To get any attention in today’s digital commerce landscape, you absolutely need an SEO strategy. Search engine rankings and visibility are more important than ever, and the competition is steep.
That’s why it’s so important to know whether or not your current SEO is working. You can start out with a good plan, but if it’s not helping you to achieve your goals, you’ll need to make adjustments. In this post, we’ll look at several key metrics that will help you how to know if your SEO is working.
Check the Relevance of Your Keywords
Focusing on getting your keywords right is basic SEO 101. But it’s helpful to return to keyword relevance again and again because trends, consumer preferences, and other factors affect which keywords are useful at any given time.
Every page on your website (as well as your blog posts) should focus on one or two targeted keywords. These keywords should be terms that prospective customers would search as they’re looking for the kinds of services and products you offer. It’s not necessary to use the same keywords on each page; in fact, it’s helpful to use different keywords for different parts of your website so you have a better chance of capturing multiple keywords in searches.
Each time someone types a phrase or keyword into a search engine, the engine’s algorithm determines which sites are most applicable to the searcher’s intent, and then it orders the results in order of relevance. Keyword effectiveness is in a constant state of flux. A keyword that worked wonders for your traffic in April may not be as effective in October due to seasonal topics, algorithm changes, and industry trends. That’s why it’s important to reevaluate your keywords regularly and produce new content as necessary.
Compare Organic Traffic with Paid Traffic
If you want to know how effective your SEO is, compare your organic traffic with your traffic that comes from paid advertising. Organic traffic–traffic that comes from search engine queries–is the holy grail for digital marketers. A high volume of organic traffic means that you have found the secret sauce, the combination of effective keywords, posting frequency, design, and messaging that people find helpful and attractive.
If most of your traffic is coming from paid advertising, consider improving your organic traffic in the following ways:
- Improving your page titles and meta descriptions
- Creating more content and posting more often
- Targeting new keywords, including local keywords, if applicable
As you work to improve your organic traffic, you’ll realize several benefits. First of all, your overall traffic will increase. Second, your marketing bills will decrease, and you’ll be able to put those funds toward other priorities.
Check Your Online Conversion Rate
Conversion rates vary widely industry to industry. If you’re selling products, you should expect different conversion rates than a company that is trying to get appointments for tax preparation services, for example.
Generally speaking, however, if you have a conversion rate over 3.5%, you should be very happy. Anything over this rate is considered to be solid. If you’re in between 1% and 3%, there’s definitely room for improvement, but you’re off to a good start. If your conversion rate is less than 1%, it’s time to make some changes and possibly get professional digital marketing help.
Evaluate Your Bounce Rate
Once you get people to your website, how long are they staying there? Visitors to your website may arrive at any page, depending on their search terms. If they’re interested in what they see, they’ll explore your site a little more. If they leave immediately, they will have bounced right out of your sphere of influence.
What can you learn from a high bounce rate? If people are quickly clicking the back button after they get to your site, they’re not finding what they were looking for. This is a clue to you that you need to refocus your site to what your target audience is looking for. You may also need to improve your design and make it easier for people to access the information they want.
If your bounce rate is over 70%, it’s time to do some major website renovations. Between 35% and 60%, you’re hitting the average. There’s probably some room to improve, but you should be pretty satisfied with this range. If your bounce rate is less than 35%, you’re hitting it out of the park. Well done!
As you can see, there are several important metrics you can use to evaluate the strength of your SEO. If you’d like to get a free SEO analysis of your website, click here. You can also contact us for help with questions about other content marketing issues. We’re Park Slope Softworks, your Brooklyn digital marketing company.
