Search engine optimization is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages, you’re making your website more visible to people who are looking for keywords associated with your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google.
If you thing you only need to do SEO once, you are wrong because SEO takes time. This is especially true if your website is new, or it’s your first real attempt at SEO. One-time successful SEO campaigns will not stand the test of time. Without continuous improvement and maintenance everything falls into degradation. Websites naturally face challenges over time, that is the reason why you should monitor your rankings regularly. However, understanding the cornerstone of digital marketing, otherwise known as SEO, can be a little overwhelming. With everything from on-page to keywords and keyword rankings to off-page factors, it’s hard to know what actions will provide a genuine return on your investment of time and money.
We have to consider 5 metrics to focus on for better SEO optimization.
1) Organic Keyword Rankings
Google is run by one language that we all use – keywords. Keyword research is at the heart of all the work for SEO. Once you understand what keywords you want to rank for and set about doing the work to rank for them, you’ll want to ensure you are properly tracking and measuring those keyword rankings for your site. So, half the battle is knowing the best keywords from the start and then knowing when to shift to a new set of keywords if certain keywords are moving or they shoot to position one and only need a little bit of effort to maintain. It’s always important to keep in mind that Google is a business; they are not just a convenient means for finding information or purchasing products. Recognizing that Google is a business that competes in a free market where consumers have options, it is their goal to become an all-inclusive destination that provides an experience that is so fulfilling, it keeps consumers returning to their search engine. Reaching the target audience via organic search is only manageable when you find the right keywords.
2) Pages indexed in Google Search Console
One thing is certain: Nobody is going to find a webpage in the search results if it isn’t indexed. That’s why you need to pay attention to the number of pages on your website that have been indexed. You should also take note of how many pages are indexed relative to how many pages have been submitted. Again, if you find that a small percentage of your submitted pages are indexed, you might need to manually request indexing via the Search Console. We should monitor our rankings regularly. For most websites this can be done monthly, but for others that engage in ecommerce, this may need to be done more frequently. If you’re tracking dozens of search terms you should consider finding a rank tracking tool to automate the process. One of the nice things about using a tool like this is the reporting.
3) Content Metrics
There’s a lot of metrics to consider when it comes to the content you produce but the top metric to move the needle on those macro metrics, specifically conversions and revenue, is your website’s top 5 pages. This is a metric that like keyword rankings, doesn’t necessarily translate to higher being better. Without measurement, you have no way to know what’s working, what’s not, and how to revise your strategy to amplify the strengths of what you’re doing and eliminate the weaknesses.
4) Conversion
A conversion is an action that occurs on the website, which is a predetermined goal set by the business. This varies greatly depending on the type of business and what the goal of the website is. Each conversion can easily be tracked and compared with the campaign in order to determine the cost of each conversion. From here it can be optimized and changed in order to achieve a lower conversion cost.
SEO campaigns can deliver high rankings and an insane amount of website traffic, but if the conversion numbers are low then it will not be a successful marketing campaign. A lot of this has to do with the website content, layout and call-to-action location. It requires a lot of split testing and diving into the numbers in order to fine-tune a campaign to deliver the highest conversion rate. Even after achieving a high conversion rate the campaign must constantly be evaluated, and changes made if needed.
5) Micro vs. Macro
Let’s first talk about micro metrics and macro metrics in SEO. Macro metrics, these are things like traffic, revenue and conversions. The big metrics you are ultimately after. Smaller scale measurements are things like keywords, off-page and content-specific metrics. Also, what we know to be totally true is that small scale metrics move large scale metrics so try to track and set an arrangement to impact the miniaturized scale metrics above all else, as those will at last pick up you full scale comes about.
Source: www.effectiveseo.net