Is your SEO strategy on the right track? The only way to know is by paying attention to SEO metrics. If you still don’t know what they are, how to monitor them, or why they matter, this post will be very useful.
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What are SEO metrics?
SEO metrics are metrics that help you understand the performance of your organic positioning strategy and the results it is achieving. In this sense, SEO metrics are the KPIs of web positioning (indicators such as organic clicks or positioned keywords).
The 10 most important SEO metrics
Although each positioning strategy may have different objectives, there are certain SEO metrics that are relevant for understanding whether your site is achieving positive results (or not). Here are the 10 most notable ones:
1. Organic traffic
Organic traffic is one of the most significant SEO metrics for any strategy. This metric covers all visits your site receives from organic search channels (for example, visits that come to your website from Google or Bing results).
It is one of the indicators that best reflects how well (or poorly) your SEO positioning strategy is performing. After all, the number of visits you get is directly related to how well you rank.
Best of all, since organic traffic only considers visits that come from Google and other search engine results, it is an easy metric to recognize and monitor.
How to measure organic traffic?
There are many free ways to track the organic traffic your site receives. You can measure it as follows:
- With Google Analytics: To measure organic traffic, go to Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, where you will see organic traffic filtered in the channel called Organic Search.
- With Google Search Console: this is very simple. Search Console will only show you organic clicks (organic clicks correspond to the organic visits your website receives), so just go to the Performance section in Search Console and look at the clicks to find out how much organic traffic your website is receiving. Keep in mind that it will only measure visits received from Google.
- With Bing Webmaster Tools: this tool is like Google Search Console, but geared towards Bing. It will measure the organic traffic you receive from the Bing search engine. To monitor it, you have to go to the Search Performance section.
2. Keyword positions
Your site’s keyword ranking is also a crucial SEO metric for understanding what your strategy is achieving. If you know where your website ranks for the keywords you want to target, you can analyze the effect of your SEO efforts.
For example, if you spend a lot of time and money on your SEO strategy but don’t rank higher for any of the keywords you’re trying to target, this would be an indication that your strategy needs adjustment.
On the other hand, if, after specific positioning actions, you see that your website ranks higher for its target keywords, this would be a good sign that your strategy is on the right track.
Expert advice
When talking about keyword rankings, you’ll want to take a close look at the keywords in the top 10 positions (those on the first page of Google results) because they’re the ones that give you visibility and traffic.
After the first page, you will get little organic traffic because your website will not be very visible.
Beyond the keywords that you rank on the first page, you can pay attention to those between positions 11 and 30, as your website still has a good chance of reaching the first page in these positions.
Laura García
SEO and Link Building Campaign ManagerHow to measure keyword positioning?
You can measure your keyword rankings for free with Google Search Console in the Performance section. Search Console estimates the average position of your keywords and clearly shows you how they rank.
However, keep in mind that Google Search Console’s ranking tracking is not the most accurate. So if you want something more detailed and reliable, you should opt for SEO tools such as SE Ranking or Semrush.
In SE Ranking, you can analyze your keyword positions by reviewing your site in the Competitor Analysis section.
With Semrush, you can see your keyword positions in the Organic Research section.
Domain authority is one of the link building and SEO metrics you should pay the most attention to. Basically, it refers to how strong your website is on Google and other search engines.
It is key because domain authority influences your website’s ability to rank on Google (and now also on AI). In addition, it tends to be the most powerful ranking factor.
Therefore, measuring and increasing your domain authority should be one of the priorities of your SEO strategy.
Domain authority depends on the number of backlinks and referring domains that the site obtains, and it also varies depending on the quality of these links.
How to measure the domain authority of your website and pages?
You can measure your website’s authority for free with tools such as Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker, which will show you your website’s Domain Rating, which is the authority score created by the Ahrefs team itself.
In addition to that, it will show you the number of backlinks that the site you are analyzing gets, and the number of different websites that are linking to the website.
4. Indexed pages of your website
An indexed page is a page that has already been discovered and registered in Google’s index (and other search engines), which means that it can appear in search results and rank.
