Search Engine Optimization - 18 Aug 2014

10 Critical SEO Metrics for Ensuring your Business Success

Does your business involve good SEO practices? Are you trying best to track your website performance? If yes then what can be the reason behind that your business is not doing well. Watch out, it can be a SEO issue. A successful search program depends on monitoring SEO health.
Use the following metrics to detect SEO problems as and when they appear.

1. Pay Attention to Organic Traffic Changes

Any change that you may notice in your website’s organic traffic can be the influencing outcome of your SEO strategy. If you find there is a decrease in organic traffic then find out what went wrong and address the issue. Consider taking help of the additional health metrics to search the source of the problem. Check organic traffic to various sections of the website as any section with problem can affect the whole site. Observe the marketing activity from other sources as lack of brand awareness can cause decrease in branded search.

If your website’s organic traffic increases then find out what worked out and consider implementing the practice to the rest of the site. Establish a weekly custom alert in Analytics to notify you up to 5% increase or decrease in organic traffic as compared to the previous week.

2. Are Direct Traffic Changes Going Unnoticed?

Do not ignore the direct traffic changes even if you are tracking changes of organic traffic. If there is a decrease in direct traffic then you should check whether the same is happening with organic traffic. Check the mobile device usage since most of modern mobile browsers do not transfer http referrer data. Keeping an eye on the marketing acting from other channels can also help you notice the influence on direct traffic.

If you come across increase in direct traffic then figure out what went right and apply it to the site. Do find out if there was an increase in mobile device usage or in marketing activity from other sources. Establish a weekly custom alert in Analytics to notify you in case of 10% or more fluctuation in direct traffic over the previous week.

3. Referral Traffic Changes-Gain or Lost?

This wonderful link profile performance metric elaborates whether you have gained or lost links. If referral traffic starts decreasing then analyze your backlink profile as well as referrers to check if you lost an inbound link. If you get less traffic from a link, find out if the linking website has a change in design that may result into decrease in links to your website.

Investigate the source of traffic to your site and find out further opportunities for linking from it. If referral traffic increases then it is good to set up an alert in Analytics that will make you aware of 10% or more increase or decrease in referral traffic, comparing to the previous week.

4. Attend to Campaign Traffic Changes

Monitoring campaign traffic changes helps you find out why there is a change in direct search traffic. Consider setting up a custom alert in analytics that will notify you if it experiences 20% or more increase or decrease in traffic over the earlier week.

5. Observing Email Traffic Changes can Help

Email traffic gives you an idea about the changes of direct or branded search traffic. Establish an annotation in analytics whenever an e-blast goes out. Moreover, apply a custom alert if you notice 20% or more fluctuation in email traffic as compared to the previous week.

6. Check the Mobile Device Usage

As http referrer data is being transferred on less with mobile and desktop browsers, it adds challenge to measure ROI of SEO programs with increase in the usage of mobile search. Set up a monthly alert for automated email in analytics with mobile device usage in comparison to the previous month.

7. Keep an Eye on Page Load Speed

Do watch out if your page load speed increases as search engines can consider it as a negative site quality signal. It may result into ineffective crawling of spiders that may annoy the users which ultimately decrease the changes of conversion. Establish a daily automated alert in analytics to notice an increase of more than 10%.

Consider creating two weekly automated emails with the top 50 pages with the slowest pages load speeds-one is for desktop users in your area and another for mobile users. Pick the pages with the slowest loading speed which gets a considerable amount of traffic. It is better that your should set up monitoring through gtmetrix.com. It is a helpful tool to analyze what is slowing down the pages.

8. Is your Server Responding Well?

It has been observed that sometimes the server speed can slow down the speed of your site. Establish an automated alert in analytics to notify you by email when it experiences the server response time exceeds.

9. Keyword Rankings are Vital

It is commonly understood by SEO professionals. Any decrease in keyword ranking results into traffic loss. If you lose rankings, try to adjust to you keyword strategy. Consider analyzing the possibility of a penalty.

10. Are Visitors Bouncing from your Site?

If you notice an increase in bounce rate then the multiple factors may be affecting the health of your SEO programs. These include slow page load speed, irrelevant content & keyword targeting, poor user experience and inappropriate Meta data. The best way to monitor the increase of 10% or more is to establish an automated alert in analytics.