With all the acronyms, tech blah and conflicting advice out there, we understand how measuring your SEO success can feel like navigating an alien landscape with your eyes closed. To help simplify things, we’ve collected the top five SEO KPIs that you must track to determine whether your campaign doing it’s thing. Google Analytics is an excellent tool for evaluating these KPIs, so we’ll also guide you on how to get the most from it.
1. Keyword Rankings
For years, page ranking has been the best way to instantly check on your SEO success – this isn’t going to change any time soon. Tracking your keyword rankings is crucial for measuring your whole SEO campaign. It shows whether your keyword strategy, on-page, and onsite optimisation efforts are having an effect.
Achieving high rankings for relevant search terms puts your business in a strong position to capture a significant portion of search traffic, most of which is intent-driven. It goes without saying then that poor keyword rankings decrease the likelihood of attracting substantial search traffic. Remember, many factors influence SEO, so treat positive keyword rankings as a sign that you’re heading in the right direction.
While Google Analytics doesn’t provide keyword rankings, it does show which keywords have driven organic traffic to your site. Acquisition reports in Google Analytics are incredibly valuable so if you’re keen to dig deeper we recommend running regular reports.
It’s also worth familiarising yourself with Google Search Console, which is helpful for checking up on any underlying site errors that could be affecting your SEO work – among many other things.
2. Organic Traffic Growth
For most businesses, the main goal of SEO is to steadily drive traffic to their website through searches. A good SEO strategy should lead to an increase in organic traffic. The best way to measure your organic traffic is by comparing different time periods. Here are three common comparisons:
- Week to Week: Ideal for short-term analysis.
- Month to Month: Useful for monitoring SEO strategies like new blog series or on-page updates, given the ever-changing Google algorithm.
- Year to Year: Essential for evaluating long-term SEO impact, especially for businesses affected by seasonal search volume variations.
By default, Google Analytics shows week-to-week data, but you can adjust the time frame in a Google organic search report
3. Page Load Speed
Have you ever visited a website that took more than six seconds to load? Chances are you clicked away before the fourth second! According to Google, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32% to 90% if a website takes longer than three seconds to load.
While page speed impacts SEO slightly less than other factors, faster load times can still benefit your SEO work. Page speed becomes more important when Google decides which of two similar businesses should rank higher, or if a site is notably slow.
There are a number of ways in which you can check your sites page speed. The quickest method is using Googles Page Speed Insights tool. It’s by Google so you’d imagine it’s pretty reliable! GTMetrix also offers free speed testing and basic analysis, which we highly recommend. You can check them out at GTMetrix.
4. Backlinks
A strong white hat link building strategy can make or break an SEO campaign. Building trustworthy link credibility is essential for ranking higher in search results.
Here are four key questions to determine if your backlinks are effective:
- How many total links have we built?
- How many links come from authoritative and relevant sites?
- Are a significant number of links from content sharing or directories?
- Is there diversity in my linking domains?
We believe that it’s more important to You need a substantial number of links, and they must be high-quality, authoritative, and relevant to your business. Diversity in your linking domains is also crucial. Having 1000 backlinks from 500 websites is much more impactful than 1000 backlinks from just 10 sites.
Google Analytics doesn’t show every backlink, but it can help identify which websites are driving traffic to your site. This data is found under Acquisition, All Traffic, and then Referrals. For more detailed backlink insights, tools like Moz Pro’s Open Site Explorer are invaluable.
5. Conversions and Leads
Last but certainly not least are conversions and leads. This KPI is arguably the most important as it reflects the core goal of any marketing strategy. If you’ve seen an increase in leads, inquiries, and conversions since implementing your SEO strategy, it’s a strong indication that your SEO efforts are paying off.
Google Analytics can track your conversions once you’ve set up Goals. To do this, go to Conversions, select Goals, and you’ll be prompted to create some goals. Click Set Up Goals and then the red New Goals tab. Enter the goals you want to measure, such as newsletter sign-ups, customer inquiries, or sales. After specifying your goal, enter a Goal Description, select a Type, and fill in the Goal Details like Destination URL and Value. Once set up, Google Analytics will start tracking your data. To view this data, simply go to Conversions on the Google Analytics homepage.
Conclusion
In today’s digital-focused and competitive world, it’s crucial to not only use SEO but to maximize its effectiveness. Consistently gauge, measure, track, and make decisions based on key metrics like the five SEO KPIs we’ve discussed.
At Start Digital, we’ve been managing SEO for numerous Perth businesses, big and small, for years and consider ourselves SEO veterans. If you need help with white-hat SEO, give us a call at 1300 170 908 or drop us a line. We’re here to help your business succeed!