Lesson 7: Measure your success with KPIs

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Ok, so you’ve researched your keywords and sprinkled them tastefully throughout your site. You’ve made your site mobile-friendly, cut out duplicate content, and even did some guest blogging.

It’s been hard work, but how do you know if all this hard work paid off? Good news! You don’t have to guess. You can measure your success with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

PRO-TIP

Don’t play tricks. Good SEO isn’t about working the system. If you try to fool the search engines, your organic online success won’t last long. It’s best to avoid questionable shortcuts. Do your research to find out if what you’re doing will truly improve your site. The Moz blog is a great resource for staying on top of current SEO best practices.

Start with these common KPIs

With website analytics programs, you can track the number of visitors to your website, conversion rates, and more. This will help you understand how your SEO efforts are panning out. For example, you can sign up for Google Analytics for free and add your website so you can easily keep track of important SEO metrics.

Here are some common KPIs you can track: 

  • Organic traffic. Track the number of click-throughs you get from the search engine’s organic results. The more, the better. 
  • Keyword rankings. You can use Google Search Console and Google Analytics to see how your keywords are performing.
  • Number of backlinks. Track how many sites link back to yours. If they’re reputable, more backlinks can help your page(s) ranking in an organic search.
  • Traffic to the site. Analyze the overall volume of traffic to your site where it came from (i.e., other sites, organic, etc.) to see if the organic traffic to your site is increasing.
  • Click-through rate (CTR). Track the percentage of the number of impressions (people who saw your site result) versus clicks (people who actually clicked through to your site). 
  • Bounce rate. This identifies if people land on a page and then leave. This can help you identify areas that need improvement. Perhaps the keywords are attracting people with a need that the current page isn’t meeting. 
  • Number of Featured Snippets. If a page appears in a Featured Snippet on Google, it can help drive traffic to your site. Plus, it’s a good indicator that Google views your content as authoritative.
  • Pages per session. If visitors view more than 1 page per visit to your site, it indicates good engagement.

Congratulations! You now know what SEO is and how it helps improve the quality and quantity of organic traffic to your site. You also know how to improve your search engine ranking with some SEO best practices. Plus, you have your keyword seed list ready to go to help you start optimizing your on-page SEO. See? We told you you’d be an SEO pro in no time!