5 Important Metrics to Monitor and to Improve SEO Performance

Last Updated on August 18, 2022 by Freddy G. C.

In order to prove the value of SEO, you must measure performance because only then you would know what is working and what does not work so that you can make improvements.

You must be aware of the metrics that point to performance and must-have tools to measure it, and the only way of doing it is to depend on some analytical tools like Google Analytics.

Any digital marketing agency would track everything from conversions and rankings to lost link and many more to figure out the performance level and its value.

Monitoring the performance helps to identify the key parameters that need improvement, and the exercise is critical to your SEO success.

You can use any of the plenty of analytical tools that are available to generate easy to read reports for checking the performance metrics.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the two most useful utilities to gather information about the metrics, and the tools are free.

The biggest benefit of Analytics is that you can gain tremendous insight into SEO and marketing to identify opportunities that lie ahead for optimizing the performance of the SEO campaign.

Many of the insights you gather are actionable like the ones discussed here which, when applied properly, will surely improve your SEO performance.

Organic traffic

The traffic generated from the search results page is organic traffic, which is free of cost and the essence of SEO. The keywords help to rank your site for searches in your niche.

By knowing the amount of traffic that reaches your website via the organic route, it is possible to understand how your SEO strategy is working. You can measure the traffic according to the location or by the landing page.

Traffic by landing page

Gauging traffic without geographical borders helps to track the overall organic traffic that flows to the website and is the sum of the traffic that reaches the landing pages. It helps to understand the improvement necessary.

You come to know which pages are appearing on the first page of search results and which pages are appearing further behind so that you can direct your SEO efforts accordingly to make improvements.

Traffic by location

Again, if you are using different SEO strategies for different pages, it shows which strategies are working and which are not.  If you want to target specific geographic locations, you can analyze the traffic generated from specific regions.

Conversion rate

Measuring organic traffic does not tell you the results you get from the visits. It means, the traffic flow does not indicate the conversions and to know about it, you must analyze specific metrics that point to the conversion rate.

Just like monitoring traffic, you can monitor the overall conversion rate for organic traffic. It gives the picture of the kind of appeal you have on the people who visit your website by clicking on the link in search results.

However, you would like to look deeper to understand how various segments contribute to conversions and the factors that impact it.

• Landing page wise – You can measure conversion rate by landing page because most conversions happen there. If the conversion rate of one page is higher than another, then the low performing page is not effective and needs improvement.

• Location wise – By focusing on the conversion rate according to the location, you can figure out that pattern of conversions from various geographical locations. If the response from some locations is better than others, you need to recast your strategy to make the marketing message more effective for those locations.

• By device – It is also possible to measure conversion rate by a device that clearly shows the impact of mobile device users on the conversion rate as compared to desktop users. Any weakness detected is subject to improvement.

• By browser – Similarly, you can measure the conversion rate by various browsers that users use and if you find the conversion rate is poor for traffic coming from some browsers it shows that you need to make your website suitable for those browsers too.

Bounce rate

The rate at which visitors quit your website after viewing a single page is the bounce rate. The quicker people leave the website, bad it is for engagement and the bounce rate is a percentage of visitors quitting the website almost instantly after logging.

Higher bounce rate is detrimental for SEO.  By using Analytics, you can measure the bounce rate of the landing pages to know which pages are performing poorly and can work on it for improvement.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

You can generate a Search Analytics report from the Google Search Console that shows the number of people clicking on your links on the search result page. The number expressed as a percentage is the Click Through Rate.

The CTR reflects the effectiveness of ranking because if CTR is low despite a higher rank in the search results, it could be that something is wrong with the content which needs improvement to enhance its appeal.

Low CTR means people do not like the content by looking at the brief description displayed in search results, which are preventing them from clicking on the link. Making the content more likable can increase CTR.

You can measure the CTR based on the landing page and even by the top keywords that provide further insight into the possible areas of improvement.

Top exit pages

The last pages that people visit before leaving the website are very important for you because you need to track it closely as these pages are the trouble makers.

It is fair to assume that people exit the pages when they lose interest in it, and you must try to figure out what is lacking on the page that causes disruption.

Once you know the top exit pages, you can analyze what makes visitors lose interest and work upon it to ensure that you can regain lost ground.

Going ahead, you can use Analytics to figure out the traffic that flows from various search engines like Google, Bing, etc.