5 SEO Metrics You Should Start Tracking for Long Term Growth
Reading Time: ~3 Mins | Written By: Jason Serafica
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) allows businesses to build a strong online presence, increase organic search visibility and reach their target audience. The process enables digital marketers to implement a strategy that is cost effective and valuable to the business.
SEO metrics are used to track performance and evaluate the effectiveness of the SEO strategy. Therefore, it is important to track the right metrics to ensure long term success and stay on top of insights so you can better optimize for results.
We are covering the 5 most important SEO metrics you should start tracking for long term growth!
Organic Traffic
The number of organic visitors coming to your website from the search engine results page such as Google and Bing.
Why?
Organic traffic is an important metric to track as it indicates the effectiveness of your overall SEO efforts. To increase your website’s organic traffic, your SEO strategy must consist of tactics such as on-page, off-page and technical optimizations.
As you continue to optimize for search engines, the amount of organic traffic should increase. The more you appear for organic search, the more you can drive potential customers to the products or services that you offer organically.
Keyword Rankings
The position of how your website shows for specific keywords on the search engine results page. Stronger keyword rankings result in higher organic traffic to the website.
Why?
It is important to track your keyword rankings on a monthly basis to highlight any increases and decreases. Additionally, you want to identify ranking pages and ensure that you’re optimizing based on performance. Do you need to update the title? Do you need to add an image? Is the content missing any keywords? Do you need to adjust your targeting and identify other relevant keywords?
Domain Authority
A metric that measures the overall strength of your website from 1-100. Stronger websites indicate authority and relevance in the industry and therefore will rank higher for certain keywords
Why?
It is important to track the overall growth of the website's domain authority because it can be used to compare how you perform against competitors. If you find that the website lacks authority, begin to highlight any link building opportunities as part of your overall SEO strategy.
Moreover, the more you can build your website’s domain authority, search engines will consider you as a more trustworthy source of information and thus improving your website’s organic search traffic.
Backlinks
The number of links pointing to your website from another relevant referring domain. Websites with stronger backlinks are seen as more credible in the industry.
Why?
Staying on top of your website’s backlink performance is an important metric to track, as it indicates overall popularity and relevance in the industry. The more backlinks you earn from relevant websites, the better you can rank for keywords. Additionally, high value backlinks may also bring referral traffic to your site and improve brand visibility.
User Behaviour
Tracking user behaviour on your website allows you to find out how the visitors are interacting with the pages.
Why?
Identifying metrics such as time on site and bounce rate is important as it allows you to identify specific pages to update. Optimizing for technical issues will allow you to improve engagement and further personalize the experience. Where exactly are visitors entering from? Where are users leaving? Are users interacting with the website? - clicks, pages visited, etc. These questions will assist with identifying if you’re providing relevant and valuable content to users.
Time on site
A metric that measures the amount of time the visitor spends on your website during a single session. Shorter time on site indicates opportunities to improve poor engagement and overall user experience.
Bounce rate
A metrics that measures the percentage of visitors that visited your website after only seeing a single page. High bounce rates is a sign of poor user experience - e.g. users view the home page and immediately exit.
Overall, ensuring to track user behaviour is an important metric to track for SEO. It allows you to identify potential opportunities to boost engagement, personalize the experience, and better serve valuable content to website visitors.
By tracking the following 5 SEO metrics, you can gain website insights to make data driven decisions and generate growth over time.
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