How to know if SEO is working is one question many website owners frequently ask, primarily because SEO takes time to produce results. As you already know, SEO is crucial in improving your website’s visibility and generating organic traffic. A good SEO strategy helps your website show up as one of the top results when people use search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to search for products, services, or information relevant to you.
But knowing if your SEO efforts are paying off can be tough, especially if you don’t know what to look for. Although there are many ways to track and analyze your SEO progress, not all are reliable or useful. Some metrics may be misleading or inaccurate. Others may be too complex or technical to understand and act upon.
To make things easy for you, we have compiled this comprehensive guide highlighting key indicators and analytic tools you can use to track and monitor your SEO efforts.
Key Indicators of SEO Success
Organic traffic refers to the number of visitors visiting your website through search engines. Organic traffic is the traffic that you do not pay for, generated solely from search engines rather than from paid advertisements or social media. If your website is receiving more organic traffic than before, it means your SEO strategy is working.
You can use Google Analytics to measure organic traffic. From Google Analytics, navigate to the “Acquisition” tab and select “Overview.” Here, you’ll see a breakdown of all traffic sources, including organic traffic. Google Analytics provides valuable data about the number of visitors to your website, where they come from, and their behavior on your site.
Make sure to filter out other types of traffic, such as direct, social media, referral, and paid traffic, and compare the same period from the previous year to gauge your SEO success. If your organic traffic is rising, it’s a good sign that your SEO efforts are paying off. On the other hand, if it is stagnant or decreasing, you may want to reevaluate your SEO strategies and make some changes.
Backlinks are links from other websites that direct users to your website. The amount of quality backlinks you have is an essential factor in search engine ranking as it helps to establish your website’s authority and credibility. If your website is generating more high-quality backlinks, it means you’re doing good in SEO, and other websites are finding your content valuable and informative and are linking to it.
While backlinks are important, not all backlinks positively impact your SEO. Low-quality backlinks are just as bad as not getting any, and they can harm your SEO. You can use Ahrefs to analyse your backlink profile. You can see how many backlinks your website has, where they come from, the quality score of the links, and their relevance to your website.
Keywords are the specific words or phrases people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for. Keyword rankings are a vital aspect of SEO. When users search for specific terms or phrases related to your business or your services, you want your website to appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your website ranks for a relevant keyword, the more likely it is to get clicked by users.
Monitoring your keyword rankings lets you understand how your website is performing in search engine results pages (SERPs). If your keyword rankings are improving, that’s a good indication that you’re pursuing the right keywords. However, if you’re not ranking for the keywords you’re targeting, it may be a sign that you’re targeting very competitive or irrelevant keywords. To see actual results, you need to use quality keywords already ranking on the first page of SERPs.
Bounce rate is the percentage of people visiting your website and leaving after viewing only one page without interacting with your site. If your website’s bounce rate is high, it means that visitors are not finding what they’re looking for on your website or that your website’s content isn’t engaging enough to keep visitors on the site. But a high bounce rate may not be bad for blogs or news sites; it means that users can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. However, a high bounce rate for an e-commerce or lead generation site indicates that you must rethink your SEO strategy.
Google Analytics can help you analyse your website’s bounce rate to determine if your SEO strategy is improving visitor engagement. From Google Analytics, navigate to the “Behavior” tab and select “Site Content” and then “Landing Pages.” Here, you will see your website’s pages ranked according to their bounce rate, the number of bounces, pages per session, and the average session duration.
You can reduce your bounce rate by:
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that complete a specific action on your website, such as filling out a contact form, making a purchase, or subscribing to your newsletter. Conversion rate is one of the most important KPIs for SEO because it reflects the quality and relevance of your organic traffic. The higher your conversion rate, the more leads or customers you generate from your organic traffic. Conversion rate also indicates how well your website satisfies visitors’ needs.
It’s essential to track your conversion rate to help you assess the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. Measure the number of conversions, revenue, average order value, and other metrics your organic traffic generates with Google Analytics. Analyse the conversion rate data to determine if your SEO strategies drive users to perform the desired actions. If you observe a steady increase in conversions and sales, it suggests that your SEO efforts are attracting the right audience and effectively converting them into paying customers.
Tools You’ll Need to Determine Whether Your SEO is Working
Besides tracking your website traffic, you can use Google Analytics to track how long users spend on a specific page, the bounce rate, and the number of conversions each page produces.
Ahrefs is a valuable tool for tracking your keyword rankings across different search engines. You can use tools like Moz’s Keyword Explorer or Keywordtool.io to identify quality keywords.
SEMrush is a versatile tool that provides valuable data such as the number of keywords your website ranks for, the number of pages indexed by Google and other search engines, the number of backlinks your website has, and the number of organic keywords.
Conclusion
SEO is a long-term strategy that requires time, effort, and patience to see results. By identifying and monitoring the key performance indicators mentioned above, you can determine whether or not your SEO efforts are working for your website. If not, you must rethink your SEO strategy to see the results you desire.
If you do wish to build links for your business site, get in touch with a trusted Gold Coast SEO company such as SEO Web Logistics, who provides eCommerce SEO services, Google Ads services, and much more.
