Key SEO Metrics You Need to Focus On

The SEO landscape has been through so many changes. The various—and sometimes contradicting—recommendations can certainly be confusing to site owners who are just starting to tackle the realm of online marketing. It’s easy to get confused about Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird updates if you’re just a beginner in SEO. This also makes it hard to determine the SEO metrics that you need to focus your efforts on.

Unless you have an extensive team of SEO experts tracking every single metric out there, you will need to concentrate on a handful of key metrics. There’s no need to do the selection randomly, though.

Here are five ways to get the right metrics for your strategy:

Target New Visitors…

 
Your site will not increase its reach, and your brand will not reach more audiences, if you don’t earn new visitors. A study from Adestra and Ascend2 revealed that 46% of marketers stated inadequate marketing budget as a significant barrier to digital marketing success. The good news is you don’t need millions to get new visitors. What you need is quality content.

Evaluate the purpose of each page on your site. Pages should deliver on what they promise the audience; otherwise, site visitors will leave. Your content should have a contextual match with the page and the keywords you are targeting.

In terms of figures, you will see this in the time they spend on your page. Do they reach the end of your article? Are they leaving without clicking on your call to action? That should tell you something.

Check your site’s new visitors through Google Analytics.

But Don’t Forget the Old Ones

 
It’s one thing to target new visitors, but you should not do this at the expense of the old—and loyal—ones. That loyalty may just have an expiration date. Rehashing content and offering nothing of value will drive even the most dedicated customer to the other side of the market.

To keep their interest, track the performance of your site’s CTAs and sessions. Google Search Console will give you an overview of your sessions and how much of it came from new users.

Siteoscope integrates with your Google Analytics account in order to provide you with the metrics you need to track new and old visitors to your website.

Siteoscope Analytics Feature

Social Media is More Important Than You Think

 
Most SEO specialists consider social media as an add-on to digital campaign. Though it will increase brand exposure, it doesn’t offer a guarantee that your sales will improve. This is why 48% of marketers consider social media marketing as the most difficult strategy to implement. Note that 42% of those same marketers believed social media marketing to be effective, even surpassing paid search.

Facebook engagement just might be the key to predicting your organic CTR: they are directly correlated.

Don’t let the numbers discourage you. If you know how to crack social media, you can improve customer engagement and encourage referrals. Your audience wants something human—something with emotions. WordStream affirms this by saying the emotional hook is one of the integral parts of a title format that works.

Build Engagement…

 
It’s time to disregard suggestions to exclude CTR from the site metrics to measure. It’s also time to change those keyword-heavy titles. A quick look at your engagement numbers will tell you users prefer a little creativity.

Here’s a pro-tip: target those long-tail phrases. Don’t be afraid of a little length; it means more variations in crafting witty and engaging titles.

How do you know this strategy is working?

Measure your CTR to see how engaged your site visitors are. Improving your click-through rate has a significant impact on your conversion rate. A 2% improvement in CTR may just give you a 50% conversion rate boost.

Your click through rate can be measured through Google Search Console:

And Go Beyond It

 
There’s a reason your call to action exists: it encourages action, usually a sale. It’s not enough to keep people engaged and returning to your site. What’s the average number of transactions per user on your website? If that’s a low number, it means you are not doing a good job at converting them to paying customers.

After building engagement, offer accessibility. It’s not enough to focus on desktop search. Mobile users are growing in number, and they cannot be disregarded anymore. Monitor your traffic according to device, and see which one is lagging behind. You might be popular for desktop users, but what about the mobile users out there? Top sites receive 56% of their traffic from mobile devices, so this is a good time to test your site’s usefulness on mobile.

Every day, new SEO metrics crop up. You can derive calculated metrics from each set. But don’t let the numbers distract you. The most important metrics to measure will still depend on your site, its purpose, and its niche. Sit down with your team and concentrate your efforts on the metrics that matter to you.

When it comes to consistent tracking and reporting of key metrics, Siteoscope is the tool to use. Sign up for our 30-day trial and get access to our comprehensive tracking tool.