Basic 11 Key Metrics that Website Owners should look for

It would be an understatement to say that the SEO landscape has changed to a great extent through the years and in the last couple of years in particular the changes have been quite dramatic. Penguin and Panda top the list as the most visible game changers, but there’s another one that occurred and has been equally dramatic in its impact on SEO services in Mumbai. That particular change is Search Plus Your World. Search plus personalizes your search results. Google analyses your location, brand mentions, search history of your friend, who is in your social media sphere and even your search history.

How Website Owners Measure SEO Success?

Conventionally, SEO reports focused on ‘reach’ metrics. These metrics answer questions such as ‘How many visitors are visiting the website? And ‘How highly ranked is the website?’ Sadly, that was it. It was a mystery what the visitors did after arriving on the client’s website. Did Facebook visitors read a single blog post and leave? Did potential clients arriving through Google AdWords buy the product advertised or did they purchase something else?

While reach metrics continue to be vital for establishing a performance baseline, increasingly, the metrics that matter most to clients and agencies measure ‘actions’ that visitors take on a website. Right from purchasing products to commenting on a blog post, these actions replicate the site’s sociability and interactivity.

Key Metrics Website Owners must look for

While action metrics are incredibly vital, reach metrics are still crucial for diagnosing the problems of the website and to identify new SEO opportunities. These metrics might not directly measure the successful business goals of a client, but are vital for determining whether search engines can find the clients website, the scale of SEO work, and the initial effectiveness of the SEO strategy.

1. Bounce Rate: A client’s bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors leaving the website after just viewing a single page. This high bounce rate acts as a signal to Google that a website is stuffed with keywords or material that’s irrelevant to artificially inflate search results. If a site has a high bounce rate, Google’s algorithm lowers the site’s search engine ranking.
2. Flow of Visitors: Visitors flow measures the visitor’s first, second, third and fourth actions on a website. The visitors flow helps clients better understand the significance of investing in social media as part of a well-rounded marketing strategy.
3. Content Interactivity: This metric helps the website owner understand what the visitors do on the website. A clear understanding of content interactivity is crucial for shaping online strategy.
4. Average Rankings: Average ranking gives you the ability to measure the number of links in Google that are being seen across the board. In other words, it’s a weighted measure of all impressions.
5. Growth of Visitor: The visitor growth report in Google Analytics is a baseline growth metric. This report also lets you calculate expected leads from traffic or your reach.
6. Conversions: A conversion is what happens when someone successfully completes a goal created by you in Google Analytics. This report will help your client see how those impressions that lead to visitors are actually turning into sales.
7. Accurate Match: If you take a peek at the Google Analytics exact match, you’ll come to know that it looks a lot like the PPC exact match: you are targeting a particular URL and will only get reports delivered on that specific URL.
8. Regular Expressions Match: It’s an extension of exact match as it lets you to bring similar goals under a single umbrella.
9. Impressions: In the old days of internet marketing, one would use impressions against click through rate to develop a conversion ratio. That was something one could visibly improve upon.
10. Organic SEO Keyword: Keyword ranking reports were nearly dead until Google started blocking keyword data. Now the website owner needs to use Webmaster Tools or ranking reports to determine which keywords are driving the traffic from organic SEO efforts.
11. Competitive Data & Advanced Metrics: Not carrying out competitive research with a keyword research and competitor spying tool can cause an SEO company in Mumbai to imprecisely price its proposal.

Author Bio

Bal Rai is a consultant at eTrack Media, a Website design company in Mumbai that provides the SEO services in Mumbai, web design and development services, website optimisation and social media management services to full-service marketing firms as well as end clients.

Bal Rai is an Internet Marketing Consultant at eTrack Media, a leading SEO company in Redditch, UK.