To be able to see the fruits of your SEO work and see the opportunities with optimisation, there are several good tools to use for analyses and reports. Give yourself the opportunity to create a sustainable strategy.

Analysing is a must in order to set goals with your search engine optimisation and marketing. You’ll also get lots of useful insights to use in your strategy. You want clear goals to measure KPIs.

Every website is different and different businesses require unique strategies for their search engine optimisation.

Measure SEO KPIs and see how your website is performing

To see how your search engine optimisation is performing and to set clear goals, you can use a number of KPI metrics. It’s all about getting the right data for your business using the tools available. Several of these services can also be integrated with each other to provide even more specific data.

Organic traffic

This metric is about seeing how many visitors your website gets through organic search results. This is the clearest data you can get. It’s easy to see if you’re reaching your goals with the number of visits your site is getting.

One of the best tools to get data (and statistics) on organic traffic is Google Analytics. In Analytics, go to Audience → Overview, add segments and click in “Organic traffic” and press “Use”.

Now the statistics will be loaded with data for organic results. Here you can see how organic traffic changes over time and how it correlates to total traffic.

Ranking

How do your pages rank in search results? It’s no secret that the higher you get in the results, the more traffic your website will receive.

Search ranking is a crucial KPI metric for SEO because it directly correlates to how well you are doing with your optimisation. When the higher ranking is achieved, other goals will be more easily reached, such as for traffic, leads and conversions.

But it’s also important to make sure you’re ranking for the right keywords. For example, if you rank for “Headphones, black” for a page with a pink microphone, the ranking will probably get worse over time. You want to rank for a page that actually contains “Headphones, black” with this search phrase.

To get data for ranking with your keywords, you need to use one of the available SEO services. Some examples are SEMrush, Ahrefs or Serpstat.

With tools like these, you will be able to see how your site ranks and how your ranking evolves over time. You also have the opportunity to peek at how your competitors rank in relation to you.

Exposure

Search engine exposure shows how many times your website appears in search results for the keywords it ranks for.

By examining your search engine exposure, you can get early indications of how your site is performing in search results. In other words, it is an important key value to keep track of if you want to be at the forefront of your SEO.

To get exposure statistics for your website, use Google Search Console.

In Search Console, you’ll find this report as “Total Exposures” under “Results”. Every time a user visits a search results page that contains your URL, an exposure will be recorded.

Inbound links

Links are a cornerstone of the Internet and so is SEO. In other words, building links to your website is important and should be part of your SEO strategy.

But before you start a link building strategy, there are a few things to consider.

Firstly, you need to recognise the different values of different links. For example, buying a bunch of links from random pages with no relevance will not help you optimise your site, quite the opposite.

What you want to build are quality links. To keep track of your link portfolio and see what value intended link builds can have, it is recommended to use some SEO analysis tools.

Some examples:

• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Moz’s Links Explorer
• SEMrush

With these tools, you can get data on link quality, link authority index and much more.

Learn more about Link Building and how to create a solid link portfolio.

Organic CTR

Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures the ratio of clicks on your links to the total number of users who viewed the search results containing your website. In other words, high CTR = more traffic.

CTR is also an important signal for search engine rankings. If your snippets on search pages aren’t appealing enough, they won’t generate any traffic, regardless of ranking. Low CTR sends the signal “this is not a relevant page” to Google’s algorithms.

Many people fail to include KPIs for organic CTR, but by analysing this data you can make the necessary changes to increase your click-through rate.

Use Google Search Console to create reports you can work with.

Branded traffic

Brand traffic is the traffic that comes via users searching for terms that contain your brand name. If brand awareness is important to your brand (and it should be), then brand traffic should be your primary KPI.

Because this type of search is conducted by people who already know what they want to get out of the result, it is very high converting traffic.

Track this KPI with Google Search Console

1. Add all instances of your brand name as filters in Search Console.
2. Analyse how clicks and impressions change.

Bounce rate

This rate is measured in the percentage of your visitors who bounce off the site without taking any action.

Bounce rate is another important metric, not least because it clearly affects your rankings. Depending on the market you belong to, the bounce rate should be on average 40-60%. If the percentage is higher, it indicates that the pages are not relevant to the search.

Monitor your page bounce rate in your Google Analytics overview report to identify which ones result in high rates, try different methods to see what can help you reduce it.

Average visit time

How long do your visitors usually spend on your website? Is your content engaging enough to keep the visitor longer?

Average visit times on your website are a great tool to see just how well you are engaging the visitor. Do they read full articles, do they click through to more interesting content, etc.

By monitoring the visit time on your website, you can see indications of the quality of your pages and whether you need to improve structure, etc.

To improve visit times, you can create more in-depth structure of your page by adding internal navigation (breadcrumbs), blocks for related content and more internal links.

Cost per click

Unlike paid search advertising (SEM), you don’t pay anything to e.g. Google for organic search results. In a way, these results still have a cost.

Cost per organic click (CPC) defines how much you pay per visitor via organic search results. You can calculate this cost in the following way:

Your budget / Website traffic

“Your budget” is what you spend on all SEO optimisation, SEO experts, SEO services, copywriting, etc.

If your strategy is effective, this cost (CPC) will decrease every month.

ROI

You can use ROI (Return On Investment) as a metric to examine all your marketing campaigns. By calculating the ROI for SEO, you can see if your net profit is worth the investment made in optimising your website.

Calculate your ROI percentage:

(Profit from investment – investment cost) / investment cost

Keep in mind that it’s not at all uncommon to initially get a negative result. But with a successful strategy, you will see positive results within a few months.

Find your key performance indicators (KPI) to succeed with your strategy

Measuring all KPIs is rarely effective. Concentrate on measuring the KPIs that make a difference to your business and its goals. Here are some criteria you can use to choose which metrics you should use to analyse your SEO results and create a strategy.

• Specify your goals. What do you want to achieve? Be specific so you can measure your goals. If you want more visitors, set a target, e.g. 30% more visitors by the end of the year.
  
• Plan and set a budget for search engine optimisation of your website.
  
• Review the tools and services you need to use to create a clear strategy and to analyse your goals. Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console to start with. Then choose the appropriate premium service for SEO.

We can help you!

If you’re an Angry Creative management client, you can prepare a strategy that we can then help you implement on your website. Create a case and make a note of the points you come up with.

Closing tips

To conclude, here are 5 quick tips that should be more or less obvious when working with SEO and marketing your website.

1. Learn as much as you can about SEO from a variety of sources. Don’t miss our series of articles on search engine optimisation in our knowledge bank.
   
2. Keep up to date. A lot changes and fast. Google is continuously making changes that you want to be up to date with.
   
3. Be patient! Effective SEO requires hard work and time, nothing happens overnight. It’s worth it in the long run. Studies show that SEO is what provides the best ROI for inbound marketing channels.
   
4. Avoid dodgy practices at all costs. For example, buying inbound links can often be more expensive than investing in established methods of SEO.
   
5. Do not spam!

Good luck with your analysis and creating an SEO strategy!

Eager to learn more about how to optimise your website for search engines?

Don’t miss our other articles on the subject.

• Keyword Research – How to find the right keywords to rank high.
• Off-Page SEO – How to optimise your site with external links (link building), services and tools.
• On-Page SEO – How to customise your site for the best possible search engine optimisation.

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