SEO KPI's: How to Measure Success for SEO

Measuring the Success of an SEO Program

As a businessperson with a keen interest in driving the success of your organization in the complex digital landscape, understanding how to measure the success of your SEO program is pivotal in achieving your organization’s goals.

A frequently asked question is “how do you measure the success of an SEO program?” It’s not always about “ranking #1,” but that is a good indicator if it is a keyword that is competitive, relevant, and has search volume, it’s also about deeply understanding your audience and compelling them to look at a snippit and decide to spend time on your content.

Things that I ask when establishing an SEO program:

• What does “good” look like?
• What is the goal of the website?
• Depending on the goal of the website, the SEO program can look very different. For example, if your company only works with resellers, you aren’t looking to create a demand-gen flow, you’re looking to be the industry expert, therefor your target keywords are going to be more “top of the funnel” than “buying” keywords.
• Questions to ask yourself:
• Who is your target audience?
• What is their education level?
• What is their first language?
• Are they subject matter experts?
• Are you targeting a specific vertical?
• Do you know who your digital competitors are?
• These aren’t always the same as the competitors your sales team comes up against, they should be, but sometimes it’ll surprise you.
• What do you want to accomplish first?
• There are a lot of factors when it comes to SEO success: content, site speed, navigation, mobile friendliness, UX, inbound signals, social signals, etc, you might be able to address these all at once, but most organizations address these aspects in a waterfall fashion.

One of my favorite pieces of content to show the areas that need to be addressed in building an SEO program is the Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO Success.

Once you’ve established your SEO program, how do you measure your results? Here are some KPI’s that I use as a baseline.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with Examples:

1. Organic Traffic:

  - Metric: An increase in organic traffic.

  - Example: Over the past six months, your website has experienced a 30% growth in organic traffic, with an average of 1,000 additional visitors per month.

 - Tip: Make sure you have Google Tag Manager and GA4 setup correctly to track your organic, referral, and social traffic.

2. Keyword Rankings:

  - Metric: Monitoring keyword rankings.

  - Example: Your target keyword "digital marketing" has moved from position 20 to position 5 in Google search results, leading to more visibility.

  - Tip: make sure you are using a tool like SEMRush or SpyFu to check your ranking. Search engine results pages (SERPs) do take into account your previous browsing history to customize your results.

3. Click-Through Rate (CTR):

  - Metric: Analyzing the effectiveness of meta titles and descriptions.

  - Example: After optimizing meta descriptions, your CTR for the page "Marketing Strategies for Business Growth" has improved from 2% to 5%.

  - Tip: CTR is dependent on the meta data, if the meta data isn’t defined search engines will pull it from the page. You have less than 4 seconds to convince someone to click on your result, make sure it’s compelling and interesting.

4. Conversion Rate:

  - Metric: Measuring the percentage of visitors who take a desired action.

  - Example: Your e-commerce website's conversion rate has increased from 2.5% to 4%, resulting in more sales.

  - Tip: Conversion rate and CTR ARE different. CTR’s come from SERPs, conversion rates come from the website. If you have an ecomm store, it could be a purchase. If you’re running a B2B organization, it could be a form fill or demo request. It can be challenging to keep the source of conversion rates attributed to SEO, due to “last touch attribution” but you should try.

5. Bounce Rate:

  - Metric: Tracking the percentage of visitors who leave quickly.

  - Example: By improving website load times and content relevance, the bounce rate has dropped from 60% to 40%.

  - Tip: Also take a look at “number of pages visited” and make sure your buyer journey is optimized with internal links. Making sure your visitor knows where to go and what action to take is essential in keeping that bounce rate low.

6. Return on Investment (ROI):

  - Metric: Calculating revenue generated versus the cost of SEO efforts.

  - Example: Your SEO program cost $10,000, but it generated $50,000 in additional revenue, resulting in a 400% ROI.

  - Tip: Calculating ROI can be a little bit of fuzzy math (see conversion rate) but you can do it, especially if SEO is your first running program. Don’t forget to include OpX and CapX (operations and capital expenses).

7. Backlinks and Referral Traffic:

  - Metric: Assessing the quantity and quality of backlinks.

  - Example: A high-quality guest post on an industry-leading website has brought 500 new visitors to your site through referral traffic.

  - Tip: DO NOT BUY LINKS. Most linkfarms sell low quality, “no follow” links. Earn your links by creating awesome content (like the Search Engine Land Periodic Table of SEO Factors) and cultivating relationships with industry experts.

8. Mobile Optimization:

  - Metric: Monitoring mobile traffic and rankings.

  - Example: After implementing a mobile-friendly design, mobile traffic has increased by 25%, and mobile rankings have improved significantly.

  - Tip: Use the tools within your website development framework to optimize your site. Use the tools in AMP. Do not create a separate mobile site, it’s just too hard to keep them updated.

Monitoring and Reporting:

SEO is an ongoing journey, and adapting to industry trends and algorithm changes is vital. Remember SEO takes time, ongoing effort, and diligence.

Regular monitoring and reporting are pivotal to assessing SEO program success. Utilize industry-standard SEO tools like Moz, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to track KPIs. Create comprehensive reports to illustrate progress and provide actionable insights.

Measuring the success of an SEO program is a multifaceted effort that demands an ongoing, holistic approach. Establishing clear goals, tracking relevant metrics, and continuously evaluating progress, you can effectively create an SEO program that will benefit your organization for many years.