Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to ensuring a website’s visibility on search engines. To optimize positioning and measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, it’s essential to track certain key performance indicators or KPIs. In this article, you’ll discover the main SEO indicators to take into account.
Organic traffic
Unsurprisingly, organic traffic is the main indicator for evaluating SEO performance. It measures the number of visitors arriving on your website via search engine results. An increase in organic traffic means that your site is better positioned and attracts more visitors.
- Variation in organic traffic: shows the evolution of traffic over time.
- Acquisition channels: details the distribution of visitors by traffic source (direct, social, email, etc.).
- Bounce rate: indicates the percentage of people who leave your site after viewing a single page.
Further information: distinction between mobile and desktop traffic
It can also be interesting to track organic traffic from mobile and desktop devices separately, as user behavior and SEO criteria can vary between these two categories.
Keyword positioning
Keyword positioning is another fundamental SEO indicator. Indeed, appearing on the first page of search results for keywords relevant to your business is crucial to attracting qualified traffic.
- Keywords to track: select the most important terms for your business and track their position in search results.
- Position variation: measure the evolution of positions over time to identify trends and adjust your strategy if necessary.
- Improving keywords: identify the terms for which you are gaining positions and analyze the actions that have contributed to this improvement.
- Declining keywords: identify the keywords for which you are losing positions, and look for possible causes (increased competition, obsolete content, etc.).
To find out more: competitor keyword analysis
Comparing your keyword positioning with that of your competitors can help you identify opportunities and areas for improvement in your own SEO strategy.
Click-through rate or CTR
The click-through rate (CTR) represents the ratio between the number of people who clicked on a link to your site, and the total number of impressions of that link in search results. A high CTR indicates that your content is attractive and entices people to click. Conversely, if the CTR is low, it may mean that your page title or description isn’t sufficiently eye-catching, or that the page doesn’t meet user expectations.
- Global CTR: gives an overview of the click-through rate for your entire site.
- CTR by keyword: assess the appeal of your content for each targeted term.
- CTR by position: analyze click-through rate by position in search results to identify trends and determine which elements have the greatest impact.
Go further: study CTR by result type
Certain types of results (rich snippets, images, videos…) can have a significant influence on CTR. Analyzing CTR by result type can help you understand these variations and identify opportunities to modify your content.
Conversions and visitor engagement
Although objectives vary from site to site, the ultimate goal of SEO is generally to acquire qualified traffic and convert these visitors into loyal customers. So tracking conversions and visitor engagement is an important element in evaluating the performance of an SEO strategy.
- Number of conversions: measures the number of visits resulting in a desired action (purchase, registration, download, etc.).
- Conversion rate: ratio between the number of conversions and the total number of visitors. A high conversion rate indicates qualified traffic and an offer relevant to users’ expectations.
- Page views: gives an indication of the quality and interest of the content proposed.
- Average session duration: the longer the duration, the more engaged visitors are with your site.
To find out more: conversion segmentation by traffic source
Traffic sources can have a significant influence on conversion rates. Analyzing volume and conversion rates according to different traffic sources (organic, social, email…) can help you optimize your marketing efforts.
Regular website audit
Beyond quantitative indicators, it’s essential to carry out regular SEO audits to check that your site is still in line with the best practices recommended by Google and other search engines. Audits can also be used to identify any technical problems that may be affecting your SEO.
Key points to check during an audit :
- Meta tags (title, description)
- URL structure
- Implementation of internal and external meshing
- Page loading speed
- Image optimization
- Responsive design (mobile compatibility)
- SSL certificate (HTTPS)
- robots.txt and sitemap.xml files
- Content duplication
- Accessibility or 404 error problems
Regular analysis of these SEO indicators is essential to monitor your positioning, detect the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy, quickly identify technical problems and make informed decisions to optimize your performance.
