Tracking the results of your SEO campaign is essential to determine whether your efforts are paying off.
You have to be able to tell if what you or the agency you hired is doing is actually working.
But, what SEO KPIs should you actually be tracking?
Let's look at the most important key metrics you should track in your SEO campaign.
What is a KPI in SEO?
A KPI or Key Performance Indicator is a metric that helps you gauge the success of your SEO efforts.
A KPI can be anything from the number of links you've built to your website's organic traffic.
What is SEO Tracking?
SEO tracking is the process of measuring SEO Metrics and KPIs to determine the success of your SEO campaign in the search engines.
It allows you to track how many people are visiting your website, how many conversions you got from your website and other metrics like click-through rate, and bounce rate.
Important KPIs to Track
There are a few SEO KPIs that are important to track to determine the success of your SEO strategy.
Conversions
First of all, the most important KPIs to track on your website are conversions.
A lot of people are obsessed with traffic and keyword metrics, but if it isn't bringing you money, it is worth nothing.
So, you should always be tracking the conversions on your website.
A conversion can be a form submission, a button click, a sale, people visiting a thank you page or anything else that you want the user to do on your website.
You define what a conversion is for you.
You can track conversions with the help of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the number of visitors that come to your website from Search Engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo,
It is one of the most important seo metrics to measure your SEO performance.
The more organic search traffic you receive, the more successful it is.
You can check how many people are visiting your website from organic traffic in your Google Analytics account.
Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings are the positions that your website ranks for in the search engine results pages for certain keywords.
These are very important to track since that is one of the best ways to measure how on-track your SEO efforts are.
For example, when you are starting out, your keywords could be in the Top 40 to 100 position, but as time goes on and you start gaining authority and trust from Google, they will move up to the first page.
You can use a rank tracking tool like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to track your keyword rankings.
CTR
Click-Through Rate is how many people click on your organic listings divided by the number of searches for that keyword.
The higher your CTR is the better. It is very important to track since you could be ranking in the Top 3 positions in Google and still get a low CTR.
You might actually be not fulfilling the search intent for that specific keyword.
So by tracking your CTR, you can uncover a lot of potential issues or quick wins that can affect your seo performance.
You can track your CTR in Google Analytics.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after only viewing one page.
Generally, a high bounce rate is not good and it means that people are not finding what they are looking for on your website.
But, there are cases, like on Affiliate Websites where users read reviews and click on the buy now button. This takes them to a third-party website, like Amazon.
In these cases, a high bounce rate is completely normal.
However, on regular websites, you should aim for a bounce rate of less than 50%.
You can track your bounce rate in Google Analytics.
Referring Domains
Referring domains are the websites that are linking to your website.
The more high-quality referring domains you have, the better.
It is an important KPI to track since in most difficult niches you will need a lot of referring domains to rank.
If a website is producing valuable content, the number of referring domains should be going up over time.
You can track your referring domains in a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Page Speed
Page speed is the time it takes for your website to load.
A fast website is important because people are impatient and they will leave your website if it takes too long to load.
You can use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of your website. You can also use Chrome Lighthouse Audit to see what issues you need to fix in order for your website to be faster.
Your website speed can decrement over time, so it is important to keep track of it.
Average Session Duration
Average session duration is the average amount of time people spend on your website.
A high average session duration means that people are spending a lot of time on your website and they are finding it useful.
You can increase this by creating better content and by adding youtube videos to your articles, that makes people stay on the page longer.
You can track your average session duration in Google Analytics.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of people who take a desired action on your website.
This could be anything from subscribing to your newsletter to buying a product on your e-commerce store.
The higher your conversion rate is, the better.
You can track your conversion rate in Google Analytics by setting up goals.
How to track SEO Results?
There are a few ways to track SEO progress.
The most common way is to use Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track all the SEO KPIs we talked about in this article.
Another way to track SEO results is to use a paid tool like Moz or Ahrefs.
Both of these tools have SEO tracking features that allow you to track your SEO success.
You can also hire an SEO agency to track your SEO results for you.
An SEO agency will have the tools and the knowledge to track your SEO campaign and give you reports on a monthly basis.
SEO Metric Tools
There are a few different SEO tools that give you the ability to measure SEO performance.
Google Analytics
The most popular SEO metric tool is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track all your SEO KPIs.
Moz
Another popular SEO metric tool is Moz. Moz is a paid tool that has many features, one of which is SEO tracking.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another popular SEO metric tool. Ahrefs is a paid tool that offers a lot of features ranging from keyword research to auditing your website.
This tool also holds historical data on the number of backlinks you have, and your organic traffic and you can also track your rankings to see your position in the search results.
Keyword Rank Tracking Tools
There are a lot of keyword ranking tracking tools out there that let you track the positions of your target keyword phrases in the search results.
The most popular ones are:
- SerpRobot
- Rankranger
- Whatsmyserp
- Accuranker
Hire an Agency
Hiring an SEO agency is another way of tracking SEO performance.
An SEO agency will have the tools and the knowledge for measuring SEO Results, especially if they are handling your website's SEO.
Should you track Domain Authority (DA)?
As Domain Authority is a third party metric (Moz) and not a ranking factor, it is not necessary to track it.
A lot of websites mention tracking your website's domain authority, as it would correlate with the rankings of your website in the organic search results.
It doesn't correlate and it is very easy to manipulate it. A lot of spammers do this to sell guest posts at a higher price, while the website itself is bad.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things to measure when it comes to SEO results, but in the end, all that matters is what brings you more organic traffic and makes you more money.
The above mentioned metrics are the most important ones to track, but you should take a look at your own website and define what metrics are important for you!
We hope this article helped you to develop your own tracking process.
