We already saw the basics of SEO in our latter post, as well as how content marketing can help you launch your project in a sustainable and organic way, taking advantage of all the possibilities offered by search engines.
However, today we want to continue on the same lines, because a marketing strategy will never be good if we cannot measure it. A good SEO specialist or marketing agency that knows what it’s doing will not only provide you with top-notch, relevant content to improve your SEO rankings, but will also keep you on top of the most important metrics and how you’re doing.
What SEO metrics to look at to see our performance?
As we have been hinting in other blogs, metrics depend on the channel we are looking at. It is not the same to report on search engine advertising than on your email marketing campaigns or content marketing as in our case.
When we talk about SEO positioning in Google’s results pages (SERPs) or other search engines’ we want to look at the following:
Organic traffic
It is the number of users who come to your website because they have found you in a search engine and have seen that your site will solve their doubts and answer to what they need. These are people who proactively search for your product or service and see you as the best among all the results that appear on the screen.
Here it will be as important to look at the users as at the sessions, as it will tell us if these users repeat and come to our website more than once. Remember that a 1:1 ratio is a sign that something can be improved.
Bounce Rate or Interaction Rate in GA4
The bounce rate in Universal Analytics or the Engagement Rate in Google Analytics 4 will tell us how many of the visitors interact with the page. If a user interacts, it means that they are looking for answers and browsing the web because they see things that interest them.
In organic channels, the average bounce rate is between 40% and 50%. If you’re below, you’re doing great! But, if you are above, you should consider making improvements or reviewing how you are positioning yourself. You may not be showing up for the right keywords.
3. Positions in the SERPs of the search engines
The SERP is the “Search Engine Result Page”. As you know, an SEO strategy aims to position your website as high as possible on the first page. In fact, 28% of clicks happen in the first position on Google and only 12% of users reach the second page. Therefore, if you are beyond the Top 10, you will receive very few (or rather a minimal amount) visits.
To see your search engine rankings, you only need to implement the Google Search Console tool, or similar in the case of other search engines, on your website. There you will find how many times you are seen, how many times you are clicked and in which position you are for each Keyword.
4. Conversions
Last but not least, you’ll want to see how many conversions your organic traffic generates. The conversion rate will depend on your industry, but as you can imagine, the higher the better.
How do you measure the profitability of a content strategy?
With these metrics in hand, we will go to Google Analytics. As everything will be switching to Google Analytics 4 in a few months, we will focus on that platform.
Organic traffic
We will go to the “Acquisition” tab, and then “User Acquisition”, under “Reports”.
Here we can see the number of new users or first time visitors, the interaction rate and the average time on the site. In addition, we will be able to see both the events and the conversions that each channel has produced, as well as filter by specific conversions.
Once we have analyzed this data, we will move on to the “traffic acquisition” tab, which you may find extremely similar to the previous one.
The difference here is that we will see different numbers than before. On the one hand we will see the users, which will generally be above the metrics you have seen before. This is because all visits to your website are counted here and not only those that represent the first time.
On the other hand, you will see sessions, which is an important metric when looking at your retention (although it is not such a straightforward calculation). A higher number of sessions than users tells us that people who find us in their google searches, come back to visit us after their first time. They basically repeat, although it could also be a cookie issue.
Traffic on different pages
Now we want to know what traffic the different pages of our website receive. For that we will have to follow several steps.
First of all, we will apply a filter to our metrics to separate organic traffic from non-organic traffic. To do this, we will go to the top left and create a filter that will only show us the organic traffic that comes from
When we have done so, we will simply have to scroll down to see how many visits our organic channel pages receive. In addition, we will see the total traffic, so we will be able to see the percentage that represents the implementation of our SEO strategy. In the same way, we will see the associated conversions and performance of each of the URLs of our website. This will allow us to quantify and calculate the profitability of our efforts in content generation, off page SEO and other actions we have taken.
Finally, let’s not forget the interaction ratio, which will tell us whether or not the pages are retaining the users who are viewing them. As we have been saying, a very low interaction rate means that we have to consider optimizing that content or simply redoing it with a better focus.
Search engine rankings
To measure whether we are improving our positions in the results pages of Google or any other search engine, we have several methods available.
On the one hand, we can count on the help of an online tool. At Arcomm we are Semrush users, as it offers us the best value for money and also gives us access to tools that help us to be much more operational. Semrush allows us to track the positions in which we appear for different searches, with a detailed analysis of those keywords that we consider to be the most important. There is an initial “Keyword Reserach” work, but once done, this analysis is done regularly and automatically, allowing us to see trends, changes, fluctuations and so on.
In addition, it will alert us of the different Google algorithm updates, whether they are Google Core Updates or minor updates, and will provide us with resources to see the main changes and how to adapt our SEO strategy to them.
The other way, which is the free alternative, is Google Search Console and the equivalent tools of each search engine, such as Bing Webmaster Tools in the case of Microsoft’s search engine. These are tools that we must have installed and integrated into our website. They will allow us to see data such as the number of impressions of our page for different keywords, the clicks we receive and the average position we occupy for different searches.
What will this data tell us? First of all, see if we are making progress with our positioning and if we are moving up in the keywords we are interested in. In addition, the ratio of impressions and clicks will tell us if we have to update the metadata of our website or if they are working in a correct way. Finally, Google Search Console will warn us of technical failures that we may have on the web and will guide us in correcting them to improve the indexing of our website.
Summary
Measuring the profitability of your SEO strategy and campaigns can be as manual or automatic as you like. It is not a difficult process, but there are several metrics to look at when analyzing the content generated and published on your website. As we said, traffic, conversions, how to generate leads and sales, search engine rankings, bounce rates and more have to be analyzed individually, but also together. This way you will be able to see if your strategy is working or if you need to make a decision to improve what you are doing, either by redoing what you have, changing your content distribution strategy, optimizing texts for different keywords or focusing on other keywords.
Obviously you can do it on your own, but we have to tell you that it is always helpful to have an SEO consultant by your side. Experts like the ones we have at Arcomm are specialists in seeing how to improve your SEO and increase your organic traffic without losing sight of your target audience or your buyer persona. They know how to reach the potential buyer and do it in an organic way, without you having to over-invest in advertising.
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