We work with various companies to help them increase rankings, traffic, and conversions and partner with digital agencies to help them provide best-in-class SEO services to their clients. We ask, “How are you measuring SEO success, and what data are you gathering to determine progress?”
Many companies track the essential elements of SEO: traffic and rankings, but most miss some of the other core data points that should be included in every SEO measurement strategy. Below you will find ten oore data points we monitor for every client to help provide strategic direction for current and future SEO campaigns.
1. Total Keywords Your Website Ranks for
What It Is
Organic reach represents almost all keywords ranking in Google’s top 100 search results. Reach has been typically used in traditional media such as TV and Radio, which sell advertisements based on reach (and frequency).
What It Means
Seeing a positive trend in reach means you’re expanding your footprint in Google and most likely reaching new users.
Where to Get the Data
We get this number from SEMrush. The great news is that this basic SEO report is free.
Go to SEMrush, type your URL into the box, and hit Start Now.
It will bring you to this screen (your domain will auto-populate in the box.) Click on the All Reports dropdown and click on Organic Research.
This will bring up a trended line chart that shows all the keywords you rank for in the top 100 Google positions. If you hover over one of the lines, it will show you a breakdown of the keywords by position.
2. Organic Traffic
What It Is
This is the traffic from the organic search results due to keyword rankings.
What It Means
Organic traffic represents how much traffic your website receives from the organic search results across search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.
Where to Get the Data
You can get this number from Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > Overview.
3. Referral Traffic
What It Is
Referral traffic represents traffic from websites outside the primary domain or subdomains on the primary domain.
What It Means
Growth in referral traffic means you receive more visits from links on other websites, including social, website links, etc. This correlates with content value, linkability, and how well your content marketing works.
Where to Get the Data
You can get this number from Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > All traffic> Referrals.
What It Is
Social traffic represents traffic from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
What It Means
This represents how hard your social marketing is working for you. Growth in this number means your content is valued and shared across networks, and users click on the links within your social media updates.
Where to Get the Data
You can get this number from Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > Social > Overview.
5. Direct Traffic
What It Is
This represents traffic from users who type your URL into the address bar and directly access your website.
What It Means
Direct traffic is usually a result of a marketing campaign or brand awareness and value. The more aware of your business or brand a user is, the more likely they are just to type it into the address bar and not search Google.
Where to Get the Data
You can get this number from Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels.
6. Traffic by Website Section
What It Is
This represents how well each section–or page–on your website is doing based on a specific data requirement.
What It Means
Segmenting traffic by section can help your business better understand which sections of your website are underperforming and which are doing well.
Where to Get the Data
This one takes a little extra work within Google Analytics.
First, you’ll need to understand the URL structure of your website to be able to segment that page within Google Analytics. For example, if all your services pages have /services/ in the URL and you want to know how your services pages are doing, you’ll need to set up a filter.
First, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. This will list all the URLs on your website that are receiving traffic.
Then, above that list, you’ll see a bar that can be used to filter the data set.
Click on the blue link labeled “advanced.” Clicking on this will open a box with criteria you can use to filter the pages. For example, use this area to include (or exclude) pages that contain (end with, begin with, etc.) a particular word.
7. Traffic Year-Over-Year
What It Is
Year-over-year (YOY) compares a date range from one year to another.
What It Means
This metric is crucial for companies that have seasonal businesses. Without monitoring YOY traffic, your data may show considerable swings in traffic patterns.
Where to Get the Data
This number can be found using the date option in Google Analytics.
Click on the date in the upper right corner of Google Analytics; this will expose a dropdown. Choose the initial dates you want to compare.
Then check the Compare To box.
Once this box is checked, you can use the dropdown to choose “Previous year.”
8. Rankings for Priority Keywords
What It Is
Rank tracking is controversial as some SEO professionals don’t feel this is valuable. We agree–to some extent. Your website rankings represent the approximate location a page on your website is ranking for a specific keyword. We say “approximate” because rankings can vary slightly from person to person.
What It Means
It is essential to understand the volatility of rankings and to be deliberate and focus on managing the rankings only for priority keywords (those you have data on), not vanity keywords (those that it would be “cool” to rank for).
Where to Get the Data
You can get this number from any ranking tool. We use SEMrush.
9. Conversion Rate by Source/Medium
What It Is
This represents the source and medium that is contributing toward conversions. Again, you’ll need a goal or conversion tracking set to view this data.
What It Means
Understanding where your conversions are coming from is vital to any marketing campaign. Understanding which channel has the best ROI or sends the most value can help shape strategies.
Where to Get the Data
This can be found in Google Analytics within Conversions > Goals > Overview.
Once in that section, you will see an area where you can select Source/Medium. Select Source/Medium, and you’ll see your goals segmented.
10. Page Speed
What It Is
Page speed can be described in either “page load time” (the time it takes to display the content on a specific page fully) or “time to first byte” (how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the webserver).
What It Means
Page speed has two primary benefits: SEO value and user experience.
For SEO – Google has often said that page speed impacts rankings, but to what extent, we don’t fully know. Slow-loading pages generally suffer from low user engagement, negatively impacting rankings.
For UX – Users will exit your website if a page loads too long. However, several page-load speed case studies have demonstrated that fast-loading sites can significantly increase conversions and boost sales. In contrast, conversion rates drop when page loading time increases from 0-1 to 3-4 seconds.
Where to Get the Data
There are many places to get page speed numbers. We like looking at Google Analytics and Google’s Page Speed Tool.
Google’s new tool can be found here. The tool helps analyze specific pages and provides insights into how to make your pages faster.
You can find data on each page of your website within Google Analytics. Go to Behavior > Page Speed > Page Timings.
Final Thought
We track these essential elements for each client we work with. On top of these, we have added custom metrics that help the business track and manage its marketing efforts online. Please get in touch with our founder directly if you need help defining an SEO measurement strategy for your website.