A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that is used to track and measure your progress towards a certain objective. Business KPIs for SEO can vary by department and can be used to compare a company’s long-term performance to its own goals and industry benchmarks.
To achieve this, it is crucial to evaluate your SEO performance using various tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Semrush. Monitoring SEO effectiveness over time and creating comprehensive SEO reports can take your strategy to the next level.
Companies mindlessly embrace industry-recognized KPIs and then wonder why those KPIs don’t fit their business or provide any beneficial results. Succinct, precise, and relevant information is much more likely to be absorbed by your audience. KPIs are a form of communication, which is one of the most crucial but frequently overlooked components of them. You cannot have SEO success without using the right KPIs for your company. If you are new to the world of key performance indicators or are looking for the best KPIs for SEO, here is what you need to know to do it right.
What is KPI Reporting?
A KPI report is a virtual panel that you can use to track your metrics and see how your team is doing compared to the goals. Based on the details you want to exhibit and the needs of your team, you can display your report using charts, visuals, and tables.
Tools like Google Search Console can be used to measure SEO performance by tracking clicks, impressions, and average organic CTR over time.
As a company, you’ll almost certainly receive data daily that may or may not be related to your KPIs. Having a reporting tool accomplishes several goals, including:
- Helping you keep track of your most important metrics while filtering out the rest
- Providing decision-makers and collaborators with easy access to data, such as through Google Search Console to measure SEO performance
- Providing you with a brief and easy-to-understand snapshot of your team’s performance
- Getting everyone on the same page about the aims
Importance of SEO KPIs Tracking
KPIs serve as a monitoring system, allowing you to see which strategies are effective and which are not. What’s more, tracking the correct KPIs is the most effective approach to avoid wasting time and money on something that isn’t generating the required revenue. It is crucial to monitor and improve SERP visibility for relevant keywords to enhance your website’s visibility and organic traffic.
Additionally, tracking organic search traffic is a key metric for assessing SEO performance. Using tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and third-party tools like SEM Rush and MOZ can help measure organic search traffic and compare it to competitors. This helps in understanding SEO performance, benchmarking against competitors, and making necessary improvements.
Some factors that fall under KPIs are:
- Production, acquisition and lead costs
- Number of returning customers
- Profit and net income
- Conversion rate
- Marketing leads
- Return of investment
- Follower growth
- Pages and screens: Monitoring and analyzing user engagement with specific web pages, including metrics like engagement time, bounce rate, and benchmarking against competitors.
Important KPI for SEO & How to Track
What are the most relevant KPIs for evaluating the performance of your SEO and digital marketing campaigns? KPIs differ depending on the business and your monthly or annual goals. However, there are a few important features that every company should focus on to achieve SEO success.
1. Organic Sessions Organic sessions track visits to your website that come from popular search engines. Organic traffic can be tracked directly in Google Analytics, or you can link the data with a reporting service like Agency Analytics for a more thorough analysis. Monitoring search engine results and search results is crucial to measure the percentage of people who clicked through to your website.
2. Keyword Ranking Increases The rank of your keywords in major search engines such as Google and Bing is referred to as keyword rankings. The closer you are to the top of the rankings, the better. You can use a service like SEMRush or SE Ranking to track keyword ranks. It is important to track specific, relevant keywords and use a rank-tracking tool to measure and improve visibility and organic rankings.
3. Leads Any interaction with a potential customer is referred to as a lead. Such as:
- Newsletter signup.
- Phone call
- Completed purchase
- Registration for a service
- Contact form submission asking for more information.
You can track leads across a broad range of subjects if you put up goals and events in Google Analytics Things like:
- Female vs male clientele
- Mobile vs desktop usage
- The most popular pages
- Interactions based on age groups
- Can all be tracked and measured.
4. Bounce Rate The bounce rate is a metric that measures the number of times a person loads a page and then leaves without taking any action. The bounce rate is determined by dividing the number of sessions by the number of non-interactive sessions.
5. Average Session Duration The average length of a visit to your website is measured by session duration. The length of a user’s session is a significant KPI since it reveals the quality of your site’s content as well as how motivated people are to stay, read, and click.
KPI Targets
Before measuring your KPIs, you need to decide which metrics to track. The specific metric you track will vary based on your goals and group. Once you have your metrics set targets for your team. Having a good SEO strategy is crucial for achieving noticeable results within a timeframe of four months to a year.
Targets are a good way to drive your team to success. They are based upon various factors such as industry trends, previous performance and your current status. Tracking SEO progress is essential to monitor the improvement of your website’s performance in search results over time. To get started with your targets you should first know your three Ws:
- Who is in charge of this KPI? It is important to have a point of contact for any issues you may face.
- When do you think you’ll be able to meet these goals? This usually varies on your team’s standard.
- Why are you doing it? Having a clear understanding of your objectives is an important motivator.
Measure SEO Success with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a very advantageous tool, its most prominent benefits being:
- Cost-free
- Customizable reports
- Templates for your needs
- Automatically collects data
- Accessible across all devices
- Able to measure internal site search behaviour
- All of your SEO and KPI needs in one place
- Easy to navigate
Google Analytics is a useful tool for assessing your online performance. It helps you observe how visitors interact with your website and content. These specialized metrics track and measure many parts of the user experience, revealing how visitors react to your website and advertisements. Additionally, Google Analytics can be used to track and analyze organic search performance.
You can use it to:
- Understand the reason behind bounces
- Learn about your audience
- Understand which social media platforms should be targeted
- Learn your audience’s preferences
- Know which content to use
- Check your achievements and performance
- Keep track of your goals
- Monitor the effectiveness of SEO efforts
- Make sure your business is going down the right track.
To track organic impressions, you can go to the ‘Search results’ report in Google Search Console, where you can view the total number of impressions and impression data on a page-by-page level.
If you are facing difficulties succeeding with your KPIs due to a lack of resources and miscommunication, Google Analytics is perfect for you. Monitoring SEO results is crucial to determine the effectiveness of SEO strategies and make necessary adjustments to improve performance.