To rank higher in search engine results, brands have to create consistent, high-quality SEO content that keeps customers coming back, and that means measuring their progress and adjusting their strategy if necessary.
The stakes with SEO might be different — there’s no gold medal — but you’re competing against other businesses for leads, so they’re still very high.
Here are seven metrics you can use to track your SEO strategy’s progress.
- Keyword Rankings
When you designed your SEO strategy, you did keyword research and chose the best keywords to focus on for your target audience. Now, measure how your site ranks by doing a Google search of those keywords. The search engine results will determine how your site ranks among your competitors.
- Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to the number of visitors you drive to your website after you show up in their online search. Google Analytics will segment the sources of your organic traffic — what search engines people use to find you, their geographic location, and the time of the day they searched. This information can show you where your unique and returning visitors are coming from, so you can target those sources for more traffic later.
- Time Spent on Page
Getting users to your site is only the first step — you also want them to stick around a while. Create educational content that they want to consume. When users search for keywords in a search engine and your site pops up, do they find the information they want? If your content strategy attracts people and maintains them for more time, your strategy is effective.
- CTR
If your site appears on the first page of search results, how many people click through to your site? The percentage of users who see your site pop up on their results and click to your site is your click-through rate (CTR). If your site provides users with the information they are seeking out, your CTR will increase consistently.
SEO metrics are interconnected; the higher your keyword ranking is, the more potential your CTR has to increase.
- Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is similar in that it measures how many people visit your site and don’t interact with any of your content. They come; they go. They don’t click on any of your links. A high bounce rate may mean you need to make your site more user-friendly, and you need to be better at correlating your content to the keywords you want it to rank for.
- Returning Visitors
If your SEO is effective, all someone has to do is search a term and find your content one time. If they click through and actually check out your content and find that it feeds a particular need of theirs, they’ll be more inclined to return again and again.
- Domain Authority
How often does your domain appear in search results for users compared to your competitors? Domain authority predicts how often your site will pop up for the keywords that users search — the better your keyword ranking, the better your domain authority.
Source: Benchmark One