According to the 2019 B2C Content Marketing report, 69% of B2C marketing professionals are unable to decipher the SEO KPIs.
Just imagine… Spending hours developing a digital strategy only to be unable to assess its profitability.
Because the SEO KPIs do not have to be a mystery, learn more about these indicators essential to any success.
Definition: what is an SEO KPI?
In its full form, KPI stands for Key Performance IndicatorThat is to say "key performance indicator" or ICE.
Put simply, a KPI is a quantifiable element that measures the success of an activity. Determined before launch, the KPI is the sole criterion capable of evaluating whether the strategy implemented is bearing fruit.
Applied to Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), KPIs measure the effectiveness of digital communication campaigns. Because yes… In digital marketing, it's necessary to step back and assess the actions that were taken.
Imagine for a moment…
Eager to position your website among the top SERPs (Search Engine Results Page or search engine results), you hustle like mad. You commission SEO-optimized blog posts. You painstakingly build your topical cluster in hopes of snagging first place for certain keywords. You're so driven you reach out to influencers to produce sponsored posts.
All these efforts and no way to measure the Return On Investment (or ROI)…
Operating online without SEO KPIs is like letting a boat drift, hoping it will bring you safely to shore. It's utopian, unrealistic, and financially speaking, that carelessness can quickly become a chasm.
Since you have no way of knowing that your Cost Per Click (CPC) is too high or that pages aren't converting, why stop? Without SEO KPIs, your digital communication will have no effect.
Both qualitative and quantitative, the SEO KPIs are a formidable weapon in the hands of those who know how to wield them. Will you soon be one of them? To — finally — have organic search performance that matches your brand, familiarize yourself with these seven SEO KPIs that make all the difference.
What are the 7 SEO KPIs you absolutely need to know?
As a marketer (or multitasking entrepreneur), it is necessary to measure SEO in terms of quantity and quality. Concretely, the SEO KPIs should make it possible to answer the questions: 'What is my real visibility on the internet?' and 'Am I being seen by the right people?'.
5 SEO KPIs to gauge a website's visibility
What if all your efforts were completely useless? What if that semantic cocoon and its SEO blog posts amounted to nothing? After all, maybe despite your efforts, internet users have no idea you exist…
It is to try to answer these questions that the SEO KPIs were created.
1. Organic traffic
In layman's terms: 'How many people regularly visit your website?'. Expressed in terms of daily or monthly visitors, organic traffic is a SEO KPIs absolutely essential.
Note the emphasis on the expression « organic traffic». This is not about visitors who discovered your website via email marketing, Google Ads, or inbound links (backlinks). Only taken into account are internet users who discovered your web page as a result of specific keyword matches in a search engine.
For startups, it can be tempting to put everything into paid ads or Search Engine Advertising (SEA). However, while this strategy can quickly generate views, it is not profitable in the long term.
For success to truly be achieved, people need to be able to find you naturally during their digital wanderings. And to evaluate that, nothing is better than SEO KPIs organic traffic.
2. Number of impressions
Suppose you run an e-commerce store specializing in leather motorcycle jackets. If you’ve worked well on your on-site SEO, each time a user searches for "leather motorcycle jacket," your e-shop will appear in the SERPs.
If in one month your website appears 2,000 times for this long-tail keyword, then its number of impressions is 2,000 views/month. It’s as simple as that.
The number of impressions not only ensures that a website is visible but also that it is well positioned. Take our motorcycle e-shop example. Given the target audience, it would be perfectly pointless to have 10,000 impressions for "women's leather perfecto." It’s highly unlikely that young women looking for a contemporary overcoat will stop by a motorcycle shop. Which brings us to SEO KPIs.
3. Click-through rate
The click-through rate, or CTR, is another SEO KPIs to watch closely.
Thanks to the number of impressions, you can assess your site's visibility. CTR lets you know whether the page seems interesting to users. Note that a good CTR ranges between 0.05 and 5% (source: lejournaldunet.com).
A large gap between impression rate and CTR is never a good sign. Either you’re poorly positioned, or your copy is unengaging. In any case, you need to act before it’s too late. Indeed, if CTR is too low, search algorithms will tend to show the page less. After all, why promote content that so few people find interesting?
Without increased monitoring of this SEO KPIsyou could end up lost in the web’s maze without knowing why…
4. Number of backlinks
Since Google Penguin, the number of backlinks has been one of the three pillars of SEO. Alongside on-site optimization and site architecture, it’s a SEO KPIs that’s worth its weight in gold.
Concretely: which other websites are talking about you? And above all, are they trustworthy?
In digital marketing, it’s accepted that backlink quality outweighs quantity. Thus, a high-DA website will always carry more weight than ten platforms whose DA ranges between 5 and 8. Yes… Even on the internet, "your network is your net worth".
5. Visit duration
Session duration is a SEO KPIs that you don’t necessarily think about, and yet… It’s thanks to it that you can tell whether the content truly meets users’ expectations.
It’s worth noting that this compliance with user requirements can take several forms: loading time, bland copy, a page not adapted to mobile, … There are many reasons why session duration can be too low.
3 SEO KPIs that assess the quality of SEO
You now have confirmation: your website is visible in search engines. But beware, the journey doesn’t end there. Now it’s time to assess whether the prospects Google sends you are the right ones.
1. Google ranking
Admit it: you’ve always dreamed of ranking first in Google results… It’s every marketer’s and entrepreneur’s dream: to be the first link that appears for a specific query.
Knowing that 91.5% of clicks happen on Google's first page, being well positioned in the SERPs is more than a matter of ego. It's what your survival on the World Wide Web depends on.
Imagine for a moment that you are #1 for the query "leather biker jacket". Because of your ranking, you capture 28.5% of users' clicks (source: leblogdumoderateur.com). If the keyword attracts 52,800 visitors per month, you are guaranteed to have 15,048 qualified leads. Among them, some will not resist your sales pitch for long.
A website's visibility and profitability depend on its ranking. Pay more attention to this SEO KPIs sometimes neglected.
2. Bounce rate
The bounce rate is used to refer to the percentage of people who viewed only one page before leaving your website. Also called "Bounce rate", it allows you to determine whether or not your site answers users' questions.
And don't forget: search engines favor sites that satisfy their users.
If your bounce rate is too high, it means either that your internal linking is weak, or that you are not actually creating added value. In either case, this SEO KPIs tells you that it's time to make changes.
3. Conversions
If you've put so much effort into digital marketing, it's in the hope of driving prospects into your sales funnel. To assess their progression from "prospect" to "customer", you absolutely must study this SEO KPIs. Note that conversions can take several forms:
- visit a specific page;
- perform a specific action - for example, subscribe to a newsletter;
- view a certain number of pages;
- spend a certain amount of time on the website;
- etc.
Everything will depend on the objectives set in advance by the marketing strategist.
Our tip for evaluating SEO KPIs
Even for digital marketing pros, it can be difficult to keep an eye on all these indicators. Conversions, number of organic visits, bounce rate... So much data to analyze to review/improve SEO.
The simplest way not to lose your footing is still to use a dashboard specialized in SEO KPIs. The best known is undoubtedly Google Data Studio. After signing up on the portal, you'll get a concise view of your website's SEO progress. Of course, it is far from the only one. But that's another story...
To improve your SEO, don't hesitate to hire a specialist writer on Redacteur.com.
