Are you pouring hours into your website but not seeing the traffic you deserve? In this episode, I share the 7 SEO metrics that will help you see what’s going on. Whether you’re a seasoned business owner or just starting out, understanding these metrics can help guide you in your SEO efforts. And following the metrics, I talk about one of the most popular questions I get which is, what are good target numbers?
Key Takeaways
- 7 metrics to watch
- What are good target numbers
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Raw Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the small business sweet spot. I’m your host Barb Davids, and this show is dedicated to helping small business owners like you get more organic website traffic and also to help create and distribute content and analyzing the numbers so that we can make better informed marketing decisions. It is action oriented, direct, and conversational. And if you’ve been looking for SEO or content marketing help, please stick around to the very end where I share about the group coaching program, small business sweet spot. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go.
Are you pouring hours into your website, but not seeing the traffic you deserve. Today, I’m going to share the seven SEO measurements that will help you see what’s going on. Whether you’re a seasoned business owner, or just starting out understanding these metrics can help guide you in your SEO efforts. And following these metrics.
We’ll talk about one of the most popular questions I get, which is what are good target numbers.
First up, we have organic search visits. These are the people coming to your site through search engines without any paid advertisements? This metric is the bread and butter of your SEO efforts. It reveals the effectiveness of your content and keyword strategies as a whole.
Watch this number as often as you want, but at least monthly, and definitely watch your trend line here.
How is it performing month? Over month, year, over year and , quarter over quarter.
The second metric we want to keep an eye on is search engine visibility. This is a made up number. Interestingly enough. This is the percentage of time your website is visible in organic search results.
Think of this like market share. If you aren’t visible searchers, can’t click to your website. I don’t look at this number on a regular basis myself, but it’s an option when I’m doing a deep audit.
Third metric there’s new organic users. These are the people previously unfamiliar with your website. Growing this number means you’re successfully reaching new potential customers, expanding your audience base. And not necessarily a monthly tracking number. But maybe quarterly and certainly annually. A fourth metric referral traffic is another key player. It’s the traffic that comes from other sites linking back to yours. High quality backlinks from reputable sites, not only boost your website, traffic, but also enhance your credibility. If this particular channel is in your strategy, then look at this on a monthly basis. However, there’s one catch to this metric and it’s called refer spam or fake traffic. This is when a program, not a real person, visit your website.
Affiliate programs are common culprits. They earn commission with increased traffic by using embedded links that include a code. It gives them. A cut of revenue from products you purchase. You can spot these folks in your Google analytics because they have a super high bounce rate. And many times you’ll see an abnormally high visits number on a single day. Uh, fifth metric and arguably the most popular one keyword rankings.
Knowing where your targeted keyword stand in search results helps you understand your content reach and effectiveness.
This is a metric that can get addictive. So I don’t recommend checking it daily. Unless you’re on a couch potato mission to justify your TV, binge watching and claiming it’s market research. Six symmetric. Is keyword performance. How is this different from the rankings? This metric can give you valuable insights into which search terms are driving traffic to your site. And this metric I recommend watching quarterly.
Although frankly, I like to watch this one a lot, like weekly for some clients. And lastly there’s the click-through rate, the CTR from the search engine results. This metric tells you how compelling your page titles and meta descriptions are urging users to click through to your website.
Lo CTR means people aren’t connecting with the page title and page meta description, or there’s a more compelling one from a competitor.
There isn’t enough oomph in the copy to convince the searcher, to click through to your page. You’re there for falling at the first hurdle. If the search power, see, you’re not attracting people to your site. They’ll keep bumping you down the rankings. Now you might be wondering where and how can you pull these metrics?
All of these can be found in your Google analytics and Google search console specifics are in the links in the show notes for this episode. And now that we know what metrics we need to keep an eye on. What should the metrics actually be setting gold numbers against industry averages can do more harm than good. Every company is different and your industry averages. I may include figures and analysis from businesses much bigger or smaller than yours. For this reason, I don’t believe in industry averages. I glance at them if I need a starting point, but it’s not about getting numbers higher than someone else. It’s about improving your own numbers. Hitting an industry.
Average might be a first goal, but why stop there? I’m always interested in improving numbers. And benchmarking all of these numbers before starting your SEO strategy is vital. That wraps up today’s episode on the essential SEO measurements for your small business. Stay tuned for more episodes. On making your business thrive online.
See you in the next sweet spot. Cheers.
Thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’re looking for SEO and content marketing help, consider joining the small business sweet spot. It’s a group coaching program where you can get answers to your questions about your business directly and clarity around the marketing strategies that you would like to implement in your business.
You can find all kinds of information at compassdigitalstrategies. com. And if you liked the episode, please tell a friend. Cheers.
