Since all goals should be measurable that includes the results you want to receive from your SEO efforts. After all, there is really no point doing something that doesn’t provide results, right? If you don’t know whether you’re seeing results from your work it will be harder to keep it up, and you could be wasting your time focusing on the wrong things. Therefore, set up everything you do with measurable goals that are easy to track so that you can get the information you need.
Here’s what you need to track.
Referrals from Search Engines – Using Google AdWords and Analytics you can track referrals from search engines. You want to know how much of your visitors came from search engines vs links from other places.
Visits Referred from Specific Search Terms – You can also use analytics to find out exactly which search terms are working best to send traffic to your site from searches by your audience. When you know what search terms, are working to send traffic to your site you can also figure out if that search term is causing bounces or if people who use that term are sticking on your site.
Conversions of Specific Search Terms – You can also track conversions of specific search terms so that you know what percentage of your conversions came from a specific search term. That’s great information to have because you can then use variations of that keyword to improve conversions.
Pages Receiving a Visit from Search Engines – Another metric that is good to track is which pages, and how many pages you have that are getting hits from search engines due to a search from your target audience.
Growth – Using analytics you can also track growth. How many visitors are search engines sending you today compared to when you first implemented your keyword strategy? If there is a big difference now compared to before you started that’s important.
Bounce Rate – Sometimes if you’re haven’t done keyword research and audience research properly you may get a lot of traffic for a keyword that just bounces off your site. That is a sign that either the keyword is wrong, or the content on the site is wrong for your audience.
Backlinks – Find out who is linking to your site and what pages they’re linking to. This is a great way to find out if you’re growing in authority. When people link to your long-form content (Epic content) as a good source that is a good thing.
Time on Page – How much time are people spending on your pages based on what page they linked to your site from? If they’re spending more time and going deep that signals that your internal linking strategy is working too.
SEO takes time but depending on your strategy it can start showing results faster than you might think. This is especially true if you use long tail keywords and keyword phrases that your target audience will use to find you. That’s why it’s so important to find out where your audience hangs out, and then use the terms they use to discuss this niche, their problems, and the solutions you offer to them.
