{"id":305,"date":"2014-09-17T05:30:43","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T05:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstpagesage.com\/seo-blog\/?p=305"},"modified":"2023-05-06T00:26:09","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T00:26:09","slug":"measure-seo-results-5-kpis-need-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/measure-seo-results-5-kpis-need-know\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Measure SEO Results \u2013 The 5 KPIs You Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you asked the average person how they would determine whether their SEO company is doing a good job, they\u2019d probably say \u201cBy looking to see if my site is ranking better than it was before.\u201d To most, SEO is simply the art of getting your website higher in the search results. In fact, that\u2019s a pretty good literal definition. But if that\u2019s the way your SEO company is actually<\/em> measuring its results in 2015, you\u2019ve got a problem.<\/p>\n

Why, you ask, would it be a problem to use the yardstick of search rankings for an SEO campaign? Isn\u2019t that the point? Actually no, it\u2019s not. The point is revenue. You\u2019re not doing SEO so you can get a shiny Google ranking to take a picture of and hang up on your wall; you\u2019re doing SEO to get new business that grows your company.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In fact, of the 5 most important KPIs in an SEO campaign, none of them are search rankings. Of course, search rankings still matter a lot: they\u2019re a means to an end. They matter in the same way that a tennis player\u2019s swing matters to the outcome of a match. You don\u2019t hear people saying \u201cDjokovich had a really elegant swing in tonight\u2019s match. I forgot the score, but man \u2013 that swing!\u201d You hear them say \u201cDjokovic trounced his opponent in three sets.\u201d That\u2019s what\u2019s impressive: the win. What got him there is quite important, but it\u2019s not the way you measure his success as a tennis player. In the same way, rankings are one of the key mechanics of an SEO campaign, but ROI is the measure of the campaign\u2019s overall effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Here are the 5 KPIs to watch in an SEO campaign:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Non-branded, organic traffic.<\/strong> Probably the easiest way to see how an SEO campaign is doing is looking at the site\u2019s traffic and comparing it to the traffic before the SEO campaign. But you can\u2019t just look at overall traffic, even if it is the first thing you see in your Google Analytics dashboard. Yes, SEO does impact overall traffic but the tidiest way to view the campaign is by looking at non-paid (organic) traffic from search engines. And within that traffic, you\u2019ll want to filter out searches for the name of your company and your key products. After all, your SEO campaign isn\u2019t aiming to increase those kinds of branded searches. Those come from word-of-mouth and PR<\/a>. A great SEO campaign<\/a> will bring qualified, relevant traffic to your site via hundreds of long tail searches<\/a> around the type of product or service your company sells. By using filters within Google Analytics or another analytics program, you can exclude branded searches, leaving you with the most obvious KPI: non-branded organic traffic.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Number of new, high quality links.<\/strong> The lifeblood of an SEO campaign is links<\/a>, and as such, you should be aware of the links that have been earned throughout your campaign. The links should be from generally relevant sites (not necessarily perfectly related, but shouldn\u2019t be out of left field) and almost never from directories, forums, the comments sections of blogs, press releases, or social media sites (these links are not bad like the others, but they typically don\u2019t count towards SEO<\/a>). Depending on your industry, anywhere from 1 to 4 links high quality links per month is good.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Content quality.<\/strong> While content isn\u2019t something that can be measured numerically like most other KPIs, I submit that content quality should be a key area of interest when evaluating an SEO campaign. That\u2019s because truly excellent thought leadership content<\/a> not only delights Google, it leads to new links, conversion, press, business partnerships, speaking engagements, and a whole host of intangibles. Getting that part right can drive every other element of the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Conversion improvements.<\/strong> I\u2019d judge an SEO company favorably any day if they could take a conversion rate of 10% and made it 15%. That could be huge revenue-wise. To most SEO companies, that isn\u2019t even a part of a campaign. To us at First Page Sage and any other competent firm, that\u2019s one of the key pillars of a campaign. Making improvements to landing pages, including blog and article pages, to move people through the sales funnel, is about as important a job as there is in any marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Leads.<\/strong> To the extent that leads is the most you can reasonably expect from your SEO team \u2013 that is, if people\u2019s phone calls and form fills go directly to the sales team and out of the SEO team\u2019s hands \u2013 then this is the bottom line of most SEO campaigns. Although it can be tricky to track leads from an SEO campaign, take the time to do it, as it will help everyone involved to understand the value of the work. Ultimately, no matter what the other KPIs look like, if leads are coming in and they can be traced back to SEO, the SEO folks are doing their job.<\/p>\n

Live by these 5 KPIs, rather than getting bogged down measuring rankings, and your company will see the true benefits of SEO far more quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Measuring the results of an SEO campaign is not as straightforward as you might expect. Read on for the 5 KPIs you really should know when overseeing an SEO campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo-basics","category-seo-faqs","category-seo-roi"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23049,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/23049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redesign.fpsclients.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}