SEO KPIs are values you can use to measure the performance of your website and the success of your SEO and content strategy. SEO KPIs measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and play a vital role in the overall digital marketing strategy, increasing your website’s visibility and driving customer conversions.

To know if your SEO investments and efforts are wise and will pay off in the long run, you need to know which SEO KPIs to track so that your progress is as clear as possible.  This is what allows you to have a powerful SEO strategy that ensures your content is reaching all the right people – your potential customers.

In this article, we’ll go over the 20 most important SEO KPIs you need to track, as well as the tools where these metrics can be found and how to measure them.

What Are SEO KPIs?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical factor in the success of your online business.  To use SEO effectively, you need to learn how to measure the success of your efforts using key performance indicators (KPIs). 

SEO KPIs are measurable metrics that you can track to evaluate your performance in various marketing activities. In other words, they will tell you what is working and what is not working in your SEO strategy. SEO KPIs are the key indicators that tend to have the greatest impact on the progress of your SEO strategy.

You need to monitor and measure KPIs to ensure that your long-term goals are being met. While metrics are the data that reflect your progress, they do not behave like KPIs and do not have the same level of importance as the KPIs that need to be monitored and measured.

It’s worth noting that not all SEO KPIs are equal either. When it comes to tracking SEO KPIs, successful website optimization means reaching a more targeted audience. There are many SEO KPIs, or metrics, that you can track in order to optimize your website and get ahead of your competitors in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

It is important to know which SEO KPIs to measure to know if you have chosen the right SEO strategy and to identify new optimization opportunities.

Read More: SEO for Beginners How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

How Do SEO Goals Influence Digital Marketing Strategy?

SEO is an essential aspect of any successful digital marketing campaign. An effective SEO strategy is essential to increasing your brand’s visibility and voice and driving customer conversions and business results.

When optimizing your website for SEO, your SEO goals must align with your business and marketing goals. The key to any successful SEO campaign is how you define your SEO goals and measure their impact, as this allows you to focus your actions on the desired outcomes of your campaign and provides a way to measure the success of the campaign.

 SEO objectives differ from one another depending on the type of website, business goals and objectives, resources, and opportunities. One of the best ways to set goals is to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure project performance.

These are essential benchmarks designed to monitor SEO performance to ensure consistency and reliability in your overall digital marketing strategy. SEO KPIs are not only about SEO performance but also about achieving your company’s primary goal of increasing profits.

Knowing which metrics to track will make all the difference for your business. You can choose a single KPI to improve, and then design campaign strategies focused on improving that one performance metric. 

Once you’ve determined your business goals, you should choose the most important SEO KPIs to track. For example, if you want more traffic to arrive at the top of your funnel, your SEO strategy may have a broader goal.

Read More: 30 Best KPIs to Measure for a Successful Marketing Strategy

20 Most Important SEO KPIs to Track for Successful Optimization

1. Keyword Ranking

Keyword ranking is the position of your specific keywords in the major search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. This is one of the most important  SEO KPIs to track, as it is directly related to SEO success.

Improving keyword rankings is the first entry point to achieving other main goals. The better your content ranks, the more likely you are to get more reach, traffic, leads, and conversions.

The higher your website ranks for high volume keywords, i.e. frequently searched terms, the better. You should keep a close eye on your keyword rankings. Improving your search engine rankings should be one of your main goals because the better your website ranks for your brand-specific keywords, the more likely visitors are to visit your site and convert into loyal customers.

Tracking keyword ranking positions allows you to see how your site ranks in searches for specific queries.  In addition, it shows you where you stand in relation to your rivals.

As a general rule, to take advantage of this important SEO KPI, you need to identify the keywords that send you the most traffic. These are the high-volume keywords that have a lot of potential because they can potentially drive more traffic to your site, but they are usually more competitive and therefore harder to rank for.

But depending on the type of your website, you can focus on other types of keywords, such as product keywords, brand keywords, and measure your SEO performance.

Either way, keep in mind that keyword tracking is useful as long as you are tracking keywords that are relevant to your business. So make sure that the terms used in your content are relevant to your business.

 Not all keywords are equally valuable either. Tracking product keyword rankings lets you know how your products are ranking in search results and what your chances are of getting target traffic – people who are highly interested in your products.

 Branded keyword tracking lets you know how popular your branded keywords are in searches. To get better organic rankings for your target keywords, create your content to answer users’ questions.

The performance of this SEO KPI may depend on various factors such as keyword competition, content relevance, domain authority of your website, organic CTR, bounce rate, etc.

Therefore, to improve search ranking, you need to consider all these factors. If your main keywords are moving up in the rankings, it means that your strategy is starting to pay off.

