One of the biggest mistakes a company can make with their SEO program is failing to actually monitor the performance in an effective manner and ongoing basis. You would be surprised just how many of my clients believe they know where their performance is at, but when we begin to dive into the deeper analytics we find that it’s quite the opposite. A true analysis of organic search performance must be backed up with data.
Here are a handful of the KPI that we monitor.
Rankings
This metric shows the opportunity for traffic. There can be no organic search traffic if the webpage does not appear prominently on the search engines. This metric has historically been the Holy Grail for SEO but its complicated. There is still some value with rankings. However, with localization and personalization of the SERPs it is much more difficult to trust that a page one ranking in Los Angeles will be a page one ranking in New York City. That being said, there is still significant value to monitoring rankings, as long as the software that we use is checking from the same location or IP address each time. If we have a page that ranks at #17 one month and pops to #3 the next month, we know that things are working. If we were to see the inverse, it is a red flag that something is wrong and we need to check things out.
Impressions and Clicks
Google Search Console gives us some valuable page-level information that comes straight from their services. They provide us with impressions, which is the number of times that the page was shown in the search results. They also show us clicks, which is number of times that those impressions led to a click through to the webpage.
Traffic
This is arguably the most valuable metric for organic search as it shows that we are converting the visibility in the SERPs into actual traffic to the website. It’s important to look at the monthly visits, sessions or users (in Google Analytics) each month. We obviously want to see that number grow each month. However, we also want to see the percentage of organic search against the total number of visits grow, or organic search contribution. We also want to compare that against the other marketing channels such as paid search, social, display, and the others. There is nothing more rewarding for an SEO team as when we can show that the organic contribution is growing even when other channels may be struggling.
Revenue
This is the bottom line. In the end, we are in this to make money. If rankings are up, and traffic is up, and organic revenue is up then everyone is happy. But if the first two are up and organic revenue is down then something is broken. It is generally a sign that the content is not doing it job with converting the traffic that is being sent to the site. It may be time for some Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
Impressions, clicks and conversions are generally easy to set up. However, accurately attributing revenue back to those metrics are often more challenging. Many platforms, such as Google Analytics, allow us to insert an average dollar per conversion number. But that provides only an estimate at best. The most accurate method is when there is a direct connection between web analytics and other business software that can insert conversion revenue back into the analytics. When this connection has been made, the power of web analytics really comes alive.
Ultimately we need to get a process in place where we can report on total revenue broken down by channel so we can measure important KPI such as cost and revenue per visit, cost and revenue per conversion (acquisition), average revenue per team member, or many others. At the end of the day leadership need to see the ROI for our department.
Every client that I partner with will see Monitoring and Reporting as a priority. I want to be clear where we are winning and where there is room for ongoing improvement. No one wants to hear bad news, but that is the point where the traffic trend begins to turn to good.
If you are unsure of your SEO program’s current performance, or have question regarding what is being reported to you, reach out and let’s take a closer look under the hood.