How to track SEO progress and measure results beyond rankings

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How do you monitor SEO progress and measure SEO results? Much of the content written on this topic focuses on following the right measurements. It’s easy to find a list of (often long) metrics of SEO and KPIs you should follow – but metrics really only scratch the surface of tracking SEO progress.

Keyword rankings, for example, are a common metric for search engine optimization professionals. Don’t get us wrong – rankings are important metrics, however only in the right context. To understand the true value of keyword rankings (and track your SEO progress), you need to relate these rankings to what happens when they visit your landing page and become a potential customer.

You need to link rankings to revenue.

To explain how best to do this, we spoke with an SEO consultant, Jeremy Riverawho works with us here in Raven. Jeremy described 3-step procedure used to measure SEO success and track progress:

1. Placing rankings in the context of the value of organic search traffic
2. Set up proper conversion tracking in Google Analytics
