If you are running a website and especially if this website is used to sell something then you need to know how to measure SEO performance. That is especially important for future planning and keeping track of sales. If you have an SEO expert then they will know all this. But even if you have one it can be good to know these things. After all, this is your website. You need to be on top of that project. You might not need to be on top of every strategy of your SEO campaign but basic knowledge is a must. Our experienced team members from AZ Citation Services give you some guidelines.
15 Most important metrics you need to know to measure SEO performance
There are so many things you need to know in order to measure the SEO performance of your website but here is a list of the 15 most important metrics. You should track them often. Some even daily.
- New referring domains (track your overall backlinks)
- Domain rating (and authority)
- On-page optimization scores
- Text readability metrics
- Impressions
- CTR (click-through-rate)
- Keyword rankings
- Visibility (organic)
- Traffic (also organic)
- Organic conversations
- Pages indexed (numbers)
- Page speed
- Pages per visit
- Crawl errors
- Bounce rate
Those are the most important ones, and luckily you have the tools to check them out regularly.
Tools to help you measure SEO performance
We recommend using Google Analytics for metrics like search traffic, bounce rate, and such. It can also be good for pages to visit. So this tool will come in quite handy. On the other hand, Google Search Console can be good for crawl errors, CTR and pages indexed. There are websites that can help you to stay on top of keyword rankings and domains. Some of them can be used to stay on top of everything, some to correct mistakes and some can be good to educate yourself on all those topics which are very important since there is always something new happening in the SEO world of campaigns. Yoast and Clearscope can be great for on-page optimization and text readability. Try them out.
Keyword rankings
This is an obvious and yet crucial metric. You need to track it often. You need to know one thing about keywords – keyword rankings constantly fluctuate. But if you notice a sudden and big drop in rankings that can be a sign of trouble. There are plenty of SERP trackers where you can do this. Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, and STAT are on the top of the list but they are not the only ones.
New referring domains
If you are wondering what is the most important Google racing factor – its backlinks. Backlinks from high-quality domains will be able to boost your domain authority. Links from domains that have never linked to you tend to be more potent than additional links from websites that have already linked to you in the past. That is all how Google values domains. The point here is to make sure to track your overall backlinks and referring domains as well. That is the key.
Domain Authority / Domain Rating
The score of domain authority/domain rating is calculated based on a number of factors. The number of backlinks and quality of referring domains for example. The score ranges from 0 to 100. One thing you need to know is that domain authority is not an official Google ranking factor but it’s still a very important metric measure for your SEO performance. Page Authority is also another metric that should be tracked regularly.
Page speed
This is so easily explained why page speed is so crucial to track. Take you for example. If you want to buy something or to look for some information and you go to the website and it takes forever to load would you wait? Or would you just take your business elsewhere? Most people don’t like to wait. The optimization here can be an important factor here as well. You need to make sure that your website is also optimized for smartphones because nowadays we are all replacing laptops with our phones for everyday use.
Why is it so important to measure SEO performance regularly?
Too keep track and see if you are having any issues. Also to improve. Metrics will give you a good insight and from there you can learn more about your focus group or clients and adapt yourself to their needs. This is especially important if you are using your website to sell something. Now let’s get back to what if this is getting a bit too much for you.
Who can help you
It’s perfectly ok if you can handle every aspect of business especially if it’s getting bigger – you don’t need to. There are a lot of things you need to take care of and if this is becoming a bit too much – then hire an SEO expert. You can hire one to help you learn more about this or you can hire an in-house SEO expert to handle this part of the business for you. That can be a good solution. If you don’t know how to hire an SEO expert we left you a pretty useful article where you can read all about it and then you will be ready for interviews.
Few tools
We showed you a few tools that are a way to measure SEO performance. We made sure to show you the ones that are easiest to use. There are many more that are a bit more complicated but who needs that? SEO is the most important part of this business and you need to find a way how to stay on top of it. We hope that we helped you a bit and now it’s up to you!
