Key performance indicators for SEO are essential for a solid company that expands consistently.
Ten SEOs will give you ten different responses if you ask them to name their top SEO Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The explanation is that KPIs are situational and unique to each type of business.
The fact that KPIs aren’t always indicators that demonstrate where you are winning is an intriguing aspect of KPIs. They could also be indicators of areas that require improvement.
As a leading SEO agency in Melbourne, we have prepared this post to help you discover what SEO KPIs are, why it’s important to track them, and the benefits of tracking them in evaluating website performance data.
Let’s get started!
What Are SEO KPIs?
SEO KPIs are metrics for particular SEO strategy goals. They enable marketers and agencies to establish benchmarks, monitor particular SEO targets, and gauge the success of their marketing campaigns.
In other words, SEO KPIs assist marketing and SEO agencies in tracking the success of their SEO strategies and give them adequate information to maximise their efforts.
Why Are SEO KPIs Important?
Below are three main reasons why tracking SEO KPIs is important:
They Provide an Overview of Search Performance
For instance, algorithm changes, seasonality, and technical issues significantly impact search traffic. Observing traffic changes could help determine the causes and prepare more effective and precise plans.
They Allow You to Discover New Possibilities for Development
Depending on your SEO analytics, you would obtain important information, including site, content, or off/on-page audit.
Perform an on-page SEO audit, for instance, to identify the most relevant keywords; an off-page audit, to establish which backlinks could generate the most referral traffic; or a content audit, to find out which content pieces are most effective and what the audience wants to read more about.
It Serves as a Baseline for Comparison
Your SEO objectives and goals should ultimately be to improve, develop, and expand. But how will you be able to tell if you are progressing at all? By tracking KPIs!
KPIs can be used as benchmarks to assess the success of your SEO efforts. Additionally, SEO KPIs can be used as comparisons and sources of direction.
To compare the progress of different KPIs at any point, whether you’re manually recording KPIs or using an SEO reporting tool, you’ll need to have a list of them on hand.
Read on to learn more about the advantages of tracking KPIs for your SEO strategy.
Important KPIs and Their Benefits to Your SEO Efforts
Organic Traffic
We start with organic traffic.
To further understand it, consider the site visitors that arrive at any page on your website via an unpaid source, such as search engine results (which is most of the time). This is website traffic that is created organically.
Given that more visitors are exploring the website, there is a greater likelihood of receiving qualifying leads with a larger volume of organic traffic. In the long run, it is more sustainable (as opposed to paid traffic) and increases brand loyalty. It is also more cost-effective.
The performance of particular keywords and your attempts to reach your target audiences are both shown by organic traffic. Higher organic traffic indicates that you are providing the client’s audience with content that is relevant to their interests.
Conversions From Organic Traffic
You receive a conversion from organic traffic when a website visitor who found your website through an organic search performs the desired action.
As an SEO agency, we use this information to determine the ROI and conversion rates for particular keywords. You may discover more about the visitors and what they are looking for, allocate your budget appropriately, and boost conversion rates further by determining which keywords produce the best results.
In summary, writing content to increase organic traffic is good, but driving organic conversions from that traffic and those search enquiries is even better. Conversions are not a ranking factor, but improving your ranking on search engine results pages will help you achieve more of them.
Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings, or the position of your page on the search results page for a particular keyword search, are another important SEO KPI.
A KPI called keyword rankings keeps track of, evaluates, and emphasises how well your SEO campaigns send searchers to the website. This KPI is a reliable indicator that provides insightful information about the development of your current ranks or your capacity to rank for new keywords. It is a general indicator of your content marketing effectiveness and overall search engine performance.
Monitoring this KPI will give you access to detailed statistics on your keyword performance and linked sites in Google search results. The more visitors you can expect, your SERP ranking will be higher. This is one of the most crucial marketing metrics to track because even a small improvement in keyword ranking can greatly impact your revenue.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value (CLV) determines how much money you can anticipate making from a single customer throughout your relationship with them.
This KPI is crucial since it illustrates the long-term worth of every visitor you turn into a client. It also aids in choosing how and where to distribute your SEO budget.
