SEO is a complex and ever-changing field. It can be difficult to keep track of all the different metrics that are important for your website’s ranking. Which metrics tell an important story about your SEO strategy and which should be left alone? These five metrics are essential for understanding how well your website is performing and what changes you may need to make to improve your ranking.
Traffic Value
As we learn to move away from bounce rate and other vanity metrics, traffic value becomes increasingly more important. This metric tells you how much each visitor is worth to your website by explaining the value of your clicks if they were part of a PPC campaign.
Unfortunately, far too many people waste time with generalized ‘traffic’ metrics that don’t give them an accurate representation of their website’s success. This is dangerous because it can lead to a false sense of security, or worse, to make decisions that could hurt your website’s ranking.
Instead, focus on traffic value as it will give you a much better indication of your website’s SEO health. You learn the value of your traffic, and this is important considering that millions of visitors are worthless if they aren’t converting.
Referring Domains
Secondly, focus on referring domains. This metric tells you how many other websites are linking to yours and is a strong indication of your website’s popularity and authority. Rather than just telling you how many backlinks you have, you can explore the quality of your links. Thankfully, it’s getting easier to track referring domains with tools like BuzzSumo and Moz.
Organic Traffic
All traffic has potential, but organic traffic is the lifeblood of any website since it’s completely free. You can increase your organic traffic by optimizing your website for search engines, improving the quality of your content, and building backlinks. You can also track your organic traffic using Google Analytics.
If you only look at traffic, you could be missing out on a lot of valuable data. For example, what if 90% of your clicks are coming from PPC but your organic traffic is growing at a much faster rate? In that case, you might want to focus on SEO since it has more potential.
Keyword Rankings
Additionally, you should also track your keyword rankings. This will give you an idea of how well your website is performing for certain keywords. You can use a tool like Google Search Console to track your keyword rankings.
Where do you rank for your most important keywords? If you’re not ranking in the top ten, you need to improve your SEO. Track your keyword rankings over time to see if you’re making progress. If you jump from position 32 to position 11, this is great news.
Search Visibility
Last but not least, you need to track your search visibility. This metric will show you how often your website appears in Google search results. You can use a tool like Google Search Console to track your search visibility.
If you have high search visibility, this means that your website is appearing in Google’s search results more often. This is a good sign that your SEO is working and that you’re getting more traffic to your website.
Conclusion
This year, make sure you’re tracking the right SEO metrics. If you’re working with award-winning SEO in Dover, they will know exactly what metrics to track to help you achieve your goals!
