Photo by: Darlene Alderson
You’re putting time, energy, and budget into SEO – publishing content, fine-tuning web pages, and working on backlink strategies. But how can you be sure these efforts are contributing to your business’s growth?
Companies get busy tracking keyword rankings and website traffic. While these metrics can offer a sneak peek of performance, they don’t always reveal whether your SEO is driving real business results.
To help answer that question, we spoke with Maggie Swift, co-founder of Unframed Digital, who specializes in tying SEO strategy to real business outcomes. In this article, we explore the key performance indicators that truly reflect SEO success.
We’ll also point out some of the common KPIs Maggie finds to be misleading and share practical tips on how to align your SEO strategy with your business goals.
What Are The KPIs That Matter?
1. Organic Conversions
Getting people to your website is one thing. But what matters is what they do once they’re there. Are they buying something? Filling out a form? Signing up? That’s where the real value of SEO shows up. If people are landing on your site but not taking action, it might be time to ask why.
2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
You can show up in search all day long, but if nobody’s clicking your link, that’s a red flag. CTR tells you whether your headlines and descriptions are doing their job. If it’s low, maybe your snippet just isn’t speaking to what people are looking for.
3. Search Visibility
Think of this as your SEO footprint -how often your site pops up in search results for the stuff that matters. It’s not just about one keyword. It’s about your overall presence when people are looking for what you offer.
Tools like Google Search Console can help monitor this metric over time, providing insights into your site’s performance in search rankings.
4. Conversion Rate
It’s great if you’re getting traffic, but how many of those visits turn into something? A solid conversion rate means your content and site are aligned with what your audience wants. If it’s low, you might be attracting the wrong crowd – or the right crowd, but with the wrong message.
5. SEO Return on Investment (ROI)
This one’s pretty straightforward: Are you getting more out of SEO than you’re putting in? If you’re spending time and money but not seeing revenue tied back to it, that’s a problem. ROI helps you figure out if your strategy is paying off.
6. Core Web Vitals
Introduced by Google, Core Web Vitals focus on user experience metrics. how fast your site loads, how stable it feels, and whether people can interact without hiccups. Google pays attention, and so do your visitors. If your site’s clunky or slow, people leave.
KPIs That Don’t Matter at All
Keyword Rankings
While it’s tempting to focus on keyword rankings, they don’t always align with your business success. Focus on keywords with high intent and how people think while they are searching for things online.
Organic Traffic Volume
An increase in organic traffic is positive, but it’s essential to assess the quality of that traffic. High volumes of irrelevant traffic won’t contribute to business goals. You could have 10,000 visits and zero sales – or 1,000 visits with 50 conversions. It’s not just about quantity.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate indicates the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. However, this metric can be misleading. For instance, a user might find the information they need on a single page and leave, which would still count as a bounce. Therefore, bounce rate doesn’t always accurately reflect user engagement or content effectiveness.
Number of Keywords Ranked
Tracking the sheer number of keywords your site ranks for can be deceptive. It’s more important to rank for keywords that are relevant to your business and have a high potential for conversion. Focusing on quality over quantity ensures that your SEO efforts are aligned with business objectives.
How to Know If Your SEO Strategy Is Working?
To effectively measure the success of your SEO strategy, consider the following steps:
- Align KPIs with Business Goals: Ensure that the KPIs you track are directly related to your overarching business objectives.
- Utilize the Right Tools: Leverage tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO platforms to gather and analyze relevant data.
- Regularly Review and Adjust: SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. Regularly review your KPIs and adjust your tactics based on the data.
- Focus on User Experience: Ensure that your website provides value to visitors, with relevant content and a seamless user experience.
- Monitor Competitor Performance: Keeping an eye on your competitors’ SEO strategies can provide insights into industry trends and help identify areas where you can improve or differentiate your approach.
- Assess Content Performance: Regularly evaluate how individual pieces of content are performing in terms of traffic, engagement, and conversions. This helps in identifying what resonates with your audience and informs future content creation.
Essential Tools for Tracking SEO KPIs
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Provides detailed insights into how users are interacting with your site, where your traffic is coming from, and how your conversions are performing.
- Google Search Console: A must-have for understanding how your site appears in Google Search. It shows data on search queries, indexing issues, and your site’s overall visibility.
- Ahrefs: A go-to tool for SEO professionals. It’s useful for analyzing backlinks, doing keyword research, and checking out what competitors are up to.
- SEMrush: Offers features like keyword tracking, site audits, and tools to analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies.
- Google Looker Studio: Lets you create custom dashboards by pulling in data from sources like GA4 and Search Console, making it easier to visualize and report on your performance.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in numbers like keyword rankings or sudden bumps in web traffic. But if those visitors aren’t doing anything meaningful on your site – like signing up, buying, subscribing, or reaching out – what’s the real value?
The metrics that matter are the ones tied to real business outcomes – like conversions from search, overall visibility, site speed, and click-throughs.
By focusing on these, you move beyond vanity metrics and start reaching people who need what you offer.
Are you measuring what truly reflects success? If not, it might be time to shift your focus.
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