For any business owner or marketer handling a website, the importance of SEO can oftentimes be overlooked when maintaining the health and quality of their site. Many of them may prioritize the aesthetics of the site over the structure and functionality, which takes away high amounts of value from investing in that site in the first place. What’s the point of having a beautiful looking website if no one ever sees it displayed when they are surfing google? What’s the point of having heaps of information on your site if it is difficult for the user to access it through navigation errors or bugs? These are all questions that should be asked if you choose to go your own route in the web development process. In this blog, we will review some of the most important SEO metrics to consider and consistently keep up with to assure that your site is being seen and functioning well.
Keyword Rankings
The most basic and important metric to track is your keyword rankings. You should have a broad understanding of the keywords that you are targeting for your website and blog content. If you are not ranking for the keywords that you want to be found for, then no one will ever find your site in the first place! A great way to track this progress is by using Google Search Console. This is a free platform provided directly from Google that gives webmasters insights into how their site is appearing on search engine results pages. Simply type in some of the key phrases that you would like to rank for and see where your site appears. The higher up on the page, the better!
Domain Authority
Domain authority is a measurement of how your website ranks in search engines outside of Google, such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. The better domain authority you have, the more credibility you, your website, and your business has. Given the age, size, and popularity of the site, it can also display how you are outperforming competitors, if you consistently keep up with this metric over time. The higher your DA score, the better! You can check your DA score using extensions that will show how your website is performing on all of the biggest search engines. Outranking your competitors goes a long way!
Organic Traffic and Conversions
Organic traffic is the number of people who visit your website from a search engine such as google, yahoo, or bing. This metric is important to track because it tells you how many people are actually finding and using your site. The higher your organic traffic, the better! Similarly to organic conversions, you can track this progress using Google Analytics.
Organic conversions are the number of visitors to your website that take a desired action such as making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. This is one of the most important metrics to track because it tells you how well your site is performing in terms of driving leads and sales. The higher your organic conversion rate, the better off you will be! You can also track this progress using Google Analytics. Simply set up goals for specific actions that you want people to take on your site and see how many people are completing those goals.
Backlinks
In order for your website to rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs), you need other websites to link back to your site as well. This is called link building or backlinking. Google looks at the number of backlinks that a website has when it decides where to rank that site on their search engine. The more high-quality websites linking to yours, the better!
Page Speed and Website Health
Page speed and website health are two important factors that Google looks at when determining where to rank a site on their search engine. If your site is slow or not functioning properly, then it will not rank as high as it could be. A great way to keep track of this progress is by using Google PageSpeed Insights. This tool will give you a score for how fast your website loads and how well it functions. The higher the score, the better!
At this point, it should be pretty evident that there are a lot of factors behind having a great website beyond how it looks. If all of these metrics seem like too much to handle on your own, choosing to partner with a digital marketing agency is always a great option! Here at Localmize, we pride ourselves in being industry leaders in website maintenance so that your site brings you business. Get in touch with us today!
