The Most Important SEO Metrics That You Shouldn’t Neglect
SEO matters. You don’t need me to inform you that – although I certainly have told you all about it!
Acknowledging the importance of SEO is one thing and learning what to do with your SEO metrics is another. With plenty of metrics to choose from, how do you know where to put your focus? Which metrics can help you the most?
That’s where I come in. It’s a difficult to ask any small business owner to learn all there is to know about SEO. It’s a complicated subject. But here are the SEO metrics that you should be tracking, even if you don’t have time for any other thing.
Organic Traffic
The traffic your website gets is the lifeblood for your online business. If your site doesn’t draw new visitors, it’s an apparent sign that your SEO isn’t doing what it should.
Organic traffic is all the traffic you pay nothing for – this means that, it’s the traffic you get because someone searched for a keyword on Google and then clicked on your link. Traffic coming through paid ads is not organic.
You need to preview organic traffic using Google Analytics because it’s a good tool for your SEO in general. If you get little or no organic traffic, it means your site needs optimisation. If your organic traffic is high, your SEO is doing great for you.
Your Target Keywords
What are the keywords you want people to use to locate you? Knowing their search volume and variations on them can help you direct them on your website.
A tool such as Keywords Everywhere is a good way to start. You should look at the monthly search volume and scrutinise the search results finding for opportunities to rank for them. You may be able to spot opportunities that other websites have missed.
The Keywords You Already Rank For
How are people discovering your website currently? Whether you intend to target them or not, there are keywords that get your website first-page rank on Google. Knowing what they are is important if you want to enhance your SEO.
The best way to do that is by using Google Search Console. I suggest using current rankings to leverage the opportunities at the same time you wonder how you can use the traffic you have to get the traffic you wish for.
Backlinks
Backlinks are still a major factor in SEO. A site that has a greater number of high-quality backlinks is always going to rank above on Google than a site with few or low-quality backlinks.
There are two aspects to tracking the backlinks. The first is tracking your own, which you can do using Google Search Console. Knowing what you have can help you identify the areas where you need improvement.
The other aspect is tracking your competitors’ backlinks. There are a lot of valuable backlinks out there and I’m willing to get you haven’t capitalised on all of them. Using a backlink checking tool, such as the SEMRush Backlink Checker or Moz can help you peep into your competitors’ backlinks.
If you notice an authority backlink that you’d like for your own site, you can work on getting it. Some of the best ways include writing a guest blog post or simply reaching the site owner directly to ask if they’d be willing to link to your site.
Social Media Traffic
Google says social media posts (and other metrics, including Likes, Follows and Shares) don’t effect your Google rank directly.
“Directly” is a crucial word because there is evidence that social media activity does impact a website’s rank in some way. There’s a point that when you look for a big company, their social accounts show up at the top of Google’s SERP.
The encouraging thing is that you can track your social traffic using Google Analytics, which is free. Pay more attention to the posts and activity that’s landing people back to your website. You can use that information to do a better job of targeting your social media posts – and to create the type of content that people will react to on social media.
Voice Search Rankings
Is your website being found by people through voice search?
If you’re not pondering that question, you should be. Voice search is taking over the world of search. As of 2020, 49% of all searches are voice searches. Smartphones are the primary source of most voice searches, but virtual assistants Alexa, Cortana and Siri aren’t far behind.
You can see your Alexa search rank on Alexa.com. Apple doesn’t reveal search rankings for Siri, but you should make sure that your business is listed on Apple Maps if you wish to rank on Siri, and Google Maps is a must for Google voice search.
One final note about voice search. Unlike regular Google rankings, voice search provides a single answer to a single question. That means your best option is to identify questions that the people in your target audience are likely to ask and then optimise your content for them.
Page Speed
Nobody appreciate a slow website and research shows that if your site consumes more than a few seconds to load, people will navigate away. That makes tracking your page speed a no-brainer.
This is an easy metric to track using Page Speed Insights by Google. If your page is slow, you’ll need to improve it immediately.
Organic Conversions
I saved the best for lost. Your organic conversion rate is a measurement of how well your organic search rank is converting casual searchers to subscribers or (best of all) paying customers.
Here again, you can use Google Analytics – which is free – to track your conversions. You might get a ton of organic traffic, but if it’s not helping you build your list, capture leads, and increase sales, then it’s not doing you any good.
Most of these metrics are free to track. You don’t need fancy tools, nor do you need to be an SEO expert. With a bit of research and perseverance, you can use your metrics to help you do a better job of optimising your site – and growing your business.