SEO is one of the digital marketing strategies that one can use to amass traffic, leads, and sales. And just like the many other marketing strategies, when you choose SEO, you are hoping it will work. The only way to know that is by tracking and measuring performance. This helps you know whether the strategy is working for you or if you need to make some adjustments.
Time Spent On Page
One of the metrics you can use to measure SEO performance is the time visitors spend on a page. When visitors type something on Google and land on your page, they may either spend ten seconds or a long time depending on what they are looking for. If people spend a significant amount of time on your site, it means your resources are valuable, you have interesting content, or someone is interested in what you are selling. More time spent on your page is a good indicator that you have met the visitor’s expectations. In addition to that, you can measure the time visitors spend on each page. This will help you understand which parts of your site visitors find more appealing.
Organic Traffic
Another important metric to use is organic traffic. When potential customers type a word, question, or phrase into a search engine, they get a results page. The number of people that click on your websites from the search engine results is what is referred to as organic traffic. Organic traffic is maybe one of the reasons you may have considered Vazoola’s SEO package. You know that getting customers to click on your website is the first step to attracting them. Increased organic traffic is good for your business because you are sure that the visitor is looking for something specific. And if you can provide it, you will have gained a new customer. It is also an effective metric to measure the general progress of the SEO strategy.
SERP Visibility
For every question you ask, the search engine will produce a search engine results page (SERP). SERP features include ‘also asked’ questions, image packs, reviews, knowledge panels, videos, and Google map entries. Search engine visibility estimates the number of people who see your page in the search results, which at times gets affected by the SERP features. But generally, this metric will give you an idea of how your SEO is doing.
Keyword Ranking
Each word that is searched in a search engine and produces a results page is referred to as a keyword. For you to achieve a good keyword ranking, you have to ensure that your content has been optimized to rank on top of other results using the same keyword. For instance, search for any keywords relevant to your brand and see where you rank, and also take note of your position among your competitors. For you to understand better the keywords you should be using, or how competitive they are, you can use a keyword planning tool. For any keyword you are using, you should aim to appear on the first result page and be at the top or at least close to the top. Most people will click on the top results, meaning your position can have a huge effect on the organic traffic.
Bounce Rate
Your goal is to convert visitors to customers. With that in mind, you should aim for a low bounce rate. Bounce rate measures the number of visitors that leave your website without engaging in anything beyond the initial click. Tracking your bounce rate will give you a few insights, like whether you have appealing content, the ease of use of your website, and how effective your lead magnets are.
Page Speed
Page speed is often overlooked as a metric to track the performance of SEO, yet it is very effective. Today’s world is very fast-paced, meaning a visitor will abandon your page if the site takes too long to load. The faster a page is to load, the lower the bounce rate will be. Pages that score 50% or less in page speed are likely to lose visitors.
The significance of measuring SEO performance is to know whether that strategy is working in your favor. You and your marketing team should use the metrics mentioned above to get an idea of how your SEO strategy is doing.
By Andrej Kovacevic
Updated on 4th May 2022