Knowing about the important performance indicators is an essential requirement for every SEO professional. The KPIs (key performance indicators or metrics) help you measure the progress of your SEO campaigns that you run to achieve certain marketing objectives.
Introduction
Before we start discussing the SEO KPIs in detail, give us a moment to explain to you in brief what is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It includes practices that usually happen around the search engines.
Under SEO, we send the signals to search engines such as Google, and Bing so that they can scour the website, index the content and finally show the information to people whenever they search the information similar to your business. This is how you can understand SEO in brief.
Now let’s understand how SEO has evolved since the beginning. Earlier, all the SEO efforts were done to persuade search crawlers, (also known as bots or spiders) to pick the content and rank it well on Google. At that time, the KPIs involved in SEO were different.
Presently SEO is done to persuade people by posting the relevant content and providing it at the right time to the right person. If somehow that content becomes popular among the people then that content is considered on priority for ranking by the search crawlers. So here KPIs involved are different. From the above discussion, we can say that KPIs are not static but dynamic in nature.
It is interesting to know that KPIs vary from business to business. They are conditional and specific to each business. Many people think that KPIs are used only to present the end result of campaigns but this is halfway true. Indeed, they are also used in campaigns to see the progress if needed.
Here we have put up a list of different critical KPIs that you might be avoiding but are very important to track in 2022.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Understanding the total revenue that any customer brings to the company throughout his lifetime is a crucial factor in marketing. CLTV gives you the path to increase revenue and profit. If you increase CLTV, then you increase your profit for the company. It is simple as that.
According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling to your existing customer is 60-70% as compared to selling to a new prospect which is just 5-20%. Because existing customers have already interacted with your business. So, focussing on returning customers and their lifetime value, we can increase the probability of getting a higher profit margin.
Here finds the formula through which you can calculate CLTV for any customer.
Simple equation, CLTV = 52 (a) *t
Where “a” = Average customer value per week (customer purchase per visit * no. of visits per week) and “t” is the average customer life span.
Content Efficiency
SEO is driven majorly by the content available on the website. Because it is the content that ranks on Google or any other search engine. Similarly, it is the content that people read and make the decision to buy something from the brand.
You might have heard about something called “keywords” whenever you got to be a part of an SEO discussion. So, what are Keywords? Keywords are nothing but a word or phrases that people use to search for any information. And whenever your content matches with the searched keywords of people, they see your content.
So, it is also a very crucial factor that we should consider while measuring SEO. Under content efficiency, it is measured how well your published content is read by your readers? How effectively it is showing up in front of the right customers? There are many associated factors that can help to know whether the content is good or not.
Here finds the list of factors that determine how is your content performing.
Clicks, Views, and Time on Page
If your content can’t attract enough attention from your audience, then it is not working. No. of clicks on your page link, no. of views it receives from the readers, and the total time your readers spend on your page determines how powerful your content is.
These metrics help you measure the quantitative aspect of your content.
Comments, Shares & Downloads
How do people are reacting after reading the content? Whether they are switching to another page, leaving the page in a few minutes, or they are leaving comments after reading the content?
Same way if people are considering the content worthy to share with others or download it for future reference. These all metrics show the level of engagement your content is getting from your audience. These metrics help you measure the qualitative aspect of your content.
By considering all the factors mentioned above, you can see whether the content is created and served efficiently to people or not? This is the second major KPI that you should track while measuring SEO.
Average Engagement Time
Average engagement time is also known as dwell time. It is another major KPI that you should track for knowing the progress of SEO campaigns. In Google Analytics, you can easily measure dwell time by looking at the metric “Avg. Session Duration”.
In general, dwell time is the time taken by any user to analyse the webpage before going back to search results. High dwell time means the page matches the user’s search intent.
Essentially, dwell time metrics can show if the web page is capturing enough attention from your target audience. For instance, you write content on “SEO tips & latest techniques”. After reviewing, you notice that the piece of content has a higher CTR (click-through rate) but lower dwell time.
Upon further inspection, you go through the other articles available on SERP that include wide-ranging information about how to perform SEO for WordPress websites, how to target people in local regions using local SEO, and how to perform SEO for e-commerce websites, and a list of ranking factors to consider in SEO.
It gives you clues about optimising UX for your web page. Let’s say if the load time of your web page is slow due to which people are jumping back to the search results. Then you can make an important decision here to rectify this issue at the earliest so that your web page can load faster in front of your audience.
How to measure dwell time?
It is measured by taking the total duration of all sessions, (in seconds), divided by the total number of sessions. In Google Analytics, it is shown as session duration under Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages for each page available on your website.
Conversion Goals by Percent Based Metrics
When the financial return is the most important KPI you want to measure then you should not rely on ROI alone. Calculating and tracking organic conversions (sales, leads, or others depending on your business setup) is the most solid way to demonstrate the success of your business.
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors completing the desired action after visiting the landing page compare to the total number of visitors over the same page.
When you define your goals or events on Google Analytics, you see where people are dropping off in the process so that you can make the necessary improvements and carry out the same process again.
An increasing sales show you how visitors are coming in large numbers but also taking the desired actions set by you or your team.