If you search for any content that is not yet indexed, you will not find it because Google has not discovered or saved it.
So in order to rank with your website, you first need to get Google to find your site and index its content.
That’s why the metric of indexed pages on your website is so valuable, because it shows you whether Google is discovering and displaying your content or not.
For many small or medium-sized websites, this isn’t always a problem, but when it comes to large sites such as e-commerce sites, indexing can be quite a challenge.
How to measure your website’s indexing?
The most reliable way to measure your website’s indexing on Google is to check the Indexing > Pages section in Google Search Console. To do this, you must have your website integrated with this tool.
Once in the Pages section, you will be able to see which content on your site is already indexed and which is not.
The most useful feature is that Search Console will even tell you if it detects any problems with indexing, making it easy to stay on top of things.
5. Impressions
Every time someone views a page on your website on Google, Bing, or another search engine, an impression (an organic view) is generated.
That’s why impressions are a metric that helps you understand a website’s organic visibility levels. This makes them useful for evaluating the results of your SEO strategy.
Although not all impressions result in clicks, an increase in impressions generally indicates that the website is ranking better and expanding its organic reach.
Expert advice
Impressions are often a sign of visibility. If you pay attention to them, you can use them to detect problems and opportunities for growth.
For example, if a page generates many impressions but few clicks and is in a low position, you know it has potential because, despite being in an unfavorable position, it manages to get views.
On the other hand, a rapid drop in impressions can be a sign of problems in your strategy. If it is very sharp, it may even be associated with Google penalties.
Impressions may not be as eye-catching or straightforward a metric as clicks, but they are another clear signal that helps you assess which direction to take your strategy in.
Laura García
SEO and Link Building Campaign ManagerHow to measure your site’s impressions?
To measure your website’s impressions, simply check the Performance section of Google Search Console. There you will see all the impressions being generated, the pages and keywords that generate the most impressions, and more.
If, on the other hand, you are interested in knowing how many impressions you generate on Bing, you can go to Bing Webmaster Tools and check this metric in the Search Performance section.
6. Organic traffic per page
Beyond the organic traffic that your entire website receives in general, it is also a good idea to pay attention to organic visits per page, that is, the traffic that each of your website’s pages receives. This is a significant metric because it allows you to understand how your content performs at a particular level.
By knowing the organic traffic for each of the pages on your site, you can identify the content that performs best, detect topics that work well for your site, and even examine the search intent of the traffic you get.
Therefore, this metric helps you focus your strategy and devote your efforts to those actions that yield the best results.
In addition, if you experience a sudden loss of traffic to your site, it is easier to identify the problem when you know which pages have been affected.
How to measure organic traffic for each page of your website?
To measure the organic traffic of each page individually, the most reliable and simplest way is to use Google Search Console. In the Performance section of Search Console, click on the Pages tab to see a summary of the organic traffic received by all your pages.
If you click on the pages, you will be able to see more detailed data about them, their main keywords, and their performance.
7. Conversion rate (from the organic search channel)
Although SEO metrics such as organic traffic are important, there is one that is not often discussed but is also critical to a successful positioning strategy: conversion rate.
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who convert on your website. In the case of SEO, to analyze your conversion rate, you would need to evaluate it for the organic search channel.
If you get a lot of visits but none of them convert (i.e., none of them take the commercial actions you want for your business), it is unlikely that your SEO strategy can be maintained.
Ultimately, it is conversions that make your website and your positioning efforts sustainable. When you pay attention to the conversion rate, you can tell if your strategy is working, if it is sustainable, if you are attracting the right audience to your website, and much more.
So yes, it is not only relevant, it is critical.
How to measure conversion rate?
To measure the conversion rate, you can use Google Analytics. In the Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition section, you will see a column dedicated to the conversion rate (Google Analytics calls it Key Event Rate).
Specifically, to review the SEO conversion rate, pay attention to the key event rate indicated for the Organic Search channel.
