Your value from SEO campaigns as a website owner lies in your ability to demonstrate your results in light of your overall goals. However, it is surprising how most website owners still find it difficult to track the success of SEO, even with so much information on the best practices of website optimisation. Most fail in monitoring their performance because of their consideration for one metric, and when the results aren’t as desirable, they begin to wander off from the SEO efforts.

SEO tracking should however not be as overwhelming, but only if you follow through with specific performance metrics that are indicators of your success about the SEO efforts you have put in place consistently. Here are some of the SEO metrics you need to measure to gauge the success of your SEO campaign:

Keyword rankings

Tracking the keyword rankings is a reliable metric to bank on as regards the success of your SEO campaign. Keywords go a long way in putting you on the same page with your target audience, and in improving your visibility on search engines.

Check whether you are targeting the right keywords or not, by determining whether your site shows up in the search results of your target keywords. The best approach to nailing it on keyword rankings is to lean more toward less competitive keywords by embracing long-tail keywords. The goal is to determine how many keywords your site ranks for and whether your position on search engines is improving.

Organic Traffic

The primary reason why most website owners are ambitious with their SEO campaigns is to improve their organic traffic, which then legitimises it as an SEO metric to consider.

Over the period which you first launched your SEO campaign to the moment of measuring performance, there should be a significant improvement in your organic traffic. You can track your traffic flow through Google Analytics. You should be keen to monitor the source of most of your traffic flow and the content that attracts the most traffic.

Link quality and quantity

Link building is a fundamental concept in successful SEO practice, which makes it an important metrics to consider. Backlinks go a long way in boosting your credibility and legitimacy, domain authority, and visibility of your website.

The more your websites get linked to, the more success you are attaining in your SEO campaign. However, you do not only want to acquire many backlinks but those of high quality. Analysing your backlink quantity and quality allows you to check on your link-building strategy in consideration of whether or not your sources are credible enough, and how cost effective your plan is.

You also are in a better position to mine for link-building opportunities and to get there; you can use Open Site Explorer tool. 

Bounce rates

Bounce rates, also known as exit rates, have a massive impact on the performance of a site. If people spend more time on your website, it means they find it valuable, and that is a positive indicator in the performance of your SEO.

You want to again bank on the Google Analytics tool on the Behavior section, so you can have a clear picture of which web pages on your site are experiencing a higher bounce rate than others by examining the average time users spent on a particular page. Remember, the time spent should be substantiated against the type of web page. For instance, a page featuring long-form content with a time lapse of 30 seconds is a fail, while a landing page with brief information would be considered successful at the same time.

New visitors and returning visitors

Since traffic flow is a concern, it matters to be a little keener on the nature of the traffic. New visitors on your website implies that your content was highly shareable and your efforts paid off in reaching a broader audience. On the other hand, returning visitors suggest a loyal fan-base, which is a direct translation that your website was valuable to them, so they came back for more.

These two metrics are valuable indicators of customer satisfaction and audience reach, and you can again rely on Google Analytics to accomplish this.

Click-through Rate

While your site may be on top of search engines, it matters the click-through rate your snippet receives. Ideally, if many people do not find your website to be relevant to their queries on the first impression, they will not click on it, even if it is the first of SERP.

The higher your click-through rates, the more traffic flow diverts to your website, which makes it an essential measurement metric. Employ Google Console to analyse the search analytics by checking the click-through rates and impressions for your posts.

Domain Authority

Domain authority is something a brand builds on over time, but it is a great pointer to successful efforts in matters of SEO. Ideally, the more authoritative your website’s domain is, the more trustworthy your site is to audiences and in the eyes of search engines.

A tool like Monitor Backlinks can help you to check your domain authority, depending on your industry. Remember, the more competition there is in your industry, the harder it will be to skyrocket your domain authority.

Sales

Sales is an obvious metrics in that, an increase in the sales made indicates success in SEO campaigns.

More sales communicate that you have reached a much wider audience, persuaded more people with quality content, and achieved a significant audience satisfaction in your products. You can use the reports from Google Analytics to examine the purchasing behaviour and activity on your site.

Now you do not have to worry about how to keep track of your SEO progress because with the eight SEO metrics mentioned above; you can proceed like a boss. For more on SERP tracking, check out https://serpbook.com.