final Thoughts
The metrics mentioned above are some of the many data points that you can look at in order to measure the efficacy of your SEO strategy with your SEO agency.
As you track and analyse all the data, it may be helpful to obtain a 3rd person perspective, such as an SEO expert or consultant. Big Wall Consultancy offers SEO services to help you optimize your company’s website and scale up your SEO performance over time.