67% of all clicks go to the first five organic search results, which is what makes fighting for those top spots in search results so competitive. Once the trust and authority of a website have been established, it is a completely free way to gain credibility, leads, and conversions. Each website and business will have its own SEO goals and will therefore need a bespoke SEO strategy.
The increasing demand for search engine optimisation (SEO) is due to its ability to establish the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of a website. The reason for this is to ensure searchers find exactly what they’re searching for.
An SEO agency can get to know your business and its goals to implement and optimise your website’s visibility.
There are however a few common key performance indicators (KPIs) that you need to know, to spot whether your SEO efforts are working.
Whether you have hired an agency, would like to understand your reports better, or would just like to keep an eye on SEO improvements yourself.
Here are four measurements you need to know to ensure your SEO is working:
1 Keyword Improvements
Make a list of the top 10-20 keywords that you would like your website to appear in the first position for and keep a track of the before, during, and after of your keyword positions. Most businesses looking to improve their SEO will have at least a monthly check or update on how their keywords are performing. A great SEO agency should provide you with consistent communication, including how your keywords are performing.
2 Organic Traffic
Measure the impressions and clicks on your website with a free SEO tool such as Google Search Console as this is a great way to measure the amount of organic visibility and traffic your website is getting. As you begin to improve your website’s trustworthiness for chosen keywords, the higher your search impression share, and therefore visibility and traffic will be. Content marketing efforts such as blogging, social media posts, and press releases should all significantly increase the amount of organic traffic you receive to your website.
3 Engagement Time
Google Analytics is another great tool to measure the success of your SEO strategy. Engagement time is the amount of time a user spends actively looking and interacting with your website. This includes the time spent on your website, the number of pages per session, and whether there were any conversions. The longer a user spends on your website and the lower your bounce rate will indicate how relevant your website is and whether you’re attracting the right audience.
4 Domain Authority
Another free tool to measure your SEO efforts is Moz’s domain analysis tool. Your domain authority predicts how likely you are to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). It is unlikely that you will see massive changes in domain authority, but any increase is a positive sign that your SEO results are effective.