Tracking keyword rankings come with fluctuations and SEO traffic is also very sensitive to the smallest changes in keyword rankings.

A single position in either direction can mean thousands of users in traffic gained or lost. But in the long run, you should see growth and stability. The trick is to be patient and start by creating content that actually answers users’ questions and provides them with tangible, actionable data.

You can track keyword rankings in a tool like Jaaxy.

Read More:

Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool Review

4 Best Keyword Research Tips to Improve Your Ranking

12 Best Tips for Creating SEO-friendly Content

2. Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is one of the most important SEO KPIs you should monitor, as it helps you achieve one of the main goals of SEO, which is to get more visitors to your website.

Organic traffic refers to visits made by customers who arrive at your website using a search engine rather than by clicking on a link via another website (referral traffic) or by clicking on an advertisement (paid traffic). Traffic, like keyword ranking, is a good indicator of potential website problems.

By focusing on increasing organic traffic, you can improve your brand awareness and increase your reach. Effective tracking will not only increase your reach but also improve your brand awareness. Tracking organic traffic can help you understand which pages are performing best and which ones need improvement.

By using organic traffic to a specific page as a key performance indicator, you ensure that you are focusing on driving customers to your most profitable pages. With Google Analytics, you can track organic traffic to specific pages and to your website as a whole, allowing you to understand which pages are performing best and which ones need improvement.

Log into your Google Analytics dashboard > Acquisitions > All Traffic > Channels. Set a target date range of at least a month, but ideally a year. Check the Compare to previous period / last year box to create a baseline.

Analyzing traffic against rankings allows you to understand which pages and keywords you should focus on. And if you’ve noticed a drop in traffic, you can find the source of the problem and fix it. You can make improvements to your organic traffic through keyword research.

By identifying the terms your site visitors are searching for, you can create better content, refine it and measure it. However, keep in mind that traffic should not be the only metric you track. In most cases, tracking traffic alone is not enough.

If your site is getting a lot of visitors, you want them to convert, otherwise, your high organic traffic probably won’t amount to much.  It’s also important to see how well the traffic you get converts.

For this, you need to track it in combination with other SEO KPIs like Conversions as a compliment. Conversions are one of the most important SEO KPIs because even if you get a lot of visitors, it won’t matter if they don’t convert. 

To track goal achievements, follow these steps in Google Analytics > Conversions > Goals > Overview > “Add Segment” > Organic Traffic” >Apply . You’ll then see a report where you can see key SEO performance metrics, including goals achieved, goal value and goal conversion rate.

 Organic traffic may simply represent the path the customer takes to reach a goal, but the most effective marketing channel could have been earlier in their journey. To find that channel, go to Conversions >Multichannel Funnels >Main Conversion Paths.

Read More: Top 10 Strategies to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Site

3. CTR (click-through rate)

Click-through rate is an SEO KPI that represents the number of times your pages are actually clicked on. Click-through rate is calculated in relation to impressions, which represent the number of times your pages appear in search results.

Thus, the click-through rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions and multiplying the result by 100. The higher the number, the better.

The higher your organic CTR, the more people will click on your listing in the SERPs.

Together, these two metrics give you the click-through rate (CTR), which is the success rate of your pages in searches, or the percentage of impressions that convert to action.

You can check your CTR in Google Search Console, under Search Results, then Performance. You can also compare the CTR of your pages and determine which pages are underperforming relative to their position in the SERPs.

Organic traffic growth is the most important SEO KPI, as it most clearly aligns with the main goal of SEO: to get more eyeballs to your website.

The click-through rate (CTR) increases with each position on the search engine results page. Moving from the 3rd to the 2nd position on page 1 can result in a spike in organic sessions, not to mention the fact that you can move from page 2 to page 1 of the results for a high-volume keyword.

Improving a single position on page 1 can result in a spike in organic traffic.

You can help increase Organic Click Through Rate (CTR) by creating a relevant and compelling page title and writing a meta description with a call to action.

To track click-through rates, set up Google Search Console for your website. This will show you the keywords your site is ranking for, as well as the total number of impressions and clicks for each keyword.

A high organic click-through rate indicates that you are ranking higher in the major search engines, which is exactly what you hope to achieve with a full SEO campaign.

In Google Search Console you can see also the total number of clicks your website receives and which search terms those clicks come from.

It also lets you know which pages are generating the most clicks and from which devices those organic clicks are coming. To access this data, go to the “Overview” section and click on “Open Report” located on the right side of the interface. You will then get your click data. 

4. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is another SEO KPI that shows the percentage of users who only saw one page of the website and then left the site without taking further action. This is one of the most important SEO KPIs, as it illustrates the visitor journey.

The bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of non-interactive sessions by the total number of sessions. Bounce rate is an important KPI because one of the main priorities of search engine algorithms is to satisfy the user’s query.

This important SEO KPI provides you with valuable data about your visitors’ journey and can inform you about what exactly is driving potential customers to leave your web page. The average bounce rate can vary from 20% to 70% depending on the industry.

If the percentage is too high, it indicates that the page is not relevant to the search query. The most common reasons for high bounce rates are slow page speed, too many ads, or poor site design, or inconsistent meta descriptions.

If the visitor doesn’t get the information they expect, they will most likely leave your page immediately. Keep the information on your website simple, consistent, and easy to understand. The bounce rate can help you determine where bounces are coming from and put you on the right track in terms of potential corrections.

Tracking this SEO KPI for all pages that are expected to generate conversions can give you a clue as to how users are interacting with your site and whether it is living up to their expectations. If the visitors leave the site after just a few seconds, then something is driving them away from your site.

If users leave your site after just a few seconds, it means your page is not holding their attention, which means you have missed opportunities to turn that traffic into customers.

Conversely, a low bounce rate indicates that your site is relevant and easy to navigate. Regularly check the pages on your site with a high bounce rate and test different A/B approaches to see if you can improve that number.

Look at your data and determine what may be causing the bounce. You can monitor your page bounce rate in your Google Analytics summary report to identify which ones are causing high rates and try different approaches to see what can help you reduce it.

You can monitor your page bounce rate in your Google Analytics summary report under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages, to identify which ones are causing high rates and try different approaches to see what can help you reduce it.

 To help you track your bounce rate, use tracking tags on each of your pages in Google Analytics.

Read More: 10 Ways to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

5. Page Load Time

This SEO KPI has become very important, as website speed comes into play in mobile search rankings. Your page load speed, with the rise of the mobile-first trend, plays an important role in mobile search rankings.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was announced in 2015 with the aim of improving internet performance when used on mobile devices. And with this update, the accelerated mobile page has a huge impact on the SEO performance of a website.

Google wants websites to load faster and be mobile-friendly, which certainly aligns with AMP which optimizes web pages for faster loading. Page load time is an underlying factor in most metrics.

Your page load time can impact your search engine rankings, as can various other factors such as organic click-through rate (CTR), keyword rankings, bounce rate, and your website’s domain authority.

If a site is very slow to load, it is also less likely to convert visitors because visitors’ interaction with that business has been frustrating. By increasing the loading speed of your site, you will improve the user experience and become more relevant to a search engine. 

The ideal page load time varies depending on the complexity of the content and the patience of the user, but the majority of users will abandon a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. For every additional second, it takes to load, your bounce rate will increase accordingly.

In fact, a page that takes 5 seconds to load increases the likelihood of a bounce by 90% compared to a page that loads in one second. You can use a tool like Page Speed Insight to see how your site loads and get recommendations on optimizations you can make to improve load time.

Read More: 11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

6. Mobile Usability Report

Making sure your mobile visitors are getting the best possible user experience has recently become even more relevant than desktop traffic. To track this SEO KPI, go to Google Search Console > Traffic > Mobile Usability.

The report will show you the issues users are experiencing and the URLs that are not displaying properly on mobile screens. The data will show any issues your mobile users are facing, as well as URLs that are struggling to display properly on mobile devices.

7. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are another SEO KPI you should consider. Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers important to the overall user experience of a web page.

The Core Web Vitals consist of three specific measures of page speed and user interaction:

• The Largest Content Picture (LCP) is the time it takes for a page to load from the perspective of an actual user.
• The first input Delay (FID) is the time it takes for a user to interact with your page.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a page as it loads.

Core Web Vitals are a subset of factors that will be part of Google’s Page Experience (UX) score which is a set of factors that Google considers important to the user experience such as HTTPS, mobile-friendliness, no pop-up interstitials, and secure navigation.

You can check the Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console under Improvements then Core Web Vitals. With the help of this report, which contains a list of all issues found at the bottom of the page, you can determine which website changes caused the problem.

8. Crawl Errors

Crawl errors are the most important indicator for your SEO efforts, as they can help you identify URLs that Google and therefore your potential visitors cannot access. If your site has crawl errors, it means that Googlebot is having trouble accessing your site or reading its content.

These are usually the following errors:

– 500 server errors

– 400 errors

– Crawl anomalies

– Pages not indexed

– Crawled – currently not indexed

– Discovered – currently not indexed

– Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical

– Blocked by robots.txt

The causes of crawl errors can be at the server level if Googlebot cannot communicate with the DNS server, if the request expires or if your site is down. Browsing errors can also occur at the URL level if a given page no longer exists or has a long redirect string.

