An effective SEO campaign is the most successful way to ensure your website ranks highly on search engine results pages (SERPS).
Ranking is crucial to your organic traffic, as 90% of all online customers don’t visit websites ranking past the first page.
In turn, if your SEO strategy increases traffic and user engagement, it will lower your bounce rate and increase conversions to sales.
How do you know if your SEO campaign is working?
In the early stages, you may not see obvious results, as organic traffic and conversion rates take time to build (in most cases, this is around one year).
In the meantime, this blog will give you a quick guide on tracking the progress of your SEO campaign, here are the top five questions you should be asking yourself:
Are you generating new and high-quality backlinks?
When a reputable site links back to your page, they pass on some of its value and help your site rank higher in search engine results.
One of the best ways to generate backlinks is by creating high-quality content that your top referrals will want to publish. By doing so, you’ll be increasing your brand’s reputation and online visibility.
If you’re starting to increase the number of backlinks to your site from other pages that rank highly on Google, this is a great sign that your SEO campaign is on the right track.
What does your SEO audit tool suggest?
Several online SEO checkers offer a free audit of your content and impart suggestions for how to make improvements.
SEO auditing tools can help you monitor your content strategy to ensure you’re not falling into any common pitfalls, such as:
- Keyword cannibalisation, overusing keywords in your content.
- Low readability scores, using overly complicated sentences and poor structure (for tips on structuring your content for SEO, click here)
Are you ranking for the right keywords?
Consider using an online audit tool, such as SEMrush, to monitor which keywords you’re ranking for.
Ranking for the right keywords is crucial to the success of your campaign. If you start to rank for keywords that have little relevance to your website, you’re going to get a high bounce rate, which will negatively affect your overall ranking.
Ideally, you’ll be focusing on target keywords that are relevant to your content, with a high volume of monthly searches, but also with a difficulty score of around 60% or less.
Remember, all keywords are not created equal. With the help of online keyword research tools, you may find new subtopics or question-based keywords to include in your content or to inform your next blog topic.
How much organic traffic are you generating?
Consider using Google Analytics, a free tool that monitors your website’s key metrics. Using the ‘Organic Search’ function, you’ll be able to assess your branded and non-branded traffic.
Branded traffic means visits from customers who directly searched for your brand name. Non-branded traffic, however, comes from visitors who have searched for a keyword that your site ranks for.
With the help of the Google Analytics search tool, you can see which landing pages visitors went to on your site. If you see multiple landing pages for your blog posts and resource content, this is a great indicator that your site is generating non-branded, organic traffic as a result of your SEO campaign.
Are you starting to see any signs of conversion?
The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase your organic traffic and convert your readers into customers.
While it may take time to see a boost in sales, there are other metrics that you can monitor to get an early indication of how effective your SEO is. These may include:
- How many customers sign up for an email subscription, such as a newsletter
- How many customers register their contact information
- Lower bounce rates from visitors to your site
- High engagement; visitors browsing multiple pages of your website
To learn more about how content marketing can benefit your website, read another helpful article on our SEO blog. Alternatively, get in touch with our team of specialists, today, to discover how we can grow your business.