SEO monitoring and ongoing SEO measurements are the key to any successful search engine optimisation campaign.
As you would probably know, SEO is not a ‘set and forget’ digital marketing strategy. So long as your competitors are trying to get above you in the search engine results pages, there is a constant need for monitoring and measurements.
This guide outlines the five key metrics that you need to look at when it comes to measuring the efficacy of your SEO campaign. A reputable Australian SEO Agency like Safari Digital will provide you with updates on these metrics at the end of each month of your SEO campaign. We strongly advise that you work with an SEO partner that favours metrics over theoretical improvements.
If you’re looking to work with a digital agency for your SEO, you can use the contact form below to find out whether your business and website is the right fit for search engine optimisation. If you’re here to learn about the key metrics that the best SEO companies use to measure progress, then read on!
1. Keyword Rankings
It goes without saying that keyword rankings are one of the key measuring tools of any successful SEO campaign. Before you begin SEO work, it’s important to plan out all of the keywords that you want your website to appear for on Google. At Safari Digital, we focus on keywords that have a transactional intent for our clients. That means that we want to look at keywords that are likely to drive the business KPIs whether that is more sales, more leads, more sales, or more enquiries – we create a target keyword list based on KPIs.
We use SERPROBOT to track individual keyword rankings for our clients. If you are interested in tracking the progress of your individual keywords, you can receive daily keyword ranking updates for around 2-cents per keyword.
Over the course of your SEO campaign, you should see an increase in the number of target keywords that you have ranking on page one of Google. It’s important to have short, medium, and long term goals for keyword rankings. For a new website, it may not be realistic to expect to rank for highly competitive keywords within the first six months of an SEO campaign. So it is important to have keywords that range in difficulty so that you can tick off short and long term goals along the way.
2. Website Conversions
Measuring overall site traffic is one thing, measuring the conversion rate of this traffic is another animal. When we look at conversion, we look at a few key metrics including:
- Clicks per conversion
- Cost per conversion
- Average page views per conversion
- Customer journey per conversion
- Which site pages are driving conversion
- Which CTA (call to action) is eliciting the highest conversion rate
Conversion Rate Optimalisation (CRO) is one service that can be highly beneficial for a website that is receiving a high number of visits, but a low number of conversion. CRO is the process of increasing the number of website visitors that take the desired action, that can be:
- Sending an enquiry
- Making a phone call
- Making a purchase
- Adding items to cart
- Sending an email
The definition of a ‘conversion’ is specific to the business type. Each business will have a different idea of what a conversion will look like. The CRO process is an essential step in SEO monitoring and involves understanding how users are navigating a website and taking actions to ensure that they reach the desired end outcome of a conversion – whatever that conversion may look like.
3. Monitoring Total Organic Traffic
It goes without saying that one of the most important SEO metrics that you need to monitor is the overall website traffic that comes to your site. The organic traffic numbers that you see in Google Search Console provide an accurate picture of just how many users are reaching your site through organic search.
The total website traffic that you see in Google Analytics may provide some valuable information on the overall performance of your website. However, the data that you see in Google Search Console will provide a more accurate picture of your organic performance.
Google search console will show you some key SEO monitoring metrics that you should be looking at including:
- Total organic traffic
- Organic traffic by keyword
- Organic traffic to pages
Monitoring your organic search traffic also allows you to see which days users visit your site the most. Using this data, you can decide when would be the most appropriate time to make any website changes.
4. Monitor Bounce Rate
Attracting visitors to your website is one thing, keeping them on your website is another thing. Effective SEO monitoring should always include looking at the percentage of visitors who leave the website after a single page view – also known as bouncing form the website.
The percentage of visitors who leave your website after visiting a single page will tell you how often a user is looking at a single page before leaving.
Bounce rate is an effective way to look at the on-site user experience. Generally speaking, websites that do not provide a positive user experience or do not meet user expectations will have a high bounce rate. If the percentage of visitors leaving your website after a single page view is high (high bounce rate), then it could be time to look at why this is happening.
Here are a few things that you can do to reduce the bounce rate on your website:
- Improve page load time
- Create clear, compelling call to actions
- Internal linking between pages
- Simplify the user journey
- Provide a positive user experience
Going forward, Google will be using bounce rate metrics as one of the key ‘Page Experience’ metrics when ranking websites. Google can deduce how well the page is matching user expectations by looking at a bounce rate.
5. Monitor Your Domain Rating
Domain rating (for Ahrefs) or Domain Authority (for MOZ) is one way that you can monitor the domain level improvements of a website over time. Both of these tools are designed to mimic the now-defunct Google Page Rank insight.
In essence, your domain rating or domain authority is an arbitrary ranking provided by two of the leading SEO tools on the market. Both of these rating systems aim to provide an idea of how easy or difficult it would be for a website to rank for competitive keywords based on the strength of their domain.
At Safari Digital, we look at Domain Rating as we believe that this metric provides a more accurate picture of domain ranking potential than Domain Authority.
Pro Tip: Don’t get too caught up with either of these metrics. They are both fairly simple metrics that can be useful to track the progression of a domain, however, they should never be used as an SEO monitoring tool for website success. Be very wary of an SEO Agency that spends too much time focussing on any of these metrics. The most important metrics to look at for SEO monitoring and progression over time are:
- Organic traffic
- Conversions
These are the metrics that will drive real business improvements. You cannot sell your domain rating or domain authority, but you can sell your goods or services with enough organic traffic.
Work with an SEO Expert for Effective SEO Monitoring
We get it. The list of key SEO metrics above can seem a bit overwhelming. If you are not sure where to start with the on-site and off-site elements of a successful SEO campaign, it may be time to speak with an SEO professional who can guide you through the process. At Safari Digital, we work with small, medium and large business to develop SEO strategies that drive business conversions and growth – whatever that may look like for your business.
Professional SEO services can help your business to take the next step online. If you have been working on your website SEO for some time and noticed that results have stagnated, it may be time to look at how an SEO professional can help your business to take the next step.
Our SEO services include monitoring, measuring, and adjusting on-site and off-site SEO elements to improve your website visibility and drive your business goals. Each business will have a unique set of goals, which means that monitoring these changes and making the necessary updates will be different. Get in touch with an SEO expert at Safari Digital SEO Agency today to find out how SEO services can help your business grow, online in 2021 and beyond.
