One of the biggest mistakes that a business can make is to set up its SEO and then sit back and do nothing else. By nothing else, we mean that they do not monitor their results, nor do they use the available data to evaluate, amend, and improve their SEO so that their results become even better. It is akin to a soccer team playing a match and their coach not watching it or not even checking the score at the end of the game. When choosing an SEO agency, it’s important to review the SEO case studies of former clients to understand how they continuously track and enhance performance based on data.
According to an experienced SEO agency, seoperthexperts.com.au, the scenario of not checking data and metrics tends to happen when a business decides to do its own SEO rather than use an SEO agency or consultant. On their own, they might get it set up, but not knowing how to analyze its performance means that they do not know how to improve the results it is achieving. Alternatively, an SEO agency will know exactly what metrics to monitor and how to use the data they provide. By reviewing an agency’s SEO case study, you can see clear examples of how they have improved client results over time through continuous monitoring and adjustments.
A starting point for business owners concerning the performance of their SEO is to know what metrics are the most important and what they mean. So, with that in mind, here are five of the key metrics that can be used to evaluate your SEO. The data can be sourced from the dashboards within your cPanel, Google Analytics, and from other SEO tools which provide a multitude of useful data related to your SEO campaign.
Traffic By Source: One of the starting points for assessing your SEO is knowing where the traffic that visits your website is coming from, and for the traffic coming from search engines, which keywords are generating the click-throughs. By knowing the keywords that are generating the most traffic it allows you to plough more resources into consolidating the rankings for them even further.
Keyword Ranking Performance: It should not be surprising that keyword ranking is one of the top metrics to monitor. Knowing if a keyword is heading in an upward or downward trajectory on Google will highlight where SEO is working to boost a keyword’s ranking and what is not. It may also indicate that focusing on long-tail keywords may provide greater opportunities than main keywords which are proving extremely difficult to rank for.
Time On Page: Simple logic suggests that the more time someone spends on a website and the pages within it, the better their experience has been. Google uses that same logic when adjusting rankings based on this metric and so the job you have is to ensure that your web design and your content provides every visitor with an experience that induces them to stay.
Conversion Rate Per Keyword: We love the SEO analogy that keywords are like seeds and just as in the garden where some seeds thrive and others die, keywords can have the same fate. Each keyword you try to optimise for will create a chain of events that, hopefully, lead to action being taken such as a sale or the person becoming a qualified lead. This data tells you which keywords to nurture and which to ignore.
Mobile Analytics: Maybe not an individual metric but across the range of data you have, knowing how you are performing on mobile search is critical to a successful SEO campaign. Mobile devices account for over 60% of the searches done on Google so if your mobile metrics are poor, you must take corrective action immediately or risk losing out on a lot of traffic.