How to Rank Higher On Google (Part 7: Measuring & Tracking SEO)

Hi again, Welcome back again to yet another part of this multipart series about How to Rank Higher On Google. Today marks the 7th part of this series. In today’s part, we will talk about Measuring & Tracking SEO Success. You need to track the progress of your SEO to be able to make it better and improve. If you have not read the previous parts of this

After you read the first 6 parts, you can continue with today’s part about measuring and tracking SEO success.

Step #7. Measuring & Tracking SEO Success.

So now, talking about measuring and tracking SEO success, how do you do it? Below we discuss some of the ways and things you can do to track and measure your SEO.

1. Track Organic Traffic (Google Analytics & GSC).

The first aspect of SEO that we will talk about measuring is organic traffic. Of course the aim of SEO is to get free organic traffic from search engines like google. Therefore, its only wise to measure amount of free organic traffic you are getting from your SEO.

To do this, you can use tools like google analytics and GSC to do it. If you have google analytics connected with your website, then it will give you a lot of data on your website. If you want more specific data about google search results, then use GSC. GSC is google search console. It is the webmaster account that google uses to give you data about your website on google. It uses it to report the performance of your website on google search.

When it comes to checking your rankings, we have talked more about it here How to Check Google Ranking.

2. Track Keyword Rankings & Visibility.

Another aspect of SEO that you need to measure and track is keyword ranking. That’s the whole point of SEO. To rank for keywords. Hence you need to track the keyword ranking of your website. You also need to check and know what is the keyword visibility of your website. Thus you need to know if your website is appearing for those keywords. In addition to that, you also need to know what position is that keyword ranking for.

Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs or Google Search Console to track the keywords. Focus on high-level keywords for more SEO juice. You also need to track position changes over time. In addition to that, you also need to check SERP features like snippets and PAAs. This will help you know how your content appears.

To see more about your keywords rankings and visibility, read this 10 Ranking checker tools (Free & Premium).

3. Track Click-Through Rate (CTR) & SERP Performance.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) shows how often people click on your page on the SERP when they see it. This rate is critical because it can help you improve. If the CTR is high, then that’s an indication that everything is fine. Keep doing what you are doing and even more. On the other hand, if the CTR is low, then that’s an indication that something is wrong. Hence you need to improve. Thus you need to do things differently. You need to change tactics since things are not working. You can improve title tags, meta descriptions, and structured data to boost CTR.

Moreover, you can even use A/B testing to see what works and what does not work.

4. Track Engagement Metrics (Bounce Rate, Dwell Time, Pages per Session).

Another metric of SEO that you need to measure and track is the engagement metrics. You need to know how the people are relating with your content. This is because google cares for this. Google considers such factors to rank your website. If your content has higher engagement, google considers it to be good for the people. On the other hand, if the engagement is low then google will consider it as bad.

Some of the metrics you can measure when it comes to engagement metrics are Bounce Rate, Dwell Time and Pages per Session.

Bounce rate is the measure of how many people leave your website without any engagement or even before it loads. Higher bounce rate is bad and google will drop your ranking for that. On the other hand, the contrary is also true. A low bounce rate is good and google will rank you higher.

Dwell time is the amount of time they spend on your content. The longer they spend on your content, the higher google ranks your content. The vice versa is also true.

Pages per session is the number of pages/links that your audience opens in one visit to your website. The more the higher google ranks you. Vice versa is also true.

5. Backlink Growth & Authority (Domain Rating/Authority).

If there is one thing that google really values it is backlinks. Backlinks to google are like oxygen is to the lungs. Google really values backlinks. Not just any backlinks but high quality backlinks. If you get toxic backlinks, google will definitely penalize you for that. Google values backlinks but not toxic ones. A website with a lot of backlinks and good backlinks, will definitely rank high. Google ranks websites with many backlinks higher than those without. If you search anything on google, you will notice that most of those top websites have a lot of backlinks. Thus don’t ignore it.

You need to track the growth of your backlinks. In addition to that, you also need to track the authority of your domain. The authority comes from the backlinks that you are getting.

6. Conversion Rate & ROI from SEO.

Conversion is when your website visitors do what you want them to do on your website. If you are selling something, then the sale is the conversion. When the person buys, then we say the visitor has converted. The amount of the visitors who convert to the total visitors is what is called conversion rate. You can also consider this as the Return On Investment of your SEO.

The higher the conversion rate, the better for you. This is because google will assume that whatever you are selling the people really love it. The assumption is that if those many people are converting, then it must be really good. Hence google ranks higher for that.

Conclusion.

You have come to the end of the 7th part of this multipart series about How to Rank Higher On Google. Today’s part teaches you how to measure and track your SEO ranking. Come back again tomorrow for the 8th part of this multipart series.