In contrast to many SEO KPIs, CLV is a unifying indicator because other teams and departments also use it to guide their choices.
You may go one step further and use CLV metrics to categorise your clientele into tiers. Making judgements about resource allocation and optimisation will be easier, thanks to this.
User Engagement
User engagement metrics include bounce rate, average time on page, session duration, and pages per session.
Any of these measures may be significant SEO KPIs for your business, depending on the nature of your industry.
However, each must be examined and evaluated as prospective KPIs in light of your company’s objectives.
New and Lost Backlinks
Backlinks that have been gained and lost reveal which websites have recently linked to yours and which links you may have lost in the interim.
A new backlink is created whenever another website links to yours. Measuring new backlinks is essential for any inbound marketing plan and SEO strategy. Remember that your website will rank higher on Google or other search engines if you have more high-quality backlinks.
On the other hand, lost backlinks provide information on links that have been deleted or withdrawn from another website. Since many lost backlinks might have a detrimental effect on the functionality of the page that those links were pointing to, measuring lost backlinks is also crucial for your SEO strategy. Keep an eye on this metric because it can also mean that a black-hat SEO campaign is being run against your website.
Average Engagement Time
Users become more engaged the more time they spend on your website. And the likelihood that someone may convert increases with their level of engagement.
Therefore, you must monitor your site’s average engagement time and average engagement time per session. In addition, if you notice low durations, think about ways to improve these two metrics.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
The cost of gaining one converted customer is quantified by the cost per acquisition (CPA) metric. The expenses associated with SEO might range from team salaries, agency fees, SEO tools, content creation, and link building.
CPA is a crucial KPI for your SEO initiatives because comparing it to CLV might reveal any potential inefficiencies in converting new clients.
A high CPA may signify that you’re spending money on content that doesn’t reach the right user base or targeting the wrong keywords.
You can calculate your CPA using the following formula:
Total Cost of SEO (agency costs, content, SEO tools, etc.) / Conversions = CPA
It’s important to keep in mind that SEO initiatives and campaigns can take time to produce any discernible results. Tracking and analysing CPA over time will be much more informative than focusing on a single measure, as it is with any SEO KPI.
Page Load Speed
Technical SEO aims to ensure the site complies with the technical requirements set forth by the major search engines. Technical SEO analysis also helps to improve organic rankings.
The speed at which a page loads is one of these metrics.
Page load speed is a KPI that tells you how quickly your server responds to requests and how long it takes for the page to render.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
The volume of clicks on search engine results is measured by the click-through (CTR) metric. An organic click-through rate is primarily impacted by the following:
- Title tag;
- Description;
- Ranking position;
- URL.
CTR tracking is primarily used to measure user engagement and better understand your audience. This metric reveals the topics that interest your audience, the sites that receive the most clicks, and even their issues.
You may find out if your ad copy (for sponsored search results) grabs readers’ attention sufficiently to be clicked on by monitoring this KPI. The copy, the image, or the offer may need to be changed occasionally.
Return on Investment (ROI)
The amount of money you receive in return for your investment is referred to as return on investment (ROI).
Every SEO strategy’s ultimate objective is to produce a positive ROI. It demonstrates the value of the effort and money invested in content, site maintenance, outreach programmes, and all of your other SEO-related activities.
SEO ROI, however, is notoriously challenging to measure. Whether the money is invested internally or through an agency, investing in SEO is simple, but it may take months or even years to see results.
Start Tracking Your SEO KPIs with TopRankings Today!
Whatever KPIs you choose to track for your SEO efforts, it’s critical to start doing immediately, so get in touch with a reliable SEO agency like TopRankings. The earlier you begin gathering and evaluating data, the more knowledgeable you will be about your benchmarks and current performance.
Setting and tracking SEO KPIs will enable you to continuously assess the success of your initiatives and make more informed decisions.
By establishing KPIs for SEO, you can also show relevant stakeholders how far along you are, encouraging cooperation and alignment with your overall objectives.
Reach out today and get your obligation-free chemistry call. Our SEO experts are more than happy to assist and ensure that your website is working as it should be.