8. Bounce rate
The bounce rate is a percentage that measures the number of visits that leave your website after viewing only one of its pages.
If a person arrives at your site, stays for a few seconds, and then leaves that page, the bounce rate would be 100% (because the visitor immediately left the website and did not visit other pages within the site).
It’s a good idea to pay attention to the bounce rate because if your visitors leave your website after their first visit, it may suggest that there is a problem with your strategy.
On the other hand, if instead of staying on a single page, they visit several, it can be a good sign.
If you then take this metric into account and compare it with others, such as the conversion rate, you will have a clearer picture of how your visitors are behaving on your site (and whether or not they are interested in your content).
How to measure the number of pages per session?
To measure the bounce rate, use Google Analytics and go to Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, where you can see the bounce rate for the Organic Search channel and find out what percentage of bounces the SEO channel has for your website.
9. Average session duration
Average session duration is another SEO metric that can be used to analyze user interaction within a site. Basically, it calculates the average time a visitor stays on a website.
It may seem unimportant, but average session duration actually tells you how well your website and its content are performing.
If your visitors only stay on your website for a few seconds, this could be a clear sign that your pages are not meeting their expectations or that they are experiencing some kind of problem.
How to measure the average session duration?
You can measure the average session duration in the Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition section. For SEO, pay attention to this metric for the Organic Search channel within that section of Analytics.
10. Site loading speed
You’ve probably heard about this SEO metric a thousand times, and for good reason: your site’s loading speed is one of the pillars of your SEO strategy.
Although it doesn’t carry the same weight as SEO links or keyword optimization as a ranking factor, it has a huge impact on user experience.
No visitor will wait 3 or 4 seconds for your website to load completely, so ensuring that it loads quickly is essential.
This is even more critical for online stores, for example, as users need to interact a lot with the website to make their purchases. If the loading speed is poor, they are likely to prefer another site.
In terms of positioning itself, loading speed is more of a tiebreaker when it comes to ranking. If two pages offer similar quality content, with similar authority and content, the one that loads faster will often rank higher.
And if this applies to standard SEO, it applies even more when positioning with AI, which is usually more demanding when it comes to making websites visible.
How to measure site loading speed?
You can measure your website’s loading speed on sites such as:
With any of these tools, you can measure the speed of your website and its pages, and detect elements that need improvement so that it can load faster.
What tools are essential for monitoring SEO metrics?
- Google Analytics: This is the essential tool for tracking most SEO metrics, especially those related to conversions and user interactions.
- Google Search Console: With Google Search Console, you can track SEO metrics associated with Google. It focuses solely on organic search channel performance, but it gives you a lot of valuable information, from keyword rankings to clicks, impressions, and more.
- Google Tag Manager: the ideal tool for integrating all tracking scripts and marketing tools in one place. It’s a little more advanced, but essential if you want to be able to accurately track your users’ actions on your website.
- Bing Webmaster Tools: like Google Search Console but for Bing. Very useful for finding out how your SEO strategy is performing on the Bing search engine, especially now that we know how it influences visibility on ChatGPT and similar chatbots.
- SE Ranking (or similar SEO tools): although it is not essential to have an SEO tool such as SE Ranking, for certain metrics (such as authority, backlinks, or referring domains) you will need it. The good news is that if you are on a tight budget, there are several inexpensive SEO tools to choose from that do a great job.
What should you keep in mind about the KPIs of your SEO strategy?
SEO KPIs will not be the same for all businesses; they will always depend on the type of website and its objectives.
For an e-commerce site, the most important SEO metrics could be the conversion rate and organic revenue generated. On the other hand, for a newspaper, the most relevant SEO metrics could be clicks and bounce rate.
There are SEO metrics that serve as general indicators, such as organic traffic or keyword rankings, but to understand if your SEO strategy is working, you need to focus on the metrics that relate to your business goals.
You now have 10 indicators at your disposal to review your SEO efforts and move forward with a clear idea.
Keep a close eye on the data, pay attention to these SEO metrics, and analyze them from time to time to ensure that your positioning strategy is on track.
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