Which KPIS are Actually Worth Focusing on for SEO?

By and large, a lot of your KPIs will be individual to your business and your sector. For example, a car dealership likely won’t measure online conversions as a KPI because most people who buy cars don’t do so online, whereas most other eCommerce businesses will definitely monitor online sales conversions as their lead KPI. 

On the whole, there are two main types of KPIs: success and failure. By looking at success KPIs such as conversion rates, you can see how well your business is doing, but by looking at KPIs that indicate shortcomings or failures, you can see areas that need to be improved. 

From a basic standpoint, though, which KPIs are worth looking at from an SEO perspective? 

Organic traffic 

First and foremost we have organic traffic. Even if you have a large paid marketing budget, you still need to be monitoring your organic traffic. This is one of the best indicators as to whether your overall SEO efforts are paying off as it shows how many visitors are finding your site organically, i.e. through SERPs. 

Rankings 

Of course, one of the main goals of SEO is to boost your rankings in Google. Ideally, you want to rank in high positions for lots of keywords. Analysing your rankings is a good way to see if your efforts are on track, and you can monitor any changes such as drop offs and new or improved rankings. This gives you the ability to see what is performing well and what needs more work, helping to inform your overall digital marketing strategy.

Visibility 

Visibility goes hand in hand with rankings. By looking at your visibility, you can identify how often your website actually shows up on SERPs for the keywords you rank for. Just like you want lots of rankings, you also want a high visibility. 

Click through rate (CTR)

Showing up on results is one thing, but having people actually click through to your site is another. Landing yourself on page one of SERPs doesn’t automatically mean people are going to click on your site, but monitoring the CTR is a good way to see this and identify any issues. 

For example, if you have good rankings and good visibility but a poor CTR, that could be an indication that your meta details aren’t compelling enough and aren’t attracting visitors, essentially rendering your rankings moot because they’re not driving traffic. 

Ideally, you want a high CTR as this is an indication that your meta copy is snappy and engaging to users. 

Links 

Links, both internal and external, are an essential part of SEO. They are a core factor for determining rankings, but often they’re overlooked as a KPI. When you consider that obtaining low quality links from websites that are deemed by Google to be spammy and with a low trust flow and domain authority can actually tank your rankings, it’s clear to see why getting high quality links needs to be a core KPI that you monitor. 

The best way to do this is by completing a backlink audit. There are a few services out there that do this, including Ahrefs and SEMrush. 

Session duration 

It’s all well and good getting visitors to your site, but you’d like them to stick around for a while. You will likely be looking at your bounce rate as part of your routine data analysis, but make sure to look at session duration. 

If people are only spending 45 seconds on your site, something isn’t aligning, be it the design, content, or usability of your site. By looking at your session duration, you can begin to identify areas for improvement with the end goal of boosting how long people spend on your site. 

Monitoring KPIs

Noting which KPIs to monitor and knowing how to do so, including making inferences and plans of action, can be hard. Getting help from an SEO agency is a good first step, or making sure you have subscriptions to tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush.

About the Author: Berna Sponca is a content marketing and Digital PR strategist with The Brains. With years of digital marketing experience, Berna specialises in building high-authority links and connecting with high-profile publications to boost brand awareness.

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