Measuring SEO
“Success is not measured by what you do compared to what somebody else does. Success is measured by what you do compared to what you are capable of doing.”
Zig Ziglar
“Success is not measured by what you do compared to what somebody else does. Success is measured by what you do compared to what you are capable of doing.”
Zig Ziglar
In this article I will talk about how you can measure your success in a digital world.
Like Zig Zigler was illuding to, its important to measure your own success, if you don’t measure your own success how will you know if you have achieved anything.
A Body builder will routinely measure what they lifted last week, so that they can increase the weight they lift in the current week, obviously this helps them lift more and more each week so they will always be training at their best.
Google analytics
Google Analytics is a free service that tracks and reports website traffic. Tracking your site’s performance is the digital equivalent of writing down how much you lifted last week. There are a number of metrics that Google Analytics will track for you:
Number of visits and unique visitors
Traffic sources, including which sites gave you traffic, which search engines were used, and which referring websites traffic came from.
User engagement, including which pages on your site had the most engagement, how long people spent on each page, and whether people bounced from your page immediately.
E-commerce metrics, including revenue, transactions, and conversion rate (which could be for landing pages or sales).
Audience demographics, including age, gender, and interests. This is useful for understanding if you are getting the right traffic to your site. For example, if you are targeting a younger audience but mostly getting older visitors, you may need to track your demographics.
Geography, including location and language. This is important if you need your audience to be in a specific location.
Device and browser information. This may not be important for all websites, but if you need your clients to visit via desktop (for example, because the information on your site is easier to read on a larger screen), then tracking desktop traffic can be helpful. If you are getting more mobile traffic than desktop traffic and this is a problem for your business, it may be an issue with your Google Ads.”
Google analytics
Google Analytics is a free service that tracks and reports website traffic. Tracking your site’s performance is the digital equivalent of writing down how much you lifted last week. There are a number of metrics that Google Analytics will track for you:
Number of visits and unique visitors
Traffic sources, including which sites gave you traffic, which search engines were used, and which referring websites traffic came from.
User engagement, including which pages on your site had the most engagement, how long people spent on each page, and whether people bounced from your page immediately.
E-commerce metrics, including revenue, transactions, and conversion rate (which could be for landing pages or sales).
Audience demographics, including age, gender, and interests. This is useful for understanding if you are getting the right traffic to your site. For example, if you are targeting a younger audience but mostly getting older visitors, you may need to track your demographics.
Geography, including location and language. This is important if you need your audience to be in a specific location.
Device and browser information. This may not be important for all websites, but if you need your clients to visit via desktop (for example, because the information on your site is easier to read on a larger screen), then tracking desktop traffic can be helpful. If you are getting more mobile traffic than desktop traffic and this is a problem for your business, it may be an issue with your Google Ads.”
Google search console
Google Search Console (GSC) is similar to Google Analytics in that it has a similar interface. When I first started using GSC, I didn’t see a difference and wrote it off as another time suck. Over time, however, I realized that GSC has some real gold if you know where to look.
On the surface, GSC is a platform where you can find out which keywords and queries your site ranks for, any crawl errors or security issues, and which other websites are linking to your site. While Google Analytics can show you this information, the way it is presented in GSC makes it much easier to digest and saves you time.
While both Google Analytics and GSC give you a broader overview of site visits and bounce rate, GSC is better suited for optimizing your site. It will give you information on how people found your site, which keyword search(s) they used to get to your page, and which keywords you should optimize for when you change your content to create more traffic.”
Google search console
Google Analytics is a free service that tracks and reports website traffic. Tracking your site’s performance is the digital equivalent of writing down how much you lifted last week. There are a number of metrics that Google Analytics will track for you:
Google Search Console (GSC) is similar to Google Analytics in that it has a similar interface. When I first started using GSC, I didn’t see a difference and wrote it off as another time suck. Over time, however, I realized that GSC has some real gold if you know where to look.
On the surface, GSC is a platform where you can find out which keywords and queries your site ranks for, any crawl errors or security issues, and which other websites are linking to your site. While Google Analytics can show you this information, the way it is presented in GSC makes it much easier to digest and saves you time.
While both Google Analytics and GSC give you a broader overview of site visits and bounce rate, GSC is better suited for optimizing your site. It will give you information on how people found your site, which keyword search(s) they used to get to your page, and which keywords you should optimize for when you change your content to create more traffic.”
A/B split testing
A/B testing could be compared to two different athletes training 2 different ways. One athlete could be training by doing more cardio, whereas another athlete might train by doing more weight training. Each athlete will then have different results for the same sport. Once you can compare both methods of training, only then can you see which has the better result.
A/B testing a website page is the same principle.
Test A
Page has bigger buttons.
Copywriting is by writer A.
Design is by designer A.
Test B
Page has smaller buttons.
Copywriting is by writer B.
Design is by designer B.
There are a number of plugins that allow you to get a test which page is performing better than the other. Most page builders will have this feature built in.
Simple Page Tester
Nelio AB Testing
OptimizePress
Google Optimize
For example, the page builder Thrive Architect will give you metrics in the backend of the WordPress interface. These metrics will, in most cases, boil down to:
Did the site visitor click on the call to action button?
Did the site visitor make a purchase?
Did the site visitor use the email sign-up form?
Once you start A/B testing, you’ll soon start to see what works for you, but most importantly, what works for your target audience. Your site’s traffic will differ from your competitor’s, just copying what your competitor does is a good start, but they will have different traffic to you.
While you can use tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, and all the other social media and Google Ads tracking sites, you won’t be able to track metrics on how well their email campaigns are doing, how many referrals they get through existing customers, etc.
Bing web master tools
Bing another analytics tool just like Google Anlatucs and is also free. Bing is less widely used as Bing search engine traffic makes up about 12% of overall traffic to your site. While it’s still a good idea to look at the metrics for Bing, most SEO’s won’t look at this traffic source as Google traffic obviously takes up most at about 77%. Yandex also give you similar tool as Bing and Google analytics does. Having bing and Yandex installed as plugins to monitor your SEO does have an SEO benefit, as Google can see what is installed on your site. Having these plugins installed shows Google that your site isn’t spammy and more likely to be a legit site.
Bing web master tools
Bing another analytics tool just like Google Anlatucs and is also free. Bing is less widely used as Bing search engine traffic makes up about 12% of overall traffic to your site. While it’s still a good idea to look at the metrics for Bing, most SEO’s won’t look at this traffic source as Google traffic obviously takes up most at about 77%. Yandex also give you similar tool as Bing and Google analytics does. Having bing and Yandex installed as plugins to monitor your SEO does have an SEO benefit, as Google can see what is installed on your site. Having these plugins installed shows Google that your site isn’t spammy and more likely to be a legit site.