You put a lot of effort into maximizing your website’s potential through SEO and choosing the best web hosting, and naturally, you want to be able to see the ROI in a meaningful way. Key performance indicators or KPIs are a great way to do that. A KPI is a metric that measures important data over time. They can be viewed separately for a drilled down look at an area of success or struggle or in totality to provide a big-picture view of customer engagement through SEO.
Measure Your Keyword Performance
While you may have a few KPIs that are specific to your industry or company, there are several that generally apply across the board, especially when it comes to SEO. First among them is your keyword performance, which is so valuable because it’s so closely tied to your SEO strategy. If your keyword rankings are going up, it’s likely that your SEO is performing as expected. Strong keyword rankings also drive a lot of subsequent user behavior and engagement.
Analyze Organic Traffic Patterns
Organic traffic measures how many people found you by search engine, where they probably entered a keyword that’s part of your SEO research. Look at subsets of this data, like click-through rate (when someone clicks on a SERP to get to your site), pages per session, average session length, bounce rate and exit pages for a more nuanced look at your traffic patterns. These KPI will show you where site changes may need to be made, regardless of whether your server is hosting WordPress for your site or another website solution.
Follow the Lead Generation and Conversion Numbers
Lead generation and conversions tell you if your SEO and other marketing efforts are successful based on your goals for the website. A critical step in using this data is first having a clear understanding of what you want people to do on the website — sign up for a newsletter, follow on social media, book a call, make a purchase? Data can also provide insight into who is engaged with your CTA and how. These clues can help you better refine your SEO strategy. Does your buyer persona align with the data you’re seeing on conversions? Depending on your answer, you may want to revise your SEO strategy.
Find the Referral Traffic
Referral traffic measures the impact of your backlinks and SEO content marketing strategies. Visitors to your website from referral traffic comes from a third party website aside from a search engine. When your referral traffic is high, it’s a signal that your backlinks and SEO strategy are connecting with your intended audience.
Finding the Ideal KPI Tracking Tools
Having a list of SEO KPIs doesn’t do you much good if you don’t track them. Many use Google tools but there are several other analytics suites available, such as WordPress hosting. Look for a KPI tracking solution that measures the KPIs you want, either out of the box or by accepting imported data. Choose a solution that can be customized or scalable depending on your needs.
The tool’s user dashboard should be clear, easy to read, and simple to navigate. Ideally, an analytics tool will also give you the ability to export data in raw numbers and as charts and graphs for sharing with other stakeholders. It should also include user support that is readily available.
Turn to InMotion Hosting for full support in identifying and measuring your KPIs. Book your call today and take the next step in SEO marketing to drive site traffic and conversions.