Top 10 SEO KPIs Marketer Should Track & Measure
Table of Contents
- List of Top SEO KPIs Every Marketer Should Track
- Ready to Rank Your Website?
- Need help with Website and SEO?
SEO is getting tougher every day.
First, we faced the Google SEO updates for backlinks, then the Google AI update, and now we have the content quality update, with more changes on the horizon.
The competition for rankings is intensifying, and we’ve been dedicated to helping our clients achieve strong positions in search results for nearly 12 years. Throughout this journey, as a leading SEO Agency based in Sydney, we’ve gained valuable insights into how search engines operate and which SEO KPIs are essential for monitoring progress effectively.
To help you stay on track and ensure your efforts are aligned with best practices, we’ve compiled a list of the most important KPIs to focus on. Check them out below!
List of Top SEO KPIs Every Marketer Should Track
1. Organic Traffic
First on our list is organic traffic, a crucial metric for any website’s success. The amount of traffic your site receives directly influences your business’s growth—without sufficient traffic, it’s challenging to thrive. That’s why tracking organic traffic is a core SEO KPI. This traffic can come from various sources, including Google, Bing, and other search engines. Tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics can help you monitor this traffic, though you may need to apply filters to distinguish organic traffic from referrals, paid traffic, or direct visits. Understanding the specifics of your organic traffic is essential for optimising your SEO strategy and driving business results.
2. Keyword Rankings
Another important metric that directly relates to SEO is keyword ranking. When we talk about keyword rankings, we’re looking at the number of keywords that are ranking for each blog page or any other URL on your site.
You need to check the position of these keywords—whether they’re in the top 10, top 100, or beyond—and see how many keywords are actually ranking. It’s also helpful to look at the search volume and difficulty of these keywords to ensure you’re targeting the right terms that will bring in clicks. We’ll come back to the clicks part later on.
Read More: Learn More About SEO in Our Technical Guide
3. Position & Volume for Keywords
Let’s break down keyword ranking and volume. When we talk about ranking, we want those keywords to be between positions 1 and 10. If they’re outside that range, you’re probably not getting much traffic or leads. Now, think about volume: a keyword with a volume of 500 to 1,000 could bring in around 500 clicks each month, while a volume of 1 to 50 means you’re looking at just 1 to 50 clicks. So, to really see results, target high-volume keywords and aim to rank them as high as you can.
4. Clicks to the Website
When you look at the search console reports on Google or Bing, you’ll notice a term called clicks. This refers to the actual number of clicks people make to visit your website from a keyword.
Clicks are crucial because just getting impressions—where users see your keyword without clicking—doesn’t help your traffic. Impressions mean people glanced at your keyword and then moved on to something else.
Clicks indicate that users are interested enough to visit your site, which is the real goal. So, keep a close eye on clicks in your search console data; it’s a key metric for any SEO marketer in Australia!
5. Conversions
Ultimately, everything boils down to conversions. Whether your marketing efforts are through paid ads or organic methods, the goal is to drive conversions—be it sales on your eCommerce site or leads from potential customers inquiring about your services. If you’re attracting significant traffic and clicks but not seeing conversions, that’s a concern. Once you have traffic flowing to your website and your keywords are ranking well, focus on optimising for conversions and ensure you can attribute them to your SEO efforts. Conversions are a critical metric for any SEO marketer!
6. Backlinks (Dofollow/Nofollow) & Authority
We haven’t discussed off-page SEO yet, and it’s crucial for boosting your organic rankings. There are three key types of SEO KPIs to keep an eye on on-page SEO optimization, technical SEO, and off-page optimization. Backlinks are a significant part of off-page SEO, so you need to focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks consistently.
Aim for backlinks from authoritative websites—those with a domain authority score of 60 or higher are ideal. If you receive links from sites with a low authority (under 20), they won’t be very beneficial.
Additionally, make sure the backlinks you get are “do-follow.” This type of link signals to search engines that your site is being recommended by others. Pay attention to the nature of the backlinks as well. Editorial backlinks, which are placed naturally within the content of a post, are the most valuable. These links might appear in guest posts or press releases, enhancing your credibility.
Avoid links that are only found in sidebars or footers, as they often carry less weight and may be ignored by Google.
7. Number of Indexed Pages
Another crucial metric for any organic activity that SEO professionals should monitor is the number of indexed pages. Recently, Google and other search engines have become selective about indexing, focusing on pages with valuable content that are updated regularly. Aim to have at least 90% of your publicly visible pages indexed. If some pages aren’t getting indexed, you should update them frequently, promote them through the right channels, and build backlinks to increase their visibility. More indexed pages will lead to increased traffic and, ultimately, more leads.
8. Bounce Rate
Many SEO professionals often underestimate the importance of bounce rate, but I believe it should be a critical KPI to monitor. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are leaving your site without engaging with your content, suggesting it may not meet their needs or expectations. This behaviour signals to Google that your website may lack value, which can lead to lower rankings in search results.
The goal should be to maintain a bounce rate below 60%. For e-commerce websites, a bounce rate typically hovers around 40-50% because visitors often explore multiple products before making a decision. In contrast, blog websites usually experience higher bounce rates, averaging 70-80%, as users often skim through headlines without engaging with the content.
Read More: Learn SEO Best Practices for WordPress Websites
It’s essential to check your industry benchmarks to gauge your performance relative to competitors. Understanding these metrics can help you adjust your content strategy and improve user experience, ultimately driving better engagement and conversions.
9. Assisted Conversions
Another key SEO metric to track is the number of assisted conversions from organic traffic. This metric reflects instances where users first arrive at your site through an organic search result. If they click on a product or service page and then later complete a purchase, that counts as an assisted conversion. It also includes cases where users leave your site and return through a different source, like direct traffic or referrals, before converting. Monitoring assisted conversions help you gauge the effectiveness of your organic traffic and understand how it contributes to overall sales, providing valuable insights into the impact of your SEO efforts.
10. Average Time on Page
Average time on page is another crucial KPI for SEO. It indicates how long users stay on a specific page before leaving. For instance, if 100 visitors spend an average of 30 to 40 seconds on a page, the average time on that page would be around 35 seconds. Pages that maintain an average time of 30 seconds or more suggest that visitors engage with the content, whether they’re reading or browsing products. If users are leaving quickly, it’s a sign the content may not resonate, so aim for at least 30 seconds of average visibility.
Bonus KPI: Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are essential metrics that Google uses to evaluate the user experience on your website, specifically focusing on three main aspects: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. These metrics include:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the largest element on the page to load. Ideally, this should be under 2.5 seconds to provide a good user experience.
- First Input Delay (FID): This measures the time it takes for the website to respond to a user’s first interaction, such as clicking a link or button. A good FID is less than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This tracks the visual stability of your site by measuring how much the content shifts during loading. A CLS score of less than 0.1 is considered ideal.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools track these metrics and update them approximately every 15 days. Although Google has stated that Core Web Vitals do not directly influence search rankings, they play a significant role in overall website performance.
A common SEO statistic is that, if your pages are loading in more than 7 seconds, you may experience a decline in keyword rankings and organic traffic. Users tend to abandon websites that load slowly, often before the content fully displays, which can lead to increased bounce rates. This behaviour signals to search engines that your site may not provide a good user experience, prompting them to lower your rankings in favour of faster-loading competitors.
To maintain optimal performance, regularly monitor your Core Web Vitals scores. Ensure that they align with the recommended benchmarks, focusing on improving loading times, enhancing responsiveness, and minimising layout shifts.
Ready to Rank Your Website?
By tracking SEO KPIs such as organic traffic, clicks, keyword rankings, backlinks, and Core Web Vitals, you can gain valuable insights into your site’s performance and visibility. Regularly monitoring these metrics and implementing the right practices to improve them will ensure that your website not only ranks for the right keywords but also grows consistently each month.
This approach will ultimately lead to increased traffic, better keyword rankings, and, most importantly, more conversions for your website. We hope the SEO KPIs mentioned above will help you, as an SEO professional in Australia, achieve optimal rankings for your website.
Need help with Website and SEO?
At WP Creative, we are dedicated to helping marketing managers optimise their sites for maximum conversions. Our team understands the complexities of SEO and the challenges of standing out in today’s competitive landscape.
If you’re struggling to improve your rankings or enhance your site’s performance, we’re here to assist you. Contact us today for a quick audit of your website, and let’s work together to develop a tailored strategy that drives traffic, boosts visibility, and ultimately increases conversions. Your success is our #1 priority.
