SEO KPIs, or key performance indicators for SEO, help you measure the success of your SEO campaigns. Tracking SEO KPIs helps you spot the areas that need work and answer the important questions about your campaign. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process that needs regular monitoring and improvement.
Read on to learn more about SEO KPIs. In this article we cover:
- What are SEO KPIs?
- The 7 main SEO KPIs to track
- Frequently asked questions about SEO KPIs.
What are SEO KPIs?
SEO KPIs are the metrics used to assess and measure SEO performance. The most common SEO KPIs include organic traffic, keyword rankings, organic conversion rates and more.
The 7 main SEO KPIs to track
If you are not sure where to start with tracking SEO KPIs, begin here. Below are seven of the main SEO KPIs you should monitor, all of which have an effect on your bottom line.
Let's look at each one:
1. Organic search traffic
One of the most important SEO metrics to watch when running an SEO campaign is organic search traffic. Organic search traffic is the number of people who visit your site after finding it in the SERPs (search engine results pages). It is a good indicator of how well your SEO strategies are attracting users.
Organic search traffic does not include all of your website traffic: it leaves out some visitors, such as those who arrived after clicking a link on another site or a paid social media ad. For that reason, organic search traffic is a good measure of how well your SEO work attracts users through unpaid methods and channels.
2. Organic click-through rate (CTR)
Organic CTR measures how many users click on your content in the search results. More precisely, organic CTR is the total number of clicks you receive relative to how often your content is shown in the search results.
Like organic search traffic, organic CTR gives businesses a clearer view of how their website performs in search engines, in terms of how many users see the site compared with how many actually click through to it.
3. Bounce rate
Another SEO KPI to keep an eye on is bounce rate. Bounce rate measures the number of users who leave your site straight after arriving.
Unlike organic search traffic and CTR, bounce rate is a metric you want to keep low.
For example, if 10 people click through to your site and six leave immediately, your bounce rate is 60%. That could mean 60% of people do not find what they are looking for on your website and go back to the search results to find another site.
Bounce rates are a good way to identify pages that need improving and to optimise them so they hold visitors better. In the same way, they help you identify the page elements that catch users' attention and keep them on the page.
4. Conversion rate
Even more important than traffic and clicks are conversion rates. The conversion rate is the share of users who complete a specific action on your site, such as a purchase, a newsletter sign-up or another action that matters to your business.
Conversion rates are an important SEO KPI to watch because they reflect how well your website moves users through your sales funnel. That is why many businesses turn to conversion rate optimisation (CRO) services.
This SEO metric also helps businesses identify the best-performing pages on their site and use the data from those pages to improve other pages that perform below expectations.
5. Exit points or exit pages
Exit points, or exit pages, are self-explanatory: they are the last page a user views before leaving the site. Exit points are useful SEO KPIs to track because they show where and why users left the site.
For example, say many users leave your site from the order confirmation or checkout pages. In that case you can infer that users come to your site, find exactly what they need and go as far as making a purchase.
On the other hand, say many users leave your site from product pages. That could mean your site (or that page in particular) is not doing enough to engage users and push them towards the next step to conversion. It is the second of the three points where a site stops converting.
6. Lead generation
Lead generation is a core KPI for search engine optimisation.
Measuring the number or percentage of leads that come from search shows you the value of your SEO strategy. You can measure this metric easily with key events in Google Analytics 4, for example by setting up an event for when a user submits a quote request form.
If you want to improve your KPI reporting, though, look at qualified lead generation.
This is the number or percentage of leads from search that your sales team considers qualified. Definitions vary from company to company, but qualified leads are often those that your sales team sees as:
- Willing to talk to the sales team
- A good fit for your products or services.
To start tracking qualified leads, you need to connect your technology stack so you can follow the user journey. This means your sales software will show where a lead came from, for example paid search or organic search, so you can track its status.
Most businesses solve this with a marketing automation platform that integrates with their sales team's customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Once that connection is in place, you can measure qualified lead generation without difficulty.
7. Revenue generation
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is talking to executives as a marketer rather than as a business leader. In most cases, your leadership team does not care about your site's bounce rate. It cares about profit.
Note: bounce rate is still a useful SEO KPI because it can affect conversion rates (and the revenue that follows). For leadership, however, it is a metric a long way from the end result.
For e-commerce businesses, Google Analytics 4 is a starting point for measuring revenue. You can track transactions and their monetary value in the free platform.
Hybrid or lead generation businesses, by contrast, will need to integrate their marketing and sales software to measure this metric.
How to track SEO KPIs
Tracking KPIs is one of the best ways to prove the value of SEO and monitor your own performance. One of the best ways to track SEO KPIs is through SEO analytics and tools such as SEO dashboards.
SEO analytics is the process of regularly collecting and analysing SEO data (such as the KPIs listed above) to better understand your website's SEO performance.
SEO dashboards collect data on your website's organic performance and display it through charts, graphs and tables.
Because data analysis is a demanding job on top of running a business, SEO dashboards and SEO analytics tools such as Google Search Console and GA4 make tracking SEO KPIs far more efficient, and they are the first digital marketing tools to set up because they cost nothing. SEO dashboards collect data on your website's organic performance and let you view it in a tidier way.
Want to start tracking your SEO KPIs? Here are some of the best SEO dashboards you can start using today to simplify your SEO analysis:
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Google Search Console
- Ahrefs
- Semrush
SEO KPI case studies
See SEO KPIs at work in these case studies.
Frequently asked questions about SEO KPIs
Find out more about SEO KPIs with these FAQs:
Why do SEO KPIs matter?
SEO KPIs are windows onto the inner workings of your SEO strategy. When you track your SEO score or metrics, though, you need to look at more than one KPI.
A single figure can only tell you so much, but with several metrics you get a full view of the results of your SEO strategy. Analysing different KPIs helps you understand what each one is really saying. One KPI can provide context for the results of another, and the other way round.
When you track your SEO KPIs, do not look at the figures in isolation: keep track of all the KPIs that tell you something useful about your SEO strategy.
What are vanity metrics and what are outcome metrics?
When people talk about KPIs, the terms "vanity metrics" and "outcome metrics" come up often. They refer to two different kinds of metric. One can be extremely useful; the other, not so much.
Vanity metrics
Vanity metrics are figures that make a website look good but say nothing about the real health of the site or the business. In SEO terms, vanity metrics give you little or no information about how your SEO strategy is performing and do not help you plan future strategies.
Outcome metrics
Outcome metrics are the exact opposite of vanity metrics. They give you useful information about the performance of your SEO strategy, which can guide your decisions on future strategies.
As well as giving you a more accurate picture of how your campaign is going, outcome metrics can help you learn more about your audience and how it interacts with your business online.
Improve your SEO KPI performance
Another reliable way to measure and track SEO KPIs accurately is to work with an established SEO agency. Good SEO agencies deal with these metrics every day, which makes them a strong resource for optimising your website for search engines.
Visilay, for example, is an SEO company that gives you professional SEO strategists and current SEO technology to help you optimise your site through tailored on-page and off-page SEO tactics that fit your business's specific SEO goals.
Find out how we can help improve your website's online visibility with professional SEO services: get in touch today.
