What are the KPIs necessary to create SEO positioning reports? How to create an SEO performance report? What criteria should be taken into account to measure the natural referencing of a website? All these questions are relevant when you are looking to measure the relevance of your SEO strategy. The right methodology for optimizing your web referencing consists of creating complete reports with relevant KPIs, implementing corrective actions or continuing the actions if they work and creating new reports. This proactive approach makes it possible to gain positions or strengthen existing positions. It is still necessary to know which are the good KPIs to measure the performance of its SEO referencing.
THE BEST TOOLS TO MEASURE YOUR SEO
Here is a list of some relevant tools to effectively measure your web SEO
- Google Analytics: audience analysis
- Google Search Console: site indexing analysis
- SEM Rush: very complete analysis (organic research, traffic analysis, keyword research, backlinks, audit)
- Google Keyword Planner: keyword research
- Ubersuggest: keyword research
- Majestic SEO: backlinks analysis
- Screaming Frog: crawl and log analysis
- PageSpeed Insights: site loading speed test
In this non-exhaustive list are the most efficient tools. In order to gain reliability on the data, it is advisable to cross-check data from several sources.
WHAT ARE THE BEST KPIS TO MEASURE SEO?
KPIs must be tangible data to assess the relevance of SEO optimization. With a regular evaluation, it is possible to closely monitor the performance of your natural referencing. Each company and each sector of activity will have larger and more relevant KPIs than others and a personalized report. The most interesting KPIs are as follows.
ORGANIC RESEARCH
Organic Search makes it possible to measure the visits acquired through search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and organic search results. This data is easily recoverable with Google Analytics. The increase in organic visitors in your reports is a strong trend that can prove the success of your SEO strategy. However, this is not enough. An increase in organic traffic can be explained by an increase in the search volume and not necessarily by better positions, a notoriety campaign can also increase searches on the brand name.
The click-through rate on search engines (available on Google Search Console) can help you understand if the optimization of your meta title tags or meta description tags has worked or needs to be implemented. It is a criterion that has a great influence on organic research.
SEO POSITIONING MONITORING
Tracking SEO Positions on the most important keywords (Keyword Rankings) is essential in an SEO measurement report. The higher you are, the more your site will be visible on the queries that matter to you. You do not know how to choose the keywords to follow? Choose keywords that benefit from a good volume of research, bring qualified traffic to your website and are not too competitive. While certain keywords will be easy to reach, such as brand name or long queries, more generic keywords are difficult but can attract a very large audience.
It is normal to see small variations appear, do not panic for a place lost on a secondary keyword. Analyse SEO positioning monitoring on a global scale. If certain pages or certain categories are very affected, you should think about implementing corrective actions.
LEAD GENERATION AND CONVERSION
Like paid referencing (SEA), natural referencing must be at the service of your activity, of your objectives. The acquisition of traffic has no interest without qualified customers or prospects. The generation of leads and activity for the company is at the centre of the SEO strategy. The conversion can take the form of a purchase, an appointment request, a completed form, a call, and subscription to a newsletter, etc.
In order to measure the performance of your SEO, it is relevant to configure and monitor conversions from Google Analytics. It will be possible to know:
- How the conversion rate is changing – Should we add reinsurance elements?
- Which pages bring the most conversions? The least number of conversions?
- Is there a difference between mobile and desktop traffic?
- Disparities according to socio-demographic criteria?
Optimizing your conversion rate requires a better user experience (UX):
- Is your site optimized for mobile? (Responsive design, loading time, etc.)
- Is the content of the site interesting, is it credible?
- Are call-to-actions visible on mobile?
- Is the navigation simple and smooth?
BOUNCE RATE AND LENGTH OF VISIT
The bounce rate corresponds to the share of users who leave the website without having done a single action (visit another page, filling in a form, launching a video…) on the total number of sessions. It is impossible to give an average to know if a bounce rate is good or not. In reality, it very largely depends on the landing pages, the activity and the content of the site. A blog article answering a specific question from a user will have a bounce rate than a home page of an e-commerce site for example.
The bounce rate must be measured over the medium and long term. This data is used to determine if your website is qualitative and meets the needs of Internet users on a specific request. Lots of actions and a visit that lasts is an indication of a relevant website that responds well to the request of a surfer and the search engines will surely value it.
THE NUMBER OF PAGE VIEWS PER SESSION
The number of page views per session shows how many pages are viewed on average for each session. Again, it is difficult to determine what would be a good number of page views per session since it depends on your architecture and your objectives. However, e-commerce sites should have a large number because visitors will look at several products and therefore several pages on each visit.
We must try to understand if visitors leave because the content of the site is not relevant (negative for SEO) or if they have found answers to their expectations (positive).