If you're running a website, chances are you've heard of search engine optimization (SEO). It's the process of optimizing your site to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), which can lead to more traffic, higher visibility, and increased revenue. But how do you know if your SEO efforts are paying off? That's where SEO tracking comes in.
In this article, we will cover:
- The basics of SEO tracking
- The necessary steps to create an SEO tracking strategy
- The important metrics you need to use
- How to analyze these metrics
So, if you are ready, let's get started!
What is SEO tracking?
SEO tracking is the way of assessing and evaluating a website's search engine optimization (SEO) performance over time. It includes monitoring a website's visibility, position, traffic, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) on search engine results pages (SERPs) for particular terms or phrases.
To make sure that the website's SEO strategy is successful and to detect any weaknesses, SEO tracking is crucial. You may optimize your methods and approaches for improving the webpage visibility and ranking by continuously analyzing the performance of the website in search results.
Best practices for SEO tracking
If you proceed in a planned and controlled manner, your SEO journey will be quite enjoyable. We have tried to simplify everything as much as possible so that you can step by step. You can review the basic summary of what to do for SEO tracking in the table below.
To have a successful SEO tracking, there are five essential steps you need to follow.
- Define your goal
You must clearly define your SEO goals before you can start improving for success. Is it your objective to increase organic web traffic, generate leads, achieve greater search engine rankings, or increase brand recognition? You may adjust your plans and strategies once you've identified a specific focus.
- Choose the right tool
After determining your business goal, find the tool that can help you reach your goal quickly. This way, you will have a companion in your SEO tracking journey.
- Select the right metrics
There are dozens of metrics you can use to analyze your SEO performance. The best one is the one that matches your goal the most. For example, if you create strategies to increase user engagement, focusing on metrics such as bounce rate and average session duration may be the right approach. This way, you can analyze how successful your efforts have been.
- Analyze and make informed decisions
When tracking your SEO with the metrics you've selected, analyze your performance. This way, you can understand how your SEO practices have changed compared to previous weeks and months. Then use this analysis to create new strategies.
- Regularly track and review the metrics you have selected
After choosing the metrics that match your business goal, all you have to do is regularly track and monitor changes. Remember, SEO is not a short journey, so you need to monitor changes constantly.
Find the most suitable tool for your goal
After improving your SEO performance, you will need a data analysis tool to analyze how close you are to achieving your goal. However, when searching for a tool that meets your needs, you will likely come across dozens of tools. This can be confusing when it comes to choosing which one to use.
Google Analytics, SEM rush, and Ahrefs are the most popular tools. However, they all have many different shortcomings. The most important two issues are pricing and usability.
While Google Analytics is free, its unique structure and usage can be quite difficult for new users. Therefore, you may need to watch many YouTube videos and read blog posts to track the metrics you want.
You may also experience the same difficulties with SEMrush and Ahrefs. Additionally, if you are a relatively small business and your website volume is not large, the pricing of these two tools may not make you happy. This is because the limited features in their lower-priced plans for SMEs may not satisfy you.
So, what is the best tool for your needs?
The answer is simple, of course - Heybooster! With its easy and fast interface that anyone can use, regardless of their experience, Heybooster will satisfy you. Moreover, Heybooster was created to help you understand the data instead of confusing you with incomprehensible data. Therefore, the whole process will progress quickly from the moment you sign up.
Now, sign up for heybooster and access all the necessary metrics for SEO tracking!
Best metrics for SEO tracking
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is a metric that measures the number of users who visit your website by seeing it on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Organic traffic is critical in many ways because it shows your authority on the SERP, unlike the traffic obtained through advertising.
By tracking the rise and fall of organic traffic, you can find the factors that cause this change. Therefore, organic traffic is definitely valuable for SEO tracking.
With heybooster, you can see changes in your organic traffic in seconds. Moreover, with the "Set a Notification" option, you can receive instant notifications when there is any anomaly in the data.
Conversion rate
The number of persons who performed the activity you specified is shown by conversion rates. The difference between the number of visitors that visit your landing page and the number of users you can turn into leads or customers must be as little as possible.
Users seeing your landing page yet not performing particular actions indicates that there is a need for enhancement. You may, for instance, adjust call-to-action phrases, use simple and plain language, and provide interesting material.
You can also detect your pages with high impressions but low conversion rates. This way, you can create new strategies for pages with high potential but unable to achieve the necessary success.
With heybooster, you can track your conversion rate daily, weekly, and monthly. This allows you to analyze whether your SEO optimization practices are working or not.
Keyword rankings
The Google algorithm rewards a successful approach that increases the authority of your website on the search engine results page (SERP). Developing brand recognition and trust are only two of the numerous advantages of becoming an authority, both of which are directly tied to your keyword ranking success.
Because people tend to favor websites that are naturally displayed on the SERP, maintaining visibility is essential. The SEO effectiveness of your landing pages may be enhanced by keeping track of your keyword rankings. By using this statistic, you may determine which keywords' rankings have risen or fallen and develop new tactics in response.
With heybooster, you can see which keywords are giving you a higher position on the SERP and which ones are losing visibility. This can help you identify areas where you can improve and increase your SERP authority.
Click-through rate
This metric is the ratio of the clicks on the links that direct users to your website or product, divided by the total number of views of the link. By consistently monitoring this metric, you can determine if the strategy you're using is appropriate for the users' intent on SERP. This information can help you adjust your strategy to better meet users' needs and increase engagement.
If your page has a high impression but a low click-through rate (CTR), it means you failed to impress users at first sight. In this case, the first step is to understand whether your content matches users' search intent. Then, you can work on making elements such as title and meta description more appealing.
With Heybooster, you can easily track your CTR rate. Additionally, Heybooster can help you identify keywords with a high CTR despite a low impression share. Let's identify these keywords together!
Organic visibility of non-branded keywords
When your website appears on (SERP) for keywords that aren't directly related to your brand name, this is referred to as organic visibility of non-branded keywords. Non-branded keywords are terms that people use in their searches for your business's products and services when they are seeking for general or sector-specific terms.
Your website is likely to score highly for these topical search queries if it has a strong organic presence for non-branded keywords. Because it might result in more visitors and new customers. This statistic is significant because it shows how well your website is doing in terms of SEO and how well your content satisfies the expectations of visitors looking for particular keywords relevant to your sector.
With heybooster, you can track the organic performance of your non-branded keywords. This allows you to create improvement strategies to increase your authority on the SERP. Let's take a closer look at non-branded keywords and their details!
Final thoughts
As you can see, there are many different factors to consider when tracking SEO. When all of these come together, you can create a successful SEO tracking strategy. Of course, trying to do everything manually in your SEO journey can be quite challenging. That's where heybooster comes in to help!
By using heybooster, you can make SEO tracking completely automated. Plus, heybooster presents everything in the simplest way possible, without requiring any technical knowledge. You no longer need to constantly monitor things manually when tracking SEO as heybooster instantly informs you of any changes. This way, you save time too.
There's no need to wait any longer. Sign up for heybooster now!