SEO is something any and all businesses should put a heavy focus on — without SEO, businesses won’t get the rankings and conversions they’re looking for. But because SEO has so many different components, it can be difficult to determine what exactly companies should be focusing on. So here are a few top SEO metrics companies should be paying attention to if they’re hoping to be successful.
Organic traffic
Many companies make the mistake of paying more attention to paid traffic than organic traffic — and while it’s important to make sure companies are getting their money’s worth for their paid advertisements, organic traffic is more important when considering SEO efforts. When judging SEO performance, organic traffic is going to be one of the main indicators of success. Looking at organic traffic will show companies which keywords and links consumers are seeing and actually using to get to the company’s website. Organic traffic actually shows whether SEO efforts are working or not.
Keyword rankings
Keywords are one of the main aspects of SEO. This is why it’s crucial for companies to actually take a look at how well their chosen keywords are ranking. Keyword rankings can show companies how well their overall SEO efforts are performing — if certain keywords are ranking better than others, this can tell companies which keywords to continue working with and which direction to take their SEO efforts in. Additionally, if no keywords are improving on ranking, then companies need to consider choosing new keywords, generally less competitive keywords.
Links
“Google looks at links as one of the main ranking factors, meaning companies absolutely need to have high-quality links on their pages” say the experts at LinkGraph. Linkbuilding is an aspect of SEO that deserves a lot of time and effort. When a company has links to and from other high-ranking pages, that’s going to help boost their rankings. But it’s important for companies to remember that having a lot of links isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially if they’re paid links or created automatically. SEO success will depend on the quality, rather than the quantity, of links.
Mobile traffic
If companies have yet to optimize their sites for mobile, they’re way behind. More and more consumers are conducting searches on their smartphones and tablets, so if a company’s website isn’t mobile-friendly, consumers are going to clink on a competitor’s link. Companies need to know how their links are performing on mobile devices, especially regarding rankings. So companies should take a look at the performance differences between desktop traffic and mobile traffic.
Page Speed
When a consumer clicks on a link to a website, they’re only going to wait a few seconds for it to load. If it doesn’t load quickly, there’s a very good chance that they’re going to leave and visit another site instead. Not only can a slow page speed result in a high bounce rate and decreased conversions, but Google actually looks at page speed as a ranking factor, too. Companies should regularly check their page speeds to ensure they’re where they should be. It’s important to remember that people are used to instant gratification and they won’t wait long for a page to load.
SEO involves a lot of different elements coming together — page speed, conversion rates, traffic from different platforms, links, keyword rankings, and even just the content that’s put on a website all have some impact on SEO success. With that in mind, it’s important for businesses to spread their attention across a variety of metrics to ensure they’re focusing on the whole picture. And these few crucial metrics should be at the top of the list and checked regularly so companies can know which direction to take their SEO efforts in.