Search engine optimization (SEO) describes a method of increasing website visibility and providing leads. But the benefits don’t end there. Successful search engine optimization makes website navigation easier, increases conversions and is part of your long-term marketing strategy.
What’s the best way to effectively track your website’s SEO metrics and see how well your efforts are really working?
The answer comes from tracking your website’s SEO metrics. There are some key SEO benchmarks you need to test to make sure your campaign is on the road to success. If you find that this is not currently the case, you can make some changes at any time to better optimize your results.
How do you track your SEO efforts?
The easiest way to track your SEO efforts is to use an SEO measurement tool to analyze your data. There are many free SEO measurement tools out there. However, the paid versions offer you a wider range of options than the free versions.
When choosing the SEO measurement tool of your choice, make sure you monitor the following important SEO measurement data:
Organic traffic
Don’t just monitor your website traffic. Measure the organic traffic of all your online advertising (including landing pages, blogs, etc.) to get a more complete picture of how well your SEO strategy is doing.
Leads
The next part of the equation is how many leads your organic traffic delivers. If you’re wondering what the average percentage of leads is, DMT Media says it’s 16%. However, this will vary from niche to niche.
Backlinks
The number of high-quality backlinks on your website has a significant impact on search engine optimization by increasing your website’s ranking and increasing your overall credibility. And according to authority, backlinks are “still the most correlated with the success of SEO”. This is because backlinks help Google find and index your website.
Keywords
You can use your keyword ranking to see how well your target keywords are doing. However, you need to look at your keywords along with other SEO benchmarks to get a better idea of your overall SEO performance.
Bounce rate
A visitor’s time spent on your website is often a key indicator of how engaging your content is. A high bounce rate can mean that the content of the page does not resonate with the reader. However, this will not always be the case. A high bounce rate can have the following causes:
- Pages are loading slowly
- Pages per session
- Technical errors
When it comes to tracking your website’s SEO metrics, your specific bounce rate depends on the niche you are in. For example, e-commerce and retail websites have a typical bounce rate of 25 to 45%, while landing pages have a bounce rate of 60 to 90%.
Pages per session
Your pages per session SEO metrics are an indicator of how interesting your content is to visitors. Most website owners want their visitors to click through to multiple pages, as this indicates that they have an active interest in the product or service presented. The average number of pages viewed per session is only two. However, if you want to aim for something, reaching an average of four pages per session means you’re in the top 20% of websites.
If your pages are a particularly low per session, the following can occur:
- Restricted accessibility
- Bad navigation
- Lack of content that interests your target audience
Returning users
If your website has repeat visitors, you know you are doing something right when it comes to how well you’re SEO efforts are working. Monitor this number over time using SEO measurement tools to see how your recurring traffic grows.
Loading time
The longer it takes to load your website, the more likely it is that a potential visitor will navigate to another website. So what should you aim for? According to recent research, the optimal loading time for conversions is between zero and four seconds. In other words, the faster your website loads the better.
To increase conversions, make sure you measure your page load times. If you find your site is lagging behind, try to improve your times by:
- Simplification of the page design
- Optimize and compress images
- Triggers send emails
- Restriction of HTTP requests and external scripts
- Repair broken links
- Use caching
Mobile traffic
Mobile traffic is one of the most important SEO benchmarks in today’s digital world. By tracking your mobile metrics, you can see how accessible your website is to mobile users. This metric also tells you whether you need to make improvements in this area, however, do not limit your SEO tracking to mobile devices, but also measure the data traffic from other devices.
Cost per lead
You have traffic to your website that leads to leads, but how much does it cost? Knowing your cost per lead will give you a better idea of the profitability of your SEO. For guidance, you can see the average cost per lead here.
Content length
One of the most overlooked SEO metrics is your content length. Google is known to prefer longer content and recommends including content length among your metrics.
Indexed pages
Another overlooked SEO metric is the number of index pages. If the number of indexed pages decreases, there is usually a problem somewhere.
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