Top 3 SEO KPI’s
Top 3 SEO KPI’s:
Since the advent of the commercialized Internet, businesses have measured SEO performance by watching their keywords climb the organic listings using keyword ranking reports for Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Keyword Ranking
No doubt this is your #1 key performance indicator for SEO. This is critical because it shows how much your target keywords have improved or dropped in the search engines over time for each SEO campaign. A page 1 listing is the goal given that almost 80% of all search concludes with a visit to page 1, and anything less than a page 1 rank renders your website virtually invisible. The only problem with using keyword rankings as your only KPI is that you could be using keywords that are not the best for the website. If a keyword is ranked on page 1 but has little traffic, it does not drive enough site traffic to benefit your business.
But today with the pace of search engine algorithm changes and continued growth of competitive websites, there are two other KPI’s that you need to benchmark for measuring ongoing changes in Website data that directly affect your SEO campaign performance and overall bottom line.
2. Traffic Volume
Traffic volume is important, but think about quality not just quantity. Is the traffic coming from your target keywords? Is your traffic likely to convert to a lead or sale? Segment your data to see where it’s coming from, find trends and look at other statistics such as traffic sources, site content site engagement and revenue from each traffic source to understand the true value of your marketing methods.
3. Non-brand Organic Traffic Volume
Measure your non-brand related organic traffic to give you a good understanding of how well the SEO keywords are performing. This traffic represents your new prospects-not returning customers. Branded search traffic is good but for SEO, non-branded traffic is your biggest growth opportunity.
Steve Emory, co-author DM Deja vu
President, Managing Partner Emory Digital
Explore posts in the same categories: Google, SEO, Web trafficTags: Bing, Google, Google Analytics, keyword ranking, Keywords, KPI, non-brand organic traffic, Organic search, Performance indicator, Search engine optimization, SEO, traffic volume, Web search engine, Website, Yahoo
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January 25, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Steve,
I am very familiar with keyword rankings and analyzing the quality of the traffic they produce.
I am not sure I have a real picture of non-branded related organic traffic. Can you provide an example?
January 26, 2012 at 8:56 am
The Medicare insurance marketplace is a good example. There is some serious competition here between National brands like AARP, United Healthcare,Prudential, Aetna and others. Lots of consumers when searching for medicare products will naturally use terms like brand names they are familiar with. However, a majority of web searchers will shop by using generic terms like “medicare”, “compare medicare” and “medicare supplement”. These are examples of non-branded search terms that all advertisers must use to compete online.
Steve E.
January 26, 2012 at 10:10 am
Thanks Steve.
Your medicare insurance example gives me a very clear image of non-branded search.