The 9 Most Important SEO KPIs
When developing an SEO strategy, it is important to focus on the KPIs you need to track as they play an essential part in the overall strategy. Unfortunately, it is one of the most overlooked areas of defining an SEO strategy. You will not know your works are generating a positive result without setting up the KPIs.
To help you create an effective SEO strategy, i will share more details about the KPIs you need to track.
1) Coverage Issues
Coverage issues are also known as crawl errors. You can learn about all the coverage issues that you deal with from the Google Search Console account.
Some of the issues we will face are 4xx errors, 5xx server errors, blocked by robots.txt, etc. Based on the outcome, you should look for effective ways to keep coverage errors minimum as much as possible to ensure all the web pages are indexed.
2) Number of Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the most crucial ranking factors of your website. Hence, you need to monitor backlinks regularly. However, it would be best if you focused on the relevance of backlinks instead of the number.
Your website’s backlinks should be referred by high Domain Authority (DA) and trustable websites to create a positive impact on your keywords ranking.
3) Organic Session
The organic session is an important SEO KPI. A session is marked by the actions taken by the visitors and then the exit from the website. The data can be obtained in Google Analytics to help you understand whether your organic rankings are getting better.
Pro tip: You can improve the organic sessions by writing a compelling, relevant page title and meta description that capture the attention of potential customers.
Source: Photo by Pixabay from Pexels
4) Bounce Rate
Bounce rate refers to the number of people (between 0% to 100%) that leave after visiting your website. Having a high bounce rate can negatively impact your SEO efforts. That’s because the Google algorithm might assume that your website is not worthy of being indexed.
Hence, it would help if you are looking for effective methods to reduce bounce rates. For example, if your page loading speed is slow, you can look for ways to reduce it.
5) The number of pages indexed and Index Status.
You can leverage on Google Search Console to discover the number of indexed pages and in indexed status. This will help you to figure out what pages are not indexed on Google. Then you can focus more on getting them indexed.
6) Keyword Ranking
Keyword rankings refer to the keywords that have been ranked on Google Search Engine. Irregular rising and falling of the keyword ranking are expected due to Google algorithm updates, but you should see growth in the ranking on a long-term basis.
Reviewing this KPI at least once per week is recommended, as any drop in the rankings could be a website issue that needs to be addressed urgently. The improvement in Keyword ranking is the first entry point for marketers to achieve other primary goals, such as more website traffic and leads generated.
7) Keyword Difficulty
You also need to understand the difficulty levels associated with the keywords you are trying to rank for Google Search Engine. The higher the score, the more difficult for the keyword to rank on page 1 of the Search Result.
Once you have a great understanding of the difficulty score, you can assess whether to invest the time and resources to rank for that keyword. However, you can look for long-tail keywords to help you secure better rankings due to low keyword difficulty.
8) Page Load Time
Your web pages should ideally load within 2 seconds. If the webpage takes more than four seconds to load, you will be creating frustration for the visitors. There is a high chance for the visitors to leave the website. This will eventually increase your bounce rates. Google is mindful of the page load times. If your page takes much time to load, Google will not think twice before dropping your rankings.
Hence, you should look for the most effective ways to reduce page load times. Some of the methods you can follow to reduce page load times include setting up a CDN, using a fast hosting solution, optimizing images, and setting up caching for the website.
9) New referring domains
You will also need to keep your eyes on the new referring domains. This is related to backlinks. You need to have relevant backlinks coming in from high-quality domains out there.
This will eventually help you to boost your overall domain authority. In addition, if your website is getting trustworthy backlinks, Google will consider your website as a trustworthy website too.
This is why you shouldn’t ignore the referring domains regularly. If you can get more relevant backlinks, you will increase your organic traffic and time.
Source: Photo by Tranmautritam from Pexels
What Are the Tools for Tracking SEO
SEO experts can make use of a wide range of tools to track the KPI. Let us take a look at what those tools are.
– Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular SEO keyword research tool out there. You will be able to run a comprehensive SEO audit on your website with the help of the tools. From the competitor analysis perspective, SEO experts can use this tool to check how their competitor got the high domain authority (DA) backlinks and try to replicate it.
– Google Search Console
Google Search Console will assist you in tracking your search engine rankings on google. This will also help you to understand what gets indexed on Google and how it happens. Based on this, you can revamp your SEO strategy to experience better indexing.
This tool is very helpful for new websites as it allows the site owners to submit their web pages for indexing in Google Search Engine.
– Moz Pro
Moz Pro is a tool that SEO specialists use for managing their campaigns. If you use this tool, you can always keep yourself up to date with the algorithm changes on Google. So whether you are trying to locate keyword recommendations or insights on your SEO efforts, you may think about using Moz Pro.
– Ubersuggest: Keyword Tracking Tool
Ubersuggest is a tool that you can use to discover the best keywords that you should be focusing on. It offers hundreds of keyword suggestions with important metrics such as competition, keyword volume, seasonal trends, and CPC. Based on these details, you can discover the right keywords for PPC and SEO campaigns.
Conclusion
Now you are aware of the KPIs that you need to focus on. Make sure that you pick the right SEO KPIs and define appropriate SEO goals. This will help you to focus and improve your rankings along with time. Concentrating your efforts on the wrong SEO KPIs will waste resourcesand not grow your sales effectively.
