How to Track & Monitor SEO Progress
One of the benefits of SEO is its capability to be tracked through analyzing data. Established metrics let you objectively track the success of your SEO strategy and identify what needs improvement. Whether you monitor your website and SEO on your own or you have someone like an agency helping you, here’s how you can better track your progress and make continual improvements to your SEO.
Depending on your business and what types of SEO progress you want to analyze, there are several key metrics to look for. Here are six of the most important metrics to keep your eye on:
Organic traffic
Organic Traffic tracks the number of visitors to your website from organic search results. This is one of the most important metrics because this is the website traffic that your SEO and keyword rankings are responsible for. If someone inputs a search into Google and then clicks on your website in the search results, that’s organic traffic. Ideally, your organic traffic numbers are steadily increasing over time as your keyword rankings are also improving. You want to look for trends in your organic traffic over time and compare them to your goals. To monitor organic traffic, you can use a web analytics tool such as Google Analytics.
2. Keyword rankings
Keyword rankings show how your website stacks up against competitors in search results pages. The higher your site ranks for specific keywords, the most likely it is that your website will generate organic traffic from those keywords. There are many factors that contribute to keyword rankings including the content on your website, the technical structure of your site, and the meta data that tells search engines more details about your site. To track your keyword rankings and see your improvement over time, you can use a keyword ranking tool such as SEMrush.
3. Backlinks
Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your site. Backlinks are one of the most important elements of SEO, but the quality of backlinks is very important. Backlinks help show search engines (Google) that your site is reputable; however, if your site contains backlinks from non-reputable websites, those can negatively affect your SEO. To have backlinks positively impact your SEO, make sure that you’re only approving them from safe, reputable websites. To monitor the number and quality of inbound links to your website, you can use a backlink analyzing tool, such as SEMrush. Look for an increase in the number of high-quality backlinks over time and remove backlinks that appear to be untrustworthy or potentially harmful.
4. Conversion rate
Conversion rates are a very customizable metric for each business. The conversions you’re tracking ultimately depend on the actions that you want users to take on your website. Conversion rate tracks the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. Look for improvements in conversion rates over time. You can set up trackable conversions in Google Analytics and other SEO tools.
5. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is another very important part of SEO and is the backbone of your website. Users can’t see your technical SEO, but search engines use this information to determine the authority and trustworthiness of your site. Technical SEO and metadata are also used to improve accessibility on your website for users by providing alt text for images for example. Use website audit tools to identify and fix technical issues on your website such as broken links, missing alt tags, and slow page load times. Track progress in fixing these issues over time to improve your website health.
6. Search engine indexing
Indexing is the core of SEO. Before your website pages can appear in search results pages, they first have to be crawled and indexed by search engines (primarily Google). You can use search engine indexing tools to ensure that all of your relevant site pages are crawled and indexed by Google. Google’s free search & SEO tool, Google Search Console, can help monitor the number of pages indexed by Google and the number of crawl errors. Fixing crawl errors is a critical element of SEO as they can prevent your site pages from being indexed.
Wrap it up
It's important to note that SEO progress can take time, and not all metrics will improve at the same rate. It's also important to track your progress in relation to your goals and compare it to your competitors. These six metrics will provide you with important information that you can use to fix errors on your site, improve your SEO strategy, and monitor your SEO progress and success in relation to your overall marketing and business goals.