How to Measure the Success of Your SEO Efforts?
Search Engine Optimization is a vital strategy for any business looking to improve its online visibility and drive traffic to its website. However, SEO is a complex and ever-changing field, making it difficult to measure the success of your efforts, especially if you are a beginner.
Fortunately, SEO is not magic, and there are certain metrics and factors you can use to determine whether your SEO campaign is effective or not. With that in mind, below are the most important things you should analyze to assess the success of your SEO. Read on and find out the key SEO metrics you should keep an eye on!
Look At Organic Traffic
If you hire a data-driven SEO company to boost your website ranking, one of the first things they will do is track your organic traffic. Organic traffic is the number of visitors who come to your site from a search engine, such as Google, without clicking on an ad.
These consumers want to find something specific on the internet and are more likely to convert into paying customers if you have a solution they are looking for.
To track your organic traffic, you can use Google Analytics, a free tool provided by Google. Simply create an account, select your website, and choose the date range you want to analyze.
Check Out Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Another metric that can help you assess the success of your SEO campaign is your website’s click-through rate (CTR). CTR is a ratio that measures how often people who see your listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs) click on it.
A high click-through rate means that your website is relevant to the user’s search query and will likely rank higher in the future.
Analyzing your click-through rate is relatively straightforward if you use Google Search Console. All you have to do is find the ‘Search Analytics’ section and click on the ‘CTR’ box to see how often your listing was clicked on.
It should also display your best-performing pages and keywords — both of which can give you valuable insights into your SEO campaign.
Take a Look at Dwell Time
Dwell time is the amount of time a user spends on your website after clicking on your listing on the search engine results page. It is a good indicator of the quality of your website and its ability to provide relevant and helpful information to the user.
If a user clicks on your website and then quickly goes back to the SERPs, it means that your website did not meet their expectations, which may negatively influence your ranking.
To track your website’s dwell time, you can again use Google Analytics. Look for the ‘Average Session Duration’ section, and you should be able to see the typical amount of time users spend on your online platform.
Monitor Your Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your own website. They are one of the most important ranking factors in SEO, as they show search engines that your website is popular and trustworthy. The more backlinks you have from high-quality websites, the higher you will rank in the SERPs.
It’s also important to keep an eye on the number of backlinks you lose over time. This can happen for various reasons, such as when a website that links to you goes offline or when a website changes its URL structure. Losing too many backlinks can harm your SEO campaign, so rectifying the situation as soon as possible is essential.
Track Website Authority
Website authority is a metric that measures the strength of your website on a scale from 1 to 100. The higher your website authority, the more likely it is to rank well on the search engine results pages and bring more quality traffic to your site.
Conversely, a low website authority can make it challenging to rank for even the most basic keywords. For this reason, it is vital to compare your website authority to that of your competitors to see how well you perform.
However, don’t be discouraged if your SEO efforts don’t bring immediate results — even if you use quality backlinks and gain a lot of organic traffic, it still takes time for your website authority to increase.
Take Page Speed Into Account
Page speed is the amount of time it takes for a page on your website to load. It is a crucial ranking factor in SEO, as users are less likely to stay on a website that takes too long to load. If you don’t want your bounce rate to increase, you must ensure that your website loads the most vital information almost instantly.
There are several ways to test your website’s page speed, such as using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Remember — any score below 90% means your website needs improvement to achieve better SEO results.
Conclusion
Measuring the success of your SEO campaign is vital to ensure that your efforts are paying off. By tracking the right metrics, you can get valuable insights into your SEO campaign and make necessary changes to improve your website ranking.
If you want to gauge your SEO success accurately, be sure to track organic traffic, click-through rate, dwell time, page speed, backlinks, and website authority. Doing so will give you a good idea of how well your website is performing and whether your SEO campaign is effective or needs adjustment.
If it turns out that your SEO efforts aren’t paying off, don’t hesitate to contact an experienced digital marketing agency and get professional help with your SEO campaign. Such agencies have years of expertise in the field of SEO and know exactly what needs to be done to improve your website ranking and boost your online visibility. Good luck!