Whether you are starting a new website or own one already, know that it requires constant attention to gain better rankings in SERPs. And you have to run an SEO campaign for that reason alone.
But how do you know your SEO campaign is moving in the right direction without tracking your progress?
Well, that is when tracking your SEO progress becomes crucial.
SEO tracking involves:
- Paying attention to quantifiable SEO metrics
- Reporting on what works for your business as a result of your SEO campaign
- Making adjustments to your SEO strategy/campaign based on the insight.
The problem is that hundreds of Google ranking factors can quickly make it a bit confusing. But you can decide on which metrics to track by identifying your ultimate business goals.
Benefits of Tracking Your SEO Progress
For SEO specialists, tracking their SEO progress is vital because they can share those details with prospective clients and explain how they can help. Those analytics serve as concrete evidence of how effective their SEO services are, which is sure to build trust and loyalty.
The good thing is that it is now easy to track those numbers and improve your SEO if you invest in a well-rounded SEO tool.
Such SEO tools cover everything from identifying the best keywords and finding broken links to running a full-length SEO audit to find problem areas. However, all the SEO benefits are linked to finding the right tool. For that, you need to check out some SEO tools reviews and compare various options for all pros and cons to pick what works for your circumstances.
Setting Up for SEO Tracking
As with any business or marketing strategy, tracking your SEO progress against identified goals is essential to judge its effectiveness.
Traditionally, this has been achieved by assessing how well specific key metrics perform.
Identify Your Key Metrics
There are many kinds of metrics. Even with sophisticated auditing tools, there is still much information to absorb, track, and evaluate.
After all, a metric can be a measure of anything, but certain key metrics are worth focusing on.
Keyword Rankings
Your keyword rankings can change over time based on Google updates, new content published by your competitors, and so on. Tracking them is essential to improve your SEO.
Even though AI is expected to facilitate a more refined ranking experience based on the quality of the content with searches performed via naturalized speech, keywords are expected to remain an indicator of how users look for information.
Organic Traffic
This is simply a headcount of the number of visitors to the site. It’s a good indicator of how effectively a campaign is progressing and can be used to plan and manage the key events of a longer-term campaign.
Backlinks and Domain Authority
Domain Authority is a trustworthiness indicator from 1-100. The higher it scores, the higher the possibility of better rankings.
Backlinks from sites with high domain authority increase your site’s domain authority and help improve your SEO. They tend to enhance indicators of how a site, its brand, and its content are perceived.
In the future, backlinks may be vital to the success of a site linking related websites to form a high-quality content network based on an individualized search.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The CTR reflects the accuracy of the match between the keyword and the inquiry. It’s also a reliable indicator of the site’s perceived usefulness based on how it appears in the searches.
Monitoring the traffic is also an excellent way to gauge the effectiveness of title tags and meta descriptions for focused marketing.
You can review your CTR through Google Search Console.
When you go to the Performance tab, you can find details about total clicks, impressions, and CTR.
Bounce Rate (BR)
BR refers to how many people landed on your site and left without browsing it. It has always been an important metric to consider, but things are changing.
Tracking the BR with a view to lowering it may not be as relevant in the future, especially for sites where visitors are looking for more mundane information, such as opening times.
Time of Page (TOP)
How long users stay on site, the TOP or dwell time, is a reliable indicator of its usefulness, the relevance and value of its content, and of what held the user’s interest.
TOP is a useful refining measure since it identifies less productive sections and pages.
Choosing the Right SEO Tracking Tools
AI search engines are set to deliver highly relevant information via a natural speech inquiry. Therefore, it will be almost impossible to track the mass data they collect in any depth without specialized SEO tracking tools.
When selecting a tool for tracking and site optimization, reading reviews is critical. But here are a few things to consider to make the right choice:
- Know your business needs first.
- Consider how much money you can spare.
- Check reviews and compare the feature sets.
- Pick tools with free trials to know how it works.
- Ensure the tool you pick gets updated based on algorithmic changes.
With so much choice, it’s worth shopping around, checking out the reviews and user communities to find the SEO tools that best meet your needs and your budget and can keep up with the demands of modern SEO.
Set Up Your Tracking
Once you have selected a tool, it’s time to go ahead with site optimization and set up your SEO tracking.
You can always begin with Google Analytics, a free tool to set up tracking for specific metrics, such as sales, or identify the most effective keywords and search inquiries.
If you go with Google Analytics, start by deciding the goals.
There are four main goal types:
- Destination – where a page or screen view is treated as a conversion
- Duration – a measure of user engagement based on a conversion
- Screens per session – a measure of conversions who view more screens or pages.
- Event – this goal treats a particular interaction as a conversion.
From the left-hand menu → ADMIN → GOALS → NEW GOALS, and choose from custom or template.
However, when you are serious about tracking your SEO performance, it’s better to invest in a well-rounded SEO software solution that also taps into the AI potential of online search.
Review Your Data Regularly
Reviewing data regularly helps identify trends and provide a competitive edge. Regular reviews can quickly change strategies in light of changing algorithms.
You need to review your data regularly because
- It helps you stay updated when search engine algorithms change.
- It enables you to find the latest SEO trends and tweak accordingly.
- It helps identify tactics that may no longer be effective.
- It helps optimize resources.
- It ensures the site is on track to achieving its goals
Conclusion
SEO tracking is critical for site optimization and marketing. Free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics will surely help, but they won’t be enough going forward. The truth is that AI is about to change the face of search engine optimization, and therefore, you need to look for professional tools to optimize a site’s resources. Be sure to pick the right one!
