What Are the Top Metrics SEO Providers Should Be Tracking
Have you ever heard of vanity metrics in SEO? Vanity metrics are metrics that do not offer any meaningful insights. They are not actionable because they don’t apply. Companies offering SEO services are susceptible to chasing vanity metrics if they do not know which metrics pertain to the campaigns they are working on.
It is in an SEO provider’s best interests to get to know clients as intimately as possible. Different clients have different SEO needs. But that is not all. A client may have different needs from one campaign to the next. If an SEO provider does not understand his clients, he will not know what metrics are important.
The experts at Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing explain that most SEO campaigns come with unique metrics that do not apply to other cases. But there are also some standard metrics that are nearly universal in SEO services. Here they are:
1. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the proverbial granddaddy of them all. Increasing organic traffic is the whole point of investing in SEO services. By definition, the practice of SEO optimizes a client’s performance on-site like Google and Bing. When that happens, organic traffic increases.
Tracking organic traffic can answer a lot of questions. The metric can reveal where traffic is coming from, when it is arriving, and more. It can even reveal how to improve a website by identifying key weaknesses.
2. Keyword Performance
Tracking keyword performance is as crucial as tracking organic traffic. Why? Because keywords are the lifeblood of modern search engines. Google, Bing, and all the rest still rely on keywords to determine content value and relevance.
A big part of keyword performance is ranking. Proper tracking reveals how well each chosen keyword is doing on sites like Google and Bing. The data informs SEO providers in terms of future keyword selections.
3. Quality Backlinks
There has been considerable debate over the years about the importance of quality backlinks. Yet we know that Google still considers backlinks when trying to understand page relevance. Furthermore, because Google came out and pushed relevance in its Helpful Content update a few years back, it is apparent that quality backlinks still matter.
Backlinks are extremely helpful to SEO. But it’s not quantity, its quality. A high-quality link creates relevance between the two sites, thereby establishing online authority. Search engines want to see that.
4. Visitor Engagement
Getting visitors to a website is just the starting point for SEO services. Once there, the client expects visitors to do something. Tracking visitor engagement metrics reveals exactly what visitors do.
The information can be put to use for any number of purposes. SEO providers can use it to fine tune the user interface, make better use of calls to action, modify content to be more useful, etc. Tracking visitor engagement is all about learning what changes can be made, changes that encourage visitors to stick around longer and do more productive things.
5. Page Speed
The final metric on my list is page speed. Some time ago, Google announced that it would start giving preference to websites with faster load times. They did so in response to the growing number of people using mobile devices to surf the internet. Today, page speed remains one of the top-ranking factors in all of SEO.
If your organization is paying for SEO services, do you know what types of metrics your service provider is tracking? Have a sit down to go over each metric and its usefulness. Track the right metrics and you get meaningful data you can do something with.