Many variables are at play in an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) campaign. SEO is dynamic and requires a lot of effort to ensure success. But merely putting in efforts is not enough, there has to be a control system to ensure that our efforts deliver results.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) act as a feedback system for us, they become our control system. KPIs allow us to identify what exactly is working for us. They also serve as a warning system to the SEOs if some strategies are not working as planned.
A firm that provides SEO services needs KPIs to illustrate success to its clients. They can also be used to convince higher-ups in a company about the efforts being put in SEO. Typical KPI metrics might reflect much effort put in performing SEO, but the clients may want to see an increase in sales and lead generation.
So, it is necessary to clearly identify objectives for businesses and marketing, then only shall KPIs would be effectively used to assess, create and recalibrate strategies to meet a client’s requirements.
Once, a customer’s real objective behind ranking for a given keyword is understood, more value and better services could be provided. Having tied KPIs to business objectives, effective communication can take place between SEOs and decision-makers.
KPIs can help demonstrate the value of organic work done in SEO efforts. KPIs can help assess efforts in some tangible form. For instance, a noticeable percentage increase in sales from a change in SEO strategies related to a particular product demonstrates the importance of KPIs.
SEO KPIs
There can be a lot of KPIs which could be specified to gauge SEO performance. So, we keep our discussion limited to nine KPIs. These indicators are sufficient enough to keep a track of any SEO program. The indicators are interrelated too, and hence analysis should always be done keeping in mind other related KPIs. With these KPIs one would gain an insight into how effective one is at these key SEO performance metrics; the KPIs are as follows:
- Keyword Ranking
This metric helps measure our search engine rankings for targeted words in the top 100 search results. In the field of search engine marketing, this is a typical KPI. It illustrates how successful our website is in getting ranked on Google for specific keywords and attracting organic traffic as a result of it. It helps in pointing out the positive and negative impacts of our SEO efforts.
It is critical because higher keyword rankings would attract more traffic. It is the key to achieving other main objectives such as more traffic, leads, and sales. The higher a website ranks for frequently searched keywords, the better it is.
Various tools, such as the Google Search Console (GSC) and others can help in tracking a site’s rankings for keywords over time. At regular intervals, one should keep eye on keyword rankings so as to adjust SEO strategies according to them.
- Organic Search Performance
Organic Search is another metric to assess the performance of a website. When a user searches for specific information, the traffic that arrives at a website based on the relevance of its content is called an organic search. Growth in organic traffic is a fair KPI, as the objective of any SEO exercise is to get more visitors to a website.
Such traffic can directly be measured in our CMS (Content Management System) or Google Analytics.
Gaining quality traffic, the traffic that has a high conversion rate is more important rather than just gaining high numbers. Hence, quality matters over quantity when it comes to organic search performance.
- Organic Leads and Conversions
It cannot be intrinsically called KPI but gives a better insight into a searcher’s intent. By keeping a track of this metric, it can be discovered what action is taken by users once they land on a website. It matters because if a webpage attracts a lot of visitors, but the conversion rates are low, then our SEO strategies might need reassessment.
In order to ensure higher conversions, the focus should be on improving user experience, navigation, and content. Our goals should be clear. Pages should have a proper, precise, and persuasive call to action. One should be aware of whether the website’s overall design and functionality helps in convincing visitors to convert.
- Bounce Rate
This metric tells us the percentage of sessions where the page loads and the user exits instantly exits without performing any actions. The typical bounce rate is 40 to 60 percent, which implies almost half of all sessions would be expected to end with no action being taken by the user. This, of course, depends on the industry or niche.
When users return back more to SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), this indicates that the page ranking was not relevant or was frustrating to navigate it or it has issues of trustworthiness. A lower bounce rate may mean the site is relevant, easy to navigate, and thus has a minimum quality threshold which may keep the user engaged.
Pages can be routinely audited which are having high bounce rates; applying A/B tests and other approaches on them, might help in reducing bounce rates.
- Pages per Session
It is a simple metric indicating how many pages a user visits during a session. A user may visit a few pages of websites that might have tens or hundreds of pages. Depending on the site’s content, intent, navigation, and processes, a visitor’s pages per session could be decided.
This metric shows the value of a website and how visitors had navigated through it. But merely having a user visit page might not be fruitful until the conversion rate is high. To ensure this, pages should have a clear goal, well-written content, friendly user interface, smooth navigation, and a persuasive call-to-action statement.
- Average Session Duration
The average amount of time a user spends on our website. The more satisfying, engaging, interactive, and in-depth our content and site structure is, the longer this duration can be expected.
This is an important KPI because it reflects on the quality of our website; it shows if the users are incentivized to stay, read and explore further. A drop-in session duration means clearly something unwanted happened which has frustrated the users. This can be identified and rectified as pointed by other metrics, feedback from users, and the resultant analysis.
- Page Load Time
It serves as a contributor to most of the indicators discussed till now. If a page takes too long, users may get impatient and would bounce back to the SERP.
If a website is too slow to load, then bounce rates would increase. This means lesser user engagement and poor conversion rates.
Page load time depends on the content’s complexity and the patience of the users. Mostly, users close a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. With every extra second needed for a page to load, the bounce rate also increases.
Optimizations can be made to the content, server, codes, embedded plug-ins, and images to improve the loading time. While redesigning a page or content or altering an image or any other feature, page load speed should always be kept in mind.
- Top Exit Pages
The last page a user visits before he exits from a website can be called an exit page. Exit page may not be intrinsically negative; a user may also leave the page after having completed the desired transaction such as purchase, subscription, etc. on that page.
If a large number of users are exiting from the page where their surfing should not end, then it becomes a cause for concern. This may force us to think about improving our page’s user interface and opting for better optimization.
- Crawl Errors
Such a metric indicate that web crawlers are having a tough time accessing and reading our website’s content. This can be found in Google Search Console (GSC). Crawl errors could be at the server or URL level.
Server level crawl error occurs if a Googlebot is not able to communicate with the DNS server or if the site is down or the request times out. URL level error might be because a page no longer exists or there is a long redirect chain.
In any case, Crawl errors should be resolved immediately to make a site accessible to web crawlers or Google bots.