4 more intelligent techniques to gauge the success of SEO

Simple SEO analytics are ineffective success indicators. Here's how to improve your link, conversion, ranking, and traffic KPIs.

I frequently find myself giving the same answers to inquiries regarding SEO measurement from new clients. My responses typically fall into one of two groups: 

Why and how to improve basic/boilerplate SEO indicators from being bad KPIs.

Which (more sophisticated) indicators should we set up to assess the real business impact?

This post will focus on the first group and demonstrate how to use a sophisticated strategy to transform straightforward SEO KPIs into significantly more potent success indicators. The KPIs I'll go over are:

• Traffic (visits)
• Ranking
• Conversions
• Links

Let's get going.

1. Traffic

As simple as it is to measure SEO traffic week over week, it lacks subtleties that can be seen with a few tweaks.

There is a straightforward explanation for this: brand traffic is typically not a result of SEO. Instead, it is influenced by awareness initiatives, which include PR, programmatic advertising, billboards, and CTV (or linear TV) advertisements. In a nutshell, brand search is a component of your entire marketing mix.

When you identify keywords at the most crucial points of your funnel and rank them according to potential impact, SEOs can excel in non-brand search. This frequently serves as the degree of purpose.

The top of the funnel is roughly represented by educational terms (such as "SEO best practices"), while the bottom of the funnel is mostly represented by transactional keywords (such as "best SEO agency for B2B").

Second, keep in mind that SEO is affected by seasonality just like any other channel.

Setting up month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year windows is essential because of this. QoQ and YoY are preferred over shorter comparisons.

Longer measurement cycles are needed to demonstrate meaningful progress after significant SEO shifts, whether internal or driven by an algorithm change.

2. Ranking

You will only have a vague picture of the total success of your campaign if you rely solely on snapshots of your current keyword rankings.

Instead, think of the following: 

• How are the MoM, QoQ, and YoY rankings for your target keywords?
• How are different pages ranked?
• Do you actually reach milestones?
• What patterns do you see?

You can track your progress over potential calendar events and seasonal changes by evaluating rankings over time.

Look at individual pages using Google Search Console rather than a blended portfolio influencing a keyword, which provides less useful data. You may then determine which particular features are having an effect on rankings for a certain keyword.

There are different types of ranking modifications depending on the milestone. Going up one position from the top of page 2 to the last position on page 1 of the SERPs may have more of an impact than moving up 50 positions from 61 to 11.

Last but not least, look further to determine the real impression and click deltas that any ranking adjustments are causing. This also takes into account outside developments. Consider, for instance, that without a change in your position for the keyword "video conferencing software," you would have experienced significant increases in impressions and clicks in March 2020.

It will get more competitive as there is more activity surrounding the keyword, which could have a greater influence on your portfolio.

3. Conversions

The 1.0 method of acquisition measurement involves adding together last-click results from organic search. By incorporating GA4, which employs a cross-channel, data-driven methodology with a 30-day acquisition lookback window, you may get a more complex understanding of the credit that is given for conversions.

We could add a lot more layers to this, like monitoring the impact of SEO on the acquisition expenses of other channels.

Let's talk about creating various conversion events that are in line with the level of intent of the keywords you're targeting in this post, which aims to help you get more insight from relatively simple KPIs (for example, "download the guide" for educational keywords or "book a demo" for transactional ones).

When carefully combined with back-end CRM data, various conversion events will have various values.

You should notice an improvement in conversion rate and get a more precise view of the value those keywords are driving when you use a variety of conversion events that strategically align with your keywords.

4. Links

Links are crucial. They still influence rankings and can be used to gauge the effectiveness of your content.

Nevertheless, link amount is a limited metric. Links are merely a tool to achieve a goal.

The main goal of SEO is to increase relevant traffic and customer acquisition. Focusing only on downstream KPIs rather than combining them with business effect (which is undoubtedly more difficult) would not significantly change the situation.

Focusing on link counts will encourage you to seek out more links. Actual impact should be the incentive.

Counting will cause you to have a quantity bias and change how you manage your SEO services. If you concentrate on company objectives, you'll be motivated to provide value rather than quantity.

Volume is easy. Value is harder.