Digital marketing is vast and subjective to individual business needs. But, one of the best things about it is you can measure all parts of marketing strategies. Earlier, there were limited options available for digital marketers to track and improve SEO strategies.
But, with Google Analytics and other available tools, you can now know how your website is performing. SEO works on constant updates and new strategies. Besides, it needs to adhere to updated search engine policies that would require you to make changes to your website for better ranking.
SEO metrics allow you to measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and make changes based on the data available. In this article, we have compiled nine of the most important metrics that you need to track along with suggestions on how to improve them.
Which SEO Metrics Should You Track?
CTR, organic traffic, page per session, exit rate, average page load time, backlinks domains, core web vitals, and top keywords are some of the SEO metrics that you need to track. Whether you want to know about site traffic, leads, or engagement, SEO metrics give you a comprehensive insight into how your site’s organic search strategy is performing. Besides, it provides you with insightful data that you require to formulate new strategies. To track SEO metrics, you can use different SEO tools. These will help you track and measure anything/everything related to your website.
Important SEO Metrics to Track
1. Click-through Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate shows the percentage of users who visit your website after discovering your web pages in the search engine. For example, if 1000 searchers see your page listing in the search result, 100 people will click through your site. In addition, the organic CTR helps show your listing through URLs, titles, and meta descriptions. If the CTR of your page is low, it means your meta descriptions and meta titles are not engaging.
How to improve your CTR?
- Monitor the click-through rate under the performance tab in Google Search Console. You can view CTR by page, device, or query. Monitoring the CTR by page will provide you with detailed insights.
- Also, update your meta titles and descriptions. Make it more interesting and ensure they adhere to the required character count i.e. up to 60 for meta title and 130 to 150 for meta descriptions.
2. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the foremost traffic you get from SERP without paying for ad placements. There is no one source for organic traffic; you can expect it from multiple sources like search engines, social networking websites, and direct searchers. Focusing on organic traffic shows your website search visibility. And, with a good SEO strategy, the number of visits will go up.
Track traffic through Google Analytics:
- Log in to your Google Analytics dashboard → select add segment in the audience overview.
- Here, select the organic traffic option-click to apply.
- The tool will let you view the organic traffic as a percentage of total traffic.
3. Pages Per Session
Pages Per Session is an essential on-site user engagement metric you can use for SEO. It indicates the number of pages users visit on an average basis before leaving your site. Also, the higher the page metric, the better it is.
To see Pages Per Session:
- Log in to Google Analytics → go to the acquisition option → select all traffic and channels.
- Here, you will get to see pages per traffic for each channel.
For lower metrics, it indicates your content is not engaging enough. In addition, if this metric is low, it also indicates your website is not user-friendly.
4. Exit Rate
Exit pages are the last pages that the users browse through before leaving your site. Tracking exit pages (especially if you identify it is the same page) will help you understand whether or not the factors for exiting the site is related to poor usability, low-quality content, or other reasons.
Tracking of Exit Pages:
- You can track exit percentage for individual web pages by heading over to Behaviour → Site content → All pages option.
- To reduce the drop-off, ensure you have a proper site layout and engaging content.
- Do include internal links and call-to-action to guide visitors to relevant pages on your site. Besides, it is vital to add high-quality multimedia content like images and videos to engage users.
5. Average Page Load Time
Website speed is a vital ranking factor that has the power to make or break your rankings on SERPs. The average load time is the time a website takes to display full content on the page.
Tracking of load time:
- You can find this option under the behavior tab → site speed. Here, you will get to see the average load time for all pages.
- It also lets you check load time for individual web pages and content loading.
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6. Backlinks Domains
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking signals for Google. The number of backlinks includes all external source links that point to your website. Keep in mind that the quality of backlinks is more significant than quantity. For instance, ten links from authoritative and high-quality domains are more valuable than hundred links from low-quality domains.
Find about backlinks:
- Ahrefs is the most popular SEO tool to track referring and backlinks domains.
- With this tool, you can see the list of websites linking to your site, which pages they are linking to, and the domain ratings of websites.
7. Core Web Vitals
Google has made a shift in focus and is rewarding websites with good rankings and good user experience. Traditional performance metrics like DOMcontentloaded and load time are easier to use, but they may not provide results. Also, focusing only on some pages can render poor UX. In 2020, Google introduced the Core Web Vital metrics that are more user-centric.
Three important Core Web Vitals:
- The first input delay tells you about responsiveness and quantifies the user experience of the page.
- Cumulative layout shift tells you about the visual stability and the number of unexpected layout shifts.
- The largest contentful paint tells you about load speed.
Head to the enhancement section of the Google Search Console to see how your pages perform based on Core Web Vitals. Google Analytics will also help you access the above metrics.
8. Pages Crawled Per Day
With the fast crawl rate, Google will index your site quickly. It improves your chances of ranking higher on SERP.
To use the pages crawled per day feature:
- Log in to Google Search Console → settings → crawl stats. You can see how many pages Googlebot crawls per day. If you have many pages and only a small percentage gets crawled, it means there is some issue with crawling.
- Tracking this metric won’t increase your ranking but will help with technical SEO.
9. Top Keywords Ranked
It is important to monitor how your site’s ranking for targeted keywords. When you know the rankings, it lets you focus on further optimising the keywords and target better ones.
Tracking keywords:
- SEMrush tool can help you track keywords. The organic search position will also help you find relevant keywords for your site that ranks better.
- Besides, you can see changes of keyword ranking over time, including how your search visibility improves.
Track and Improve Through SEO Metrics,
Tracking SEO metrics should be a part of your SEO marketing strategy.
Are you tracking the SEO metrics mentioned above? With a few free tools available like Google Analytics and Search Console, you can easily track them.
Furthermore, if you want a comprehensive insight into SEO metrics, you can use paid tracking tools. SEO metrics point out issues and let you make improvisations. Also, once you are aware of what is causing site issues, rectifying them becomes easy.
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