This is a very crucial KPI as it closely relates to your core business objectives of growing your customer base and driving more sales.
Here conversion goals can be tracked by focussing on CRO (Conversion rate optimisation), the number of conversions, and User Experience (UX).
Accurate Search Visibility
When there is a new brand and brand awareness is the centre of attention then search visibility should be tracked on priority. For tracking the search visibility, you can simply go to search console > performance > search appearance.
Importance of knowing search visibility
Through this column, you can know how many times any particular web page has appeared on the google search result page. This information is very crucial when you want to track the search visibility of your content. This is an important KPI.
By knowing the search visibility of different web pages and comparing other web pages from other websites, you can drill down to content and see the areas that require improvements. By doing so, you can enhance the visibility of your web pages.
There are other metrics also that we can track to collect more comprehensive information about search visibility such as “Pixel from the Top” as discussed by Cindy Krum, Founder & CEO of Mobile Moxie in her interview. Alongside, we can also track traditional ranking and compare it with actual ranking.
Traditional ranking in SEO excludes things such as PPC, knowledge graph, and other Google assets that impact organic ranking on SERP. However, by considering actual ranking, we can track those excluded factors.
Search visibility is an important factor to consider so if we can dive deep into and collect more and more information about the search appearance of our web pages then we can monitor and manage our search visibility in real-time.
Brand Visibility in Search – KPI
Another important metric that gives you information about how much space of search results your brand owns is the brand visibility in search.
This includes information laying off the site such as social media posts, YouTube videos, knowledge graph results, brand visibility in a news column, and everything that can be a good representation of your brand.
Under this metric, information is majorly based on off-site content. For years, SEOs are striving to optimize content falling outside the website. And, this is the time to give credit to them for their hard work.
Off-site optimised content is useful because it creates an interwoven net of links around the website that helps bring the search crawlers to reach the site easily. And also, visitors find the business information on different platforms and know about the brand from the off-site content.
Now the question comes of how to measure the brand visibility on search? To know about the platforms where the brand information is available off the site, you can use various methods.
The first method is to write the brand name in the search bar and see the results. Platforms, where the brand information is available, will come up on the search engine result page.
Second use the Google search operators such as “website URL”, “brand name” and [brand name] to go deep into your search.
Third, go over the search console and check the section of links. There you may find a number of websites where information about your business is available.
New Vs Returning Users
“New and Returning Users” is again a very important metric that should be tracked by SEO. This KPI is again a situational metric and depends on the kind of website and the type of target audience.
First let’s understand, what are New vs Returning Users? According to hotjar,
“New users are the users who have never been to your website whereas returning users have visited your site before. When someone views your website, Google’s tracking snippet looks for a tracking cookie on their device.
If the cookie is not present, Google creates one and considers this a ‘new’ user. If the cookie is present, Google considers this a ‘returning’ user and starts a new session”
This metric helps you track down the audience behaviour and the level of engagement happening on your content.
Understanding the users’ behaviour is helpful to measure the success of your strategies on users’ acquisition and retention.
Average Time on Site or Page
“Average time on site or page” is a metric that helps you measure the success of your content and the engagement level. This KPI seems important if backed with data.
We have to carefully observe this metric as if it really relates to our business objective. If so then we need to check if the metric excludes the timing of users who are bouncing back otherwise it makes no sense to measure it.
For most top-level SEOs and marketers, this metric seems to be misleading as it includes bounces that are redundant.
So, next time you look at this metric, make sure to eliminate data about the timing of users who bounce back from your site.
Organic CTR (Click-through Rate)
Click-through Rate is a performance metric that plays a significant role in determining the ranking of any website or page.
Google places a higher value on pages that receive a good CTR. It tells you how your search snippet is appealing to the users.
What is CTR?
CTR determines how many users who have viewed your listing on the search result page have clicked on the link and come over to the website.
CTR directly contributes to the web traffic to any site. Higher CTR means people are finding your content more relevant. However low CTR downgrades the authority of the website in the eyes of search crawlers.
To check this metric, you may visit the Google search console.
Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is another performance metric that tells you how many visitors after visiting the landing page are going back to the search result page or closing the page without viewing another page. In other words, it can be considered a single-page session made by the visitors.
This is another important metric that you should track. If you have a multiple-page website and the bounce rate is high throughout then you have to look deeply to understand the problem.
But if you have a single-page website and all your content is available on just a single page, then the bounce rate is of no value.
Again, it is a situational metric that depends on the type of website and content relevancy. If the content directly relates to the user’s query and is relevant then the user will definitely find it useful and read it thoroughly but if it doesn’t relate to his intent he will bounce back.
This metric can be tracked using Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Summary
The concept of top SEO KPIs seems good to implement in data analytics but varies according to business objectives. So, it can’t be common for every business. And that’s why it was called situational throughout the article.
Every business is different and has different marketing goals. It is recommended that KPIs should be formulated accordingly to determine success.
The discussed KPIs are not meant to be absolute KPIs. They are ranked top in the list of top KPIs for SEO because they are worth considering and valuable in terms of gaining insights from a broader perspective.
In the comment section, feel free to share with us which KPIs do you consider as most important for your business or perhaps what do you think could have been included. We’ll be happy to take your comments.