How to Track SEO Performance in 2021

Ideally, you want search engine results to include content for terms related to your products or services. For this reason, SEO can attract excellent traffic to your website.

Whether you are a freelance photographer or a party provider, building an e-commerce site is integral to your inbound marketing plan and digital presence. The implementation of an excellent SEO plan is a perfect start to enhance the visibility of your website, increase organic transport, and attract new clients.

But the first thing you need is an SEO plan to apply. In this tutorial, we will explore basic metrics that marketers may use to measure SEO performance and results.

Below we will examine more closely how you might determine your SEO success.

How to measure SEO in 2021?

If you’ve been in the SEO business for at least five minutes, you’ve probably heard the saying, “What you measure, you move.”

It means that the first step in assessing the efficacy of your SEO strategy is to know your numbers.

You can easily track hundreds of metrics. Google employs its algorithm with over 200 ranking variables. But it’s advisable to focus on just a few, to begin with. Determine the most crucial metrics for your business and monitor these measurements periodically.

1. Organic Traffic

This KPI evaluates how many visits from organic search results you get on your website.

It is one of the most important indicators since its growth indicates that you have fulfilled your main SEO objective; to increase the number of visitors on your site.

Go to the report ‘Audience > Overview,’ click on the Segment Add,’ and select the field ‘Organic Traffic’ to find this metric.

2. Search Rankings

You’ll reach other targets such as traffic, leads, and conversions once you receive the higher search rankings.

So if your ‘Jeans’ website is ranked #1 in the ‘thin vertical black and white jeans for women’ sector, your site traffic will not dramatically improve.

You can watch how your keyword search positions change using tools like Serpstat or Ahrefs. You only need to input your domain, select the SERP type, import the list of keywords, and start tracking.

The reports will give you information on your present positions and how they have changed. You can also choose the domains of competitors and get notifications for the keywords tracked, this way you can see how your site compares.

3. Search Visibility

The visibility of the search engine reflects how often your domain is displayed in keyword search results.

Tracking search visibility, even before your site attracts visitors, you can see the beneficial aspects. This score can be an essential driver for all your SEO activities. The visibility score for search engines is essential if you are to check the website optimization early outcomes.

You’ll notice the Total Impressions score in the performance report.

4. Link

For content marketers and SEO specialists, links should always be seen as a leading SEO statistic. Backlinks are now one of the critical criteria driving search rankings.

So, the more connections you gain, the better, right? Not exactly. You fail to boost your site authority by acquiring low-quality links and degrading your website ranks.

To guarantee that you create a quality link profile, it is essential to monitor your quality. For this purpose, you will need backlinks analyzing tools. We would recommend starting with;

• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Moz’s Explorer Links
• The Backlink Analysis tool of Serpstat

Each of these tools provides an index of link authority: the more significant the link, the better

5. CTR Organic

The click-through rate (CTR) is a performance indicator that gauges the click ratio to the total number of search results traffic. In other words, high CTR = high traffic.

CTR is also a significant ranking signal for search engine results. For example, if you do not look attractive enough to your search snippets, even high ranks will not help you attract more people. Low CTR tells your website’s search robots not to fulfill user expectations, which leads to a worse ranking.

Concentrated on traffic and rankings, many make a big mistake with this KPI. Follow up on your organic CTR, and you will determine why your strong impressions do not lead to considerable traffic and fix the problem.

6. Branded Traffic

Branded traffic is the traffic of visitors who have searched for your search terms, including your company name. If brand awareness is crucial (and it should be) to your brand, your primary KPI is branded traffic.

This KPI can be tracked with the Google Search Console:

1. Add the Search Console filter to all the keywords related to your brand name (including misspelled words).
2. Track how in time the total number of clicks and impressions changes, or doesn’t change.
3. Rate of Bounce

This measure examines the percentage of your visitors who bounced without taking action on your website.

This is another significant metric, which is a ranking element for search engines. The normal bounce rate should be between 40% and 60%, depending on your industry.

Track the bounce rate of your pages in your Google Analytics overview report to see what results in high rates and attempt alternative ways to find out how you can minimize them.

8. Average Duration of the Session

How long are your visitors spending on your website usually? The average session time is a notable measurement of user involvement on your website.

You can monitor the duration of your session and assess the quality of your site and determine whether changes should be made.

You should construct a more extensive content structure in order to have a longer session: internal connections, breadcrumbs, hamburger menus, etc.

9. Expenditure Per Click

In contrast to paid efforts, Google should not be compensated for every click from organic search results. However, there are additional costs for organic traffic.

These costs can be calculated using the following formula:

Your budget/traffic on your site

Your budget is all the money you spend on optimizing your search engine including SEO, copywriting, etc.

10. ROI

ROI (Return on Investment) is an indicator for all marketing campaigns that you can measure. The ROI for SEO calculation will establish if the net income is worth your money.

The formula for calculating your ROI percentage is here:

(Investment gain – Investment cost)/Investment cost

Please be aware that this metric is typically negative at the beginning. However, you will see the benefits within months with a successful technique.

So the proper definition of KPIs?

It is a waste of time to track all existing metrics at once. You should select the particular KPIs based on your project objectives and focus on those. Here are the major elements for your SEO evaluation when selecting key performance indicators;

• Specify your objectives. What do you wish to achieve? Specify the target of something like ‘increasing the number of visitors by 30 percent by the year’ if you want to drive more guests.
• Budget approval. Specify the amount you can spend on SEO before you begin and don’t go over.
• Choose the correct tools for tracking. Are you ready to buy famous monitoring instruments? Do you utilize CRM systems or Google Analytics? Automate tracking to save time and to receive comprehensive reports.