How to Measure the SEO Performance of Your Website
Here is everything you need to know about relevant SEO KPIs.
How can you tell if your SEO strategy is efficient or not? With so many nuances in search engine optimization, it becomes difficult to relate the success or failure of your website with the SEO efforts. There are many other factors besides SEO that also affect a lot of essential metrics. The best way to measure the SEO performance of your website is through key performance indicators. Let's find out the most important SEO KPIs and how they affect your website.
What software to use to measure the SEO performance of your website?
By far, the best software on the market is Google Analytics. While there are other platforms, Google Analytics is built explicitly for this type of research. It provides complete visibility to all SEO aspects and substantially simplifies the tracking process.
Additionally, there are other platforms like Serpstat or Ahrefs. If you find that using multiple platforms helps, we advise you to do so.
Use Google Analytics to efficiently track relevant SEO metrics.
Another piece of advice is to learn how to use Google Chrome inspector to inspect your website. This free tool will significantly help you when doing any website audit.
Find out your website's search ranking
Let's face it, at the end of the day, you want to see your website at the top of the search ranking list. That is a clear sign that your SEO efforts have paid off. Whether you are measuring the traffic, leads, or conversions, none of that can achieve satisfying results without ranking your website high.
In order to track the website's ranking, it is crucial to have important keywords in mind. The idea is to see how your website and specific pages rank for exact, relevant keywords. That will tell you everything you need to know!
A good advice is to use social media to boost organic traffic. A huge benefit of social media profiles is that they always attract interested followers. All you need to do is to connect them with your website.
Measure organic traffic
Having a high organic traffic rate means your website naturally attracts relevant visitors. You could not wish for a better thing to happen. Organic traffic is probably one of the most important SEO elements.
The easiest way to measure organic traffic influx is to use Google Analytics. Navigate to the Audience section, and select Overview. From there, you can click on Add Segment and add the Organic Traffic metric. You will get a detailed report showing your website's organic traffic activity.
Organic traffic is one of the essential SEO KPIs.
Also, measure branded traffic
Branded traffic comes from keywords related to your brand's name. Navigate to the Google Search Console, and create a Performance report. Here is where you need to add all brand-related keywords. Do not forget to add misspelled keywords as well because sometimes people make mistakes when typing.
Search engine visibility
If you want to know how well your domain ranks for specified keywords, you need to track search engine visibility. This metric is so important because it can show early results. So, to measure the SEO performance, collect as much data as possible from this metric.
Furthermore, you should also use the Google search console to learn everything about search engine visibility. Simply pull the Performance report, and review the Total Clicks and Total Impressions.
Link monitoring
Links connect all of your website's pages. They also connect your website with other relevant sources of information. They are the main element of the internet and a crucial part of On-Page and Off-Page SEO.
Because of how important they are, people think having as many backlinks as possible is good for their websites. However, that is not entirely correct. If you gain one hundred low-quality links, that will only ruin your website authority and lower the SERP ranking.
You want to target high-quality backlinks that come from relevant websites. The best way to track the quality score of your backlinks is with the help of various SEO tools. You want to look for the link authority index. The higher it is, the better. You can also check your domain name and see how strong your link profile is. That will directly depend on the number of high-quality backlinks that link to your website.
Measure average session duration
Whenever someone visits your website, they spend some time checking out your content. They can stay on one page or check out multiple pages depending on their interests. From the moment they land on your website, they start a session that ends when they leave.
It is imperative to measure the average session duration. You want to know how much time visitors spend on your website and what they are doing. An excellent way to accomplish longer sessions is to structure your website and give it some depth. Add your main navigation, breadcrumbs, and all sorts of different functionalities.
Average session duration will tell you how interested people are in your website.
However, keep in mind that building a complex website with a high number of pages does not mean it will efficiently keep the visitors longer. Think about link depth and how relevant those pages are. You want to provide quality content. Without it, no one would have a reason to stay there longer.
Be mindful of the bounce rate
A bounce happens when a visitor lands on your website and closes it immediately. That can occur due to multiple reasons:
- Slow page-loading speed
- A low number of relevant pages
- Content that delivers too fast
- Misleading titles
- Irrelevant traffic
- Technical issues with the website
- Wrong redirect from a different website
- Single-page websites
- Poor UX experience
- Low-quality content
- No mobile optimization
All of these reasons will push away the users from your website. A high bounce rate means you are not delivering quality. This metric will seriously affect your SEO ranking. If you notice a high bounce rate, try to figure out why it happens and how to solve the issue.
Hire professional help to make your SEO deliver
As an example, let's say you are running a moving business. You want to optimize your website for keywords relevant to the moving industry, but you are not sure whether your strategy is good or bad. In this case, hiring SEO services for a moving company would be a good approach. You need a team that gets results and saves time and money. If you are unsure how to track relevant SEO metrics accurately, always consult a professional.
Do a regular SEO audit to achieve the best results
As the final piece of advice, it is necessary to regularly do SEO audits. When you measure the SEO performance and get results, use them to fix SEO issues on your website. That is the best way to stay up to date with the latest SEO trends and ensure your website always ranks high!