Measuring SEO Success: Key Metrics and Tools for Tracking Your SEO Performance
Measuring the success of any marketing activity is a must. But many businesses find measuring their marketing impact difficult for two reasons;
Matching the right marketing effort with a desired outcome.
Knowing what metrics to track to measure results, e.g. impressions, followers, clicks, conversions, etc.
Covering every type of marketing would be too much to cover in one post, so for now, we'll look at SEO. What's it good for, what metrics to use when monitoring SEO performance, and what tools will aid your efforts.
SEO: What is it Good for?
SEO is a powerful marketing strategy, but only when matched with an appropriate objective. We've found businesses get the most out of it when trying to achieve one or more of the following.
Organic Traffic Generation
The primary purpose of SEO is to get into the number 1 position in Google for chosen keywords and phrases. In turn, this drives more organic traffic to your site. With this in mind, it's no surprise that the primary objective of any SEO campaign should be increased organic traffic generation. In fact, if you're not looking for more organic traffic, SEO isn't the strategy for you.
Long-Term Sustainable Results
As you've likely been told before, SEO is a long-term strategy. High rankings that drive noticeable traffic increases take time. Once you achieve those rankings, however, you'll have a marketing channel that delivers consistent visitor numbers for an extended period. This is the direct opposite of paid marketing, such as PPC or social ads, which drive traffic instantly, but once your spend is gone, so's your traffic.
So before starting an SEO campaign, ensure you can afford a few months spend with 0 results while things develop.
Local Promotion
If your business targets nearby customers, local SEO can significantly enhance your visibility to them. This can be incredibly powerful if you want to either drive footfall to a physical location or if you travel to your customers. Businesses that typically do well from local SEO are high street retailers, hairdressers, garages, estate agents, plumbers, builders, and electricians.
But even businesses that service the whole of the UK can benefit from local listings. Many customers will favour nearby suppliers even if they don't need to visit them. This is why accountants, solicitors, IFAs, and IT firms should all consider SEO's impact on their local rankings as well as their national ones.
(Long-Term) Cost-Effectiveness
I'd stress the long-term part here. As already discussed, SEO is not a short-term strategy, so if you need results right now, SEO is not for you. But suppose you want a stable, continuous source of traffic. In that case, there is arguably no strategy that delivers better results at a lower ROI. This is why SEO should be reserved for the core services that you'll always offer.
Increased Conversions
This one comes with a couple of caveats. Firstly, when I say 'conversions', I mean any meaningful action you want a visitor to take. Typically, this would be filling out a form or making a purchase. Secondly, whilst SEO can increase conversion rates by driving more relevant traffic to your site, it can only take this so far. If your site isn't currently converting your traffic, SEO isn't going to change this dramatically.
That being said, if you have a site that's converting to a level you're happy with, SEO is an excellent strategy, as you'll be increasing the number of people entering the top of your sales funnel consistently.
What Else Will SEO Do for You?
The above section details in priority order the marketing objectives you might have which SEO would be well suited to support. They're not the only benefits of SEO, however. In the below section, I've listed some other benefits you'll see from SEO. On their own, however, the below are not worth undertaking an SEO campaign for. But that doesn't mean that as a business, you shouldn't be aware of them as an additional value add.
Enhanced Brand Visibility
There are various stats on how many touchpoints customers have with a business before converting (8 currently seems to be the magic number), but everyone agrees it's more than 1! By gaining higher rankings in Google, you increase your brand visibility. So even if the customer doesn't click during that search, they might still have seen your listing and become more aware of your business.
This is certainly not a reason to undertake SEO. Still, it does increase the value of a high ranking, especially if it's a 1st position ranking.
Improved User Experience
Undertaking SEO will often see you optimising your site for faster load speeds, enhancing mobile responsiveness, and creating valuable content. All of these factors improve user experience, which in turn increases user engagement, reduces bounce rates, and fosters a positive perception of your brand. In the best cases scenarios, all of this can lead to increased conversions.
If these factors are the purpose of your marketing activity, however, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) would be a more suitable approach.
Credibility and Trust Building
Similar to enhanced brand visibility, high rankings help establish your business as an authoritative and trustworthy source within your industry. This credibility fosters trust among your target audience, increasing customer loyalty and repeat business.
Many local SEO campaigns will also aim to gain more 5-star reviews against your Google My Business listing. And what customer isn't going to trust you just a little bit more if you've got lots of positive reviews?
Key SEO Metrics
Now we know what SEO is good for, we need to agree on a set of metrics to track performance towards these goals.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic represents the number of visitors that land on your website through unpaid search results. Monitoring changes in organic traffic over time can provide valuable insights into the overall performance and effectiveness of your SEO strategies.
It's vital to track organic traffic rather than just rankings for two reasons.
Do your high ranking keywords drive more traffic?
A good SEO campaign will deliver rankings for far more keywords than you track. Tracking organic traffic helps account for these unknown, untracked 'halo' terms.
As with all metrics from your site, be sure to look at both Month-on-Month (MoM) and Year-on-Year (YoY) figures to help account for seasonality.
Keyword Rankings
Tracking your chosen keywords and their rankings helps show a consistent improvement. As SEO is a long-term strategy, it will take months before organic traffic increases. During that time, monitoring your rankings and their movement toward the first page shows improvements are being made.
Monitoring rankings below page one also gives you an idea of what to focus on next. You'll get about the same traffic if a keyword is on page 3 or 33 (none!). But moving from page 2 to page 1 will deliver a significant change in organic traffic. So rather than focusing on a term on page 10, focus on the ones at the top of page 2 and see if you can nudge them onto the bottom of page 1.
Bounce Rate and Dwell Time
Monitoring the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave your site without undertaking a meaningful action) and dwell time (the duration visitors spend on your site) can provide insights into user engagement and the relevance of your content. Lower bounce rates and longer dwell times often correlate with more engaging and valuable content for users.
They can also feed into the next one…
Conversion Rate
Evaluating the conversion rate of your site, such as form submissions, purchases, and other desired actions, helps assess the effectiveness of your SEO activity and its ability to drive valuable traffic. In GA4 you can segment traffic by source to see the direct impact of organic visitors on conversions. In theory, a well run SEO campaign will see conversion rates remain roughly the same or slightly increase.
It can occasionally decline if your keyword targeting focuses more on informational type terms rather than the converting ones. For example, someone searching for 'red size 10 men's running shoes' knows what they want and is clearly looking to buy. This person is very close to converting. If they searched for 'best ways to lose weight', this is an informational term. They're still deciding what the solution to their problem is, so they are still deciding whether to buy. People using informational searches are less likely to buy, which will reduce your conversion rate (they are usually cheaper to get onto the site, so they can be more profitable, but that's a topic for a different post!)
Essential SEO Tracking Tools
Once you know what metrics you are tracking and why, you need to understand how to track them. Here's a selection of the best solutions ranging from free to paid software.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is a powerful tool for tracking and analysing website traffic, user behaviour, and conversions. It offers valuable insights into your audience demographics, user engagement, and the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.
It's a free tool that most website developers can easily plug into. Data will usually start coming through in 24 hours, and with the new GA4 system, there's a considerable amount of data you can gather on visitor actions.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) provides essential data on your site's search performance, including click-through rates, keyword rankings, and indexation status. It also offers valuable suggestions for improving your site's visibility and resolving potential issues that may affect your search rankings.
As with GA, it's another free tool from Google with no downside to having it activated for your site. Even better, once GA is installed, validating your GSC account takes minutes and just a couple of clicks.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool that provides in-depth insights into keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitor analysis. It helps you identify new keyword opportunities, monitor your backlink profile, and understand your competitors' strategies to refine your SEO approach.
It's the first paid tool on our list and is worth considering for anyone wanting to take their SEO efforts to the next level.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO toolkit that offers features such as keyword research, site audit, rank tracking, and competitor analysis. It enables you to monitor keyword rankings, identify technical SEO issues, and uncover opportunities to enhance your website's visibility and performance in search results.
Another paid tool, this one is my favourite. It could be stronger on the backlink side of things than Ahrefs. Still, it makes up for this with its other SEO tools, as well as its social media and paid ad reports.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro provides a suite of SEO tools similar to the other two. Keyword research, link building, and site audits are all possible through its system. It offers valuable insights into domain authority, page authority, and spam score, helping you assess the overall health and authority of your website and make informed decisions to improve your search rankings.
At the time of writing, Moz was the cheapest of the paid solutions, but some of the tools from SEMRush and Ahrefs can sometimes deliver deeper insights.
Conclusion
Measuring the success of your SEO efforts is critical for achieving sustainable growth and maintaining a competitive edge in the digital landscape. By focusing on key SEO metrics and leveraging powerful tracking tools, you can gain valuable insights into your website's performance, identify areas for improvement, and implement effective strategies to enhance your online visibility, increase organic traffic, and drive meaningful business results.
