5 Things to Track for New SEO Executives
When starting out in your search engine optimisation journey, it can often be daunting to know where to start. There are so many tools, charts and different types of data you have to track, collect and know what to do with, as well as link building and technical SEO, as well as on-page optimisation. Should you learn to code? And if so, which languages? It can quickly become overwhelming.
Well, in this article you can get advice on one topic at least – some of the data. And specifically, which data you should be paying attention to. There are some things you should start to track from early on because they are vitally important to measuring the success of your campaigns.
Conversions
Conversions are one of the most important things to track from your website. They tell you how much of the traffic you are getting is being converted into a goal. In Google Analytics (GA), you can set goals according to what you want your audience to do. So if you want people to subscribe, sign up to your newsletter or fill out a contact form, these things will be tracked on GA as goals and if someone completes that task, it will be registered as a goal completion. The conversion is important because you need to know how many people are doing what you want them to do. If this number is low then you know that there might be an issue with the website, or what you’re saying in your ads to get people to come to your website.
Traffic
Traffic is also a pretty important thing to track. It lets you know how many people your campaign and digital marketing efforts are reaching and persuading to look at your website. It is vital to know how wide of a reach your website has, but the reasons for this can differ depending on the focus of your campaign. If the focus of your campaign is disseminating knowledge or just brand awareness, then you want to track traffic so that you can figure out who is receiving your message and through which channels. It can help you determine your audience, which in turn allows you to customise your information to suit the audience. If the focus of your brand is selling a product then you want to track traffic to see how many of the people who see your ad are going to your website to make sure you are targeting the correct people. You also want to track traffic to see how many people end up completing a goal.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is one of the more negative things to track, but still necessary. It is the number of people who visit your website but leave without moving off of the first page they see. This number shouldn’t be 0, but it shouldn’t be too high either. A number between 26% and 70% is average for most websites. Too much or too little can mean that there is something wrong with your site. Nevertheless you want to know this number and figure out ways to keep it as low as possible. You also want to keep track to make sure that and strategies that you implement are working.
Calls and Forms
Calls and Forms are very useful things to track because sometimes your customer’s final action has nothing to do with the actual website. Sometimes you may be offering a service to your customer, like fixing a roof, creating a website or booking an appointment. In these cases, tracking calls and forms is useful because it can show you how many people showed enough interest in your website to take an action to either find out more about your service or actually request the service from you.
Keyword Rankings
For someone who works in SEO, keywords are your bread and butter. It is one of the most important aspects of SEO and are vital things to track, because keywords relate to almost everything. You need to know the correct keywords to target for a particular article. You need to know which keywords you want your website to perform well for. You need to know whether your website is on Google SERPs for any specific keywords. You need to know the financial value of keywords if you are considering using Google ads to promote your business. Keywords are vital. So it is necessary to have a list of the main keywords you will be trying to rank for and track them year on year.
Keeping track of the monthly position changes on Google Search as well as any appearances on Google SERPs will give you a good indication of whether your SEO strategy is working month on month.
There are many things to track, and you will you will learn to keep track of them over the years, but these are good starting points for the beginning of your SEO journey.