Almost all the marketing agencies claim that they provide “measurable results” from their SEO strategies and work. But the major question is, “how are the results defined?” One of the common practices in SEO is using the raking report which includes the list on target keywords ranking, and the parallel change in ranking for the given period. The other side of the story is that the single metric rankings of the reports provide only a part of its insight and often does not correlate with the business results.
Each business undergoes a unique set of situations and events. While a few of them face minimum competitive position yet need urgent leads, others are well established and faring well. The market leaders experience the blue open opportunity. Several businesses might even look out for expanding to a completely new product range and set a new client demographic target. For businesses as these, only the keyword rankings define simplistic success that is often short-sighted. Based on varied possible objectives, the business owners should be clear about the needed outcome. Likewise, they should take care of the indices aligning genuine results for the business.
Similar to a strong investment portfolio, the SEO needs to recognize the significance of both long-term and short-term outcomes. The shares with high performance deliver capital growth for long terms and return dividends for the short-term. Likewise, good SEO ought to generate short-term returns, which include leads, conversions, and revenue growth, along with building and developing a continuously expanding digital footprint. The digital footprint is a highly treasured digital asset that often increases business equity significantly over time.
In this light on measuring SEO, we shall talk about five metrics collectively representing genuine value for SEO along with rankings.
I. Growing the Organic Search Engine Traffic
The general rule of SEO binds it to deliver constant traffic growth while it also has to consider the traffic quality. While the site could have good traffic increase it is possible that the traffic could be on the non-targeting pages, or else from the non-targeting audience. These factors have to be measured correctly to generate correct results.
Google Analytics Account shows the changes in organic traffic changes when the SEO experts follow – Acquisition → All Traffic → Channels.
II. Growing the Search Engine Traffic For Each Page
Understanding the business goals is the expertise of SEO specialists. They have to deliver more than following the marketing strategies’ standard checklist. Jim Collins’ BHAG concept, that is Big Hairy Audacious Goal serves the purpose – it is designed for capturing the medium to long term ambitious goals to motivate the actions. Defining BHAG properly enables its ability on aligning the business strategy as well as marketing activities.
The website content strategy has to support the business goals with each web page contributing to the prime goal. Traffic measurement at a particular web page level helps in identifying the purpose of the content over time. For checking the changes in the search visible after the SEO works, the specialists visit Google Analytics Account: Acquisition → Search Console → Landing Pages. Then they check the Impressions and Clicks.
III. Growing in Search Engine Traffic by Per Keyword
Keywords are reflections of what the users are searching for and how are they finding online. Thus, the keywords provide insight into the quality, intent, and relevance of the traffic visiting the site. The SEO specialists can understand the highly relevant, demanded and competitive keywords by researching the keywords effectively. Achieving the ranking outcome right within the timeframe and budget is necessary, and it is from the keywords that the website page hierarchy is planned. This website page hierarchy is to deliver optimum content logically and clearly on the correct pages with apt ranking potential. Although the keyword ranking reports could demonstrate the change in ranking yet it does not reflect the actual changes in traffic which are the results from the keywords. The SEO specialists can understand the audiences by monitoring the progress of the ongoing keyword, and decide the effectiveness of the work on the particular keyword level.
The Google Search Console shows only 75% of the actual data on keyword, and often it is minimum as 30% based on the traffic volume. To check whether the SEO work has generated any traffic changes for specific keywords, the SEO specialists check the Acquisition → Search Console → Queries.
IV. Growing The From the Search Engine Traffic Conversion
The conversions are the prime base for several businesses that concerns achieving real inquiries from potential clients. Conversions generally arrive in the form of inquiries through phone calls, website form submissions, and email. Measuring the lead sources could have been difficult in the past, but now the software on tracking and attribution helps to provide greater transparency. This transparency is achieved by collecting more correct data with lesser spam submissions and phone calls from the overseas telemarketers. SEO helps to achieve higher results by analyzing the traffic sources as well as the produced outcomes.
To check whether the visitors from search are taking actions, the SEO specialists follow Conversions → Goals → Goal URLs. Organic traffic is even segmented.
V. Growing the Search Engine Traffic to Support the Pages Assisting Conversions
Looking closely at the website conversions, the common practice is to check the trends presented in the page visits, which lead to conversions. The pages have to be supported to assist with conversions. When the pages attract the organic search traffic but do not credit the ultimate conversion, then the reasons have to be measured and tracked. The measuring and tracking demonstrate the progress and even identifies the opportunities to increase the leads and conversions further.
The skilled SEO specialists use varied metrics for identifying the trends. Then they strategically create the essential actionable tasks like –
- Recognizing the content opportunities to expand the search topics which were missed
- Recognizing the call to actions which are missing on the underperforming webpages
- Identifying the UX as well as the conversion insights which can be properly used on similar pages
- Understanding the user intents better for proceeding with the business at hand
- If there are, then directing the paid budget on media towards the supporting pages which are rendering higher performance
- Managing the content style or volume of the underperforming web pages based on the trends shown by the effective pages.
The SEO specialists can understand whether the content is fruitful enough to attract more visitors from the search are even helpful to attract the inquiries by looking at Conversions → Goals → Reverse Goal Path (The pages in the goal path are seen after segmenting for Organic traffic).
Conventional SEO strategies are still now relevant but the strategies have to be measured carefully. The real business goals have to guide the tactics. So, the genuine SEO strategists follow the methodology towards delivering logical and strategic objective series and also measurable key outcomes to generate higher traffic, leads, and conversions.
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