Tracking and Measuring Your SEO Performance

Measuring the success of SEO technique is time-consuming and difficult. This difficulty is due to the several ranking factors that are used as criteria. Because of it, you can’t point to precisely the factors that actually turn up the light for you.

Here is the thing: as difficult as it may seem, there are some ranking elements you can track to mitigate the difficulty. As a result, you are able to measure and improve the performance of your SEO techniques.

For tracking and measuring the SEO performance, 5 key elements are provided in this article. Also, check out this article for the type of tools you may use to measure the metrics. Without any more delay, let’s dive right in.

1. Overall performance measurement

This aspect focuses on the overall SEO traffic generation. Since the primary goal of setting up an SEO campaign is to generate more traffic, it is imperative to measure where the traffic originates.

Moreover, you need to distinguish between new and existing visitors. Distinction provides knowledge about the number of visits your contents acquire on a weekly or monthly basis.

When setting up a dashboard, it should contain these elements for a quick glance:

• Unique and returning visitors
• Referral sources
• Page view/visit
• Keyword searches
• Keyword ranking

2. Content performance measurement

Content performance is the process of analysing the effectiveness of the contents of your web pages. Usually, web contents are meant to entice, persuade or entertain readers. The content you place on your website should serve one of these purposes. Otherwise, there may be a lack of interest shown by your website visitors.

In essence, it is vital to measure how users are engaging or interacting on your website. If more visitors open a particular page frequently, that signifies relevancy of the page. Moreover, it shows that your contents are valuable.

To determine the success of your website contents, several things to watch out for are listed below.

• Top visited pages
• Unique and returning visitors
• Number of request or contact by visitors
• Bounce rate
• Average time spent on each page
• Number of shares, likes and comments (if available)

3. Geographical analytics

Where your website visitors are based is an essential part of designing customer target analysis. With an overview of the places they live, you can set up a separate campaign that targets those areas.

Let’s say you target the European market as a whole. You can include geographical metrics on your custom dashboard. The metrics show you the top countries/regions your traffic stems. Instead of continuously targeting the whole of Europe again, you can shift focus to the countries on top of the list.

• Top visits by continents
• Top visits by countries
• Top visits by regions/cities

4. Technology and device analytics

With a little bit of experience in web development, you will know the essence of technological preference. In this case, you need to know what devices your visitors are using to access your web pages.

More importantly, the display of your contents varies across different browsers. This means some browsers may not be compatible with the code that is used to develop your website. It is highly recommended to use generally accepted codes on your website.

For example, CSS grid layout is not yet fully supported by all browsers as at May 2018. So, coding with CSS grid will have an impact on how your contents are displayed. If your visitors are using browsers that are not compatible with your design layout, it becomes stressful for them to interact on your website fully.

Another example is the use of apps. In case you want to develop one for your business, know the operating system (OS) appearing most on your analytics. If you have more visitors accessing your web pages through iOS or Android phones, it will be wise to build an app for the platform where you have most of your audience.

In this sense, you need to know the following regarding technological usage metrics:

• Type of device: desktop, tablet or mobile
• Types of OS
• Types of browsers used in accessing your web pages

5. Leads and conversions

Leads and conversions are mostly the sole aims of running any marketing campaign. While conversions vary by business-to-business or project-by-project, measuring the outcome of every campaign is essential.

To measure your leads and conversions, calculate how much is spent generating leads in comparison to how many are converted.

• Total number of leads
• Total number of conversions
• Percentage difference
• Profit margin or Return on Investment (ROI)

Wrapping up

The most profound thing about SEO is, the more you work, the more you learn. So, you need to prepare your mind to implement the right technique. If it works, apply it to other pages on your website. Otherwise, change and test another.

Although website owners have a different end goal for running an SEO campaign, the tracking and measuring are the same. The best way to start is to measure the overall performance of your website. Then take a gradual step further into other elements.

In case you are interested in my SEO service or need support, drop me a message. I will get back to you as soon as possible.