It also happens if one of your pages is blocked by robots.txt. You can find crawl errors in Google Search Console and monitor them regularly so that you can quickly correct the errors if they occur.

You can test a page’s crawlability at any time by using the “Retrieve as Google” tool in Search Console and selecting the “Retrieve and Render” option.

This will increase the chances of your page ranking in Google and also increase your organic search traffic. When you submit a page, Google considers the submission as a suggestion of what to index.

Finally, you can also submit your sitemap to Search Console and check if the most important pages on your site are blocked by the robots.txt file. If so, you must unblock them.

By keeping an eye on these issues on a regular basis, you can stay on top of what might indicate more significant crawling or indexing problems.

Obviously, reducing these errors should be one of your main goals to ensure that all your pages that should be indexed are. If you notice a spike in crawl errors, you should take immediate action.

9. Indexed Pages

Indexed Pages is an SEO KPI that helps you better understand the URLs that Google and other search engines have indexed. By tracking this KPI, you can spot indexing issues and determine the cause, whether it’s the search engine incorrectly blocking your pages, duplicate URLs, sitemap issues, nofollow and/or noindex, etc.

To access this data, go to Google Search Console and navigate to the Index tab. There you can track your coverage and submit sitemaps.

10. Backlinks

Backlinks are key SEO KPIs that have a direct impact on your website’s ultimate ranking, as they are one of Google’s main ranking factors.

The more quality backlinks you have, the more likely you are to improve your ranking. The higher the authority of the backlinks, the better your site will be ranked by Google.

There are many ways to get backlinks, but the most valuable ones are those obtained through quality content. You can track this SEO KPI, in the Links tab of your Google search Console menu. There you will find data on your external links, internal links, most linked sites, and most linked text.

Read More: 12 Best Ways to Get Backlinks

11. Referral Traffic

This SEO metric shows visitors who arrive at your site by clicking on another website’s URL. For example, if a news platform publishes an article containing your website’s link, all users who arrive via that link will be marked as referring traffic in Google Analytics.

Tracking this metric helps you evaluate the successes and failures of your content strategy. In addition, increasing referral traffic will definitely increase the flow of leads to your website.

12. Pages Per Session

Another important SEO KPI you’ll want to pay attention to is the number of page views per session. This KPI shows the average number of pages a user visits on your website in a session.

The more pages a user visits per session, the more engaged and interested they are in your product or service. Pages per session is an important SEO KPI because it indicates the value and quality of your site and how users navigate it.

A good page/session metric depends on the depth of your site architecture and the complexity of your conversion funnel. Therefore, to improve this number, it is important to make sure your website has a good user interface and that all page CTAs are attractive and clear.

Make sure CTAs are prominent and clear, even on deep interior pages, to direct users deeper into your conversion funnel. It’s important to keep in mind that if your site only contains one page, tracking this SEO KPI won’t reveal valuable information. Instead, session length would be a more valuable metric to track in this case.

On the other hand, sites with a lot of content focused on user information, or an e-commerce site where users typically view multiple products and go through a multi-step checkout process, have many more pages per session on average.

13. Average Session Length

Another important KPI to track is the average session length. Session length tells you how long, on average, users spend browsing your website. Session length is an important KPI because it indicates the quality of your site’s content and the motivation of users to stay, read and click deeper into the site’s architecture.

Average session length is an important KPI to consider when evaluating user engagement on your website. The more in-depth the content and structure of your site, the longer this duration will be. To achieve a longer session length, you need to build a complete content structure.

 There are many ways to increase it and keep visitors to your site longer. You can create text with images and videos, format your content so that it is easy to read, and link to other pages on your site.  But what matters most is publishing content that is worth reading.

By monitoring session length, you’ll be able to assess the quality of your site and understand if you need to make changes to its structure. 

By monitoring session duration both at the site level and at the page level, you will be able to assess the quality of your site and understand if you need to make changes to its structure.

Read More: 18 Main Content KPIs You Need to Track to Measure Success

14. Exit Pages

An exit page is the last page a user visits before logging out, closing the tab or browser, or looking for a new website. It is a percentage calculated by dividing the number of exits by the number of page views for a given page.

By analyzing this SEO KPI, you will be able to optimize the user’s journey on your website and drive them towards conversion. In general, an exit page is not a negative parameter.

A user may leave the purchase confirmation page after a fully satisfactory experience. But if you have a high exit rate for a page that is not intended to be an exit page, optimizations are needed. You can find these details in Google Analytics by navigating to Behavior Reports > Site Content > Exit Pages.

15. Number of Leads

This is a critical KPI because it is closely tied to the primary business objective of expanding the customer base and increasing sales. But before you start tracking the number of leads your website gets, you need to define what a lead is in your case.

A lead can be a newsletter sign-up, a subscription, a download, a purchase made, a phone call, webinar registration, or any other option. Then you can simply track the number of leads per source to see which ones send the most qualified leads to your site.

In general, websites want to generate a lead that will turn into a sale. If you set goals, you can set up funnels to see where people stop in the process, make improvements to your site, and iterate from there.

An increase in leads not only means you’re attracting more visitors to the site but also that more and more of them are taking the desired action. To improve the results of this SEO KPI, you need to perform the following practices focusing on conversion rate optimization (CRO) and user experience (UX):

• Improve your website navigation.
• Make calls to action (CTAs) prominent and clear.
• Create trustworthy and compelling content.
•  Make it easy for the user to move through the conversion funnel.

To track this SEO KPI, you can set goals and events in Google Analytics, to see if your conversion rate is higher on mobile than on desktop, or if your leads are more male or female and which page generates the most leads.

Read More:

16 Top Lead Generation Strategies to Grow Your Business

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16. New and Returning Visitors

This SEO KPI shows the number of new visitors (those visiting your site for the first time) and return visitors. By analyzing this data by segments (traffic channels), you will see which channel is the most loyal and which ones need a marketing boost.

You can prioritize new visitors or return visitors (or both), and direct all your efforts to the channel that brings you the most of what you need.

17. The lifetime value of your Users

This SEO KPI allows you to see the value of a user based on their lifetime performance. You can track SEO KPIs in Google Analytics >Audience >Lifetime Value. To measure this KPI you need to define the value you place on a customer’s conversion.

For example, if an average customer usually spends $20 per order and you think they will place 5 orders with you in their lifetime, their lifetime value will be $100.

18. Transactions

This SEO KPI is essential and should be tracked for all e-commerce sites.  To evaluate SEO and marketing performance, it may not be enough to track site traffic metrics and lead counts. Therefore, it is necessary that Transactions be part of your company’s SEO KPIs.

The Conversions section and Ecommerce subsection of Google Analytics is the perfect place to define and track transaction amounts.

19. Conversion Rate

This SEO KPI tells you the completion rate of goals. The main goal for most businesses is that the other metrics help generate new leads and sales, which means improving your conversion rate.

That’s why it’s critical to set not only the right SEO goals but also the right conversion goals. The conversion rate is calculated by taking the total number of visitors and dividing it by the total number of conversions.

You can optimize your content to improve your search engine rankings, get more traffic and increase your conversion rate. If you understand which web pages help you generate more leads, you can adjust your SEO strategy to focus on the most profitable traffic sources.

Using conversion tracking tags in Google Analytics will allow you to collect data on the sources of your conversions and the e-commerce report helps you track sales by channel.

Read More: Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices

20. ROI

ROI (Return On Investment) is the ultimate goal of an SEO strategy for just about every business. ROI is a KPI you can measure for SEO to determine if the net revenue is worth the money you spend on optimizing your website.

You can measure ROI in terms of your investment in SEO and the revenue generated through it.

ROI is calculated by subtracting the gain of the investment from the cost of the investment and dividing it by the cost of the investment.

(Investment Gain – Investment Cost) / Investment Cost)

Remember that ROI can take time, but by regularly measuring your performance against your goal, you will be able to improve your ROI.

Conclusion

I hope this list of the most important SEO KPIs has given you an idea of how you can improve your SEO strategy. These metrics not only let you know where you stand but also show you how to proactively improve your website. But keep in mind that all of the above SEO KPIs should be considered for your SEO goals. 

For some campaigns, some of these 20 KPIs may not be relevant. So, it’s a matter of thinking carefully about the primary goal of your SEO efforts and shaping your reports accordingly. Linking your business goals to your SEO goals and choosing the right SEO KPIs will define your SEO success. While you can choose a particular metric to focus on, it’s important that you track it in combination with others SEO KPIs.

Everything from adding high-quality content to optimizing speed, building links, and developing an engaged social audience, among other ranking factors, will help improve rankings. Once you’ve decided which SEO KPIs are relevant to your goal, create informative SEO reports and assemble them on a monthly basis and track changes from month to month.

Analyzing your performance can help you determine which pages are performing the best, which keywords are converting the most, and which areas of your website need to be optimized for search. Remember, SEO takes time to produce results, but defining SEO KPIs and tracking them puts you in a better position to demonstrate the impact of your marketing efforts.