Semalt Expert About SEO KPIs: How To Define And What Are The Main Ones
If you recognize that SEO is a very important strategy for your business, you need to keep an eye on SEO KPIs.
They can help you understand if your strategy is generating the desired results or if you need to change course to get better numbers. And this is extremely important since no one wants to invest and not get the desired return, right?
In the case of this article, we will help you understand exactly what KPIs are for and especially the most important ones that you need to take into account. So read the content until the end, and let's learn together how to define your SEO KPIs!
What do SEO KPIs mean?
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. In other words, it's a way to measure whether certain actions are effective in your strategy.
But it's worth remembering here: KPIs are not metrics. Metrics are raw information about your business and are not necessarily related to your goal as a company. So don't confuse these two concepts to avoid any confusion.
The KPI is what is created through the metrics. That is to say, an indicator in the form of a percentage or a number related to the performance of your company. Here are two simple examples to understand these two concepts:
- The number of leads on the website is a measure.
- The cost of acquiring this lead (the amount invested divided by the number of leads reached) is a KPI.
We hope these two examples have helped you understand these two concepts.
Now, when it comes to SEO, KPIs play a key role in validating that investment. They are used to show how well the actions are paying off for the company in the form of more traffic to the site, a decrease in page bounce rate, and even finances.
How to define your company's SEO KPIs?
The definition of your company's KPIs will vary greatly depending on your business and the SEO goals you have.
Anyone who works in a digital marketing agency, for example, has to defend the investment the client has made in SEO. Based on the analysis, the results are presented and if necessary, new strategies must be adopted along the way.
If you are an entrepreneur and want to know more about the subject or are responsible for this area in the company, you must also show results according to predetermined objectives. And they can be multiple: lead acquisition, product launch, sales increase, a specific promotion, etc.
What are the best SEO KPIs?
While it works differently for each segment and goal, there are some basic SEO KPIs to analyze, which we've broken down into three categories and which you can find by logging into your Google Analytics account. So what are these KPIs?
Traffic KPIs
The very first KPIs we will talk about are the traffic KPIs.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is an acquisition channel that shows site users coming directly from Google search results. In other words, the user searched for a term on the internet and found your site as a result of that search.
Having this information at hand is important because it shows if your content is optimized and if the audience has no trouble finding it. It is, therefore, very important data to take into account when planning the proper functioning of your website.
Pages that generated traffic
This KPI shows if your work of inserting internal links in the content has been effective or not. It consists in adding links in the content that lead to other pages (other blog text, online store, etc.).
To do this, you need to work with the right links that are really attractive, to the point of taking the reader to another page instead of abandoning him/her without taking the next action.
Organic print
SEO tools such as the Dedicated SEO Dashboard or Google search console also extract very relevant data to measure SEO results.
There you can get the result of organic impressions, which is the number of times a user saw a link to your website when they performed an internet search. This way, you can understand the reach of your content for a specific term or keyword.
CTR Rate
Also recorded by powerful SEO tools, the CTR rate is related to the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. For example, the user searched for a term on Google, found several results for that search, and chose to click on the link on your page.
According to Google itself, the ideal percentage of a CTR will depend a lot on the segment. However, a result below 1% is bad and can show that there is a flaw in your SEO strategy or in the content itself. Keep a close eye on it!
Bounce rate
Google's tools also provide information on the number of users who accessed your site and then left it without doing anything.
It is important to keep an eye on the bounce rate (which varies greatly depending on the context) because for Google's algorithm, it is very important that a user spends more time with the desired actions on the visited platform. This allows it to know the relevance of the proposed content and the importance for the visitor of what you have proposed.
If your bounce rate is extremely high, it means that your site has not properly addressed the user's needs and that the content needs to be improved. And as a result, you lose positions in Google rankings...
Lead KPIs
Now we will talk about lead KPIs.
Lead conversions
In this KPI, the percentage of visitors who were attracted by the content or CTA until they became a lead is analyzed.
The lead is the user who accessed your content and took the next action, which was to give you information about it. This can be an email, a contact phone number, downloading an e-book, etc. From that point on, they gave you the freedom to connect with them and later on, be able to make a purchase offer.
So the higher this percentage, the better your job! Indeed, this is a step that proves if you are as close as possible to your potential customers.
Analyze leads from the blog and the landing page
It's important to analyze the leads coming from both the blog and the landing page to understand if these channels were effective.
And while this percentage may vary for each segment, it's important to work day to day to ensure that the results are always the best possible.
Keywords KPIs
We can't say it enough: keywords are the primary factors in setting up a good SEO strategy. It is, therefore, important to monitor their evolution.
Evolution of keywords
In this KPI, we analyze the performance of the most used keywords in a strategy. These keywords are generally linked to your brand identity and have the power to bring highly qualified traffic to your company.
It is interesting to evaluate the growth of this KPI precisely to identify which of them should continue to be used frequently and how they can help generate opportunities. And to find the most useful keywords for your business, what better than the Dedicated SEO Dashboard, a better all-in-one SEO tool?
Top page KPIs
We understand by top page KPIs, pages with a better ranking in search engines. And as the name suggests, this KPI brings the result of the pages of your website with the best position on Google.
This result can be an important tool to know which content generates the most traffic or sales on your site. With this information, it is possible to design strategies to strengthen the keywords used in the texts or produce more content related to the same theme.
Working with SEO KPIs is taking care of your business performance!
Looking at each of the above KPIs helps you understand if your SEO efforts are paying off. Evaluate which of them are critical to your business and rely on the power of good tools like the DSD to measure and correct whatever is needed.
And if you think your business needs SEO improvements, contact Semalt to let us know your concerns and the goals you want to achieve on your website! We are a performance-based digital marketing agency, and we have a team of qualified experts to help you achieve top positions on Google. Visit our website and contact us! You will also find comments from our many clients who are satisfied with the work done by our experts on their site.
Conclusion
As we have seen through the content of this article, KPIs are very important in the implementation of a good SEO strategy. They allow you to know exactly which actions to take and especially which ones to avoid in order to reach the expected result as quickly as possible.
In addition, it is important to remember that to choose or determine the right actions to take, the use of a very good SEO tool is required. And to help you accomplish this task freely and confidently, the Dedicated SEO Dashboard is the best all-in-one SEO tool we offer.
For much more complex SEO tasks that you are not able to perform yourself, you can refer to our experts and professionals available 24 / 7 to fulfill your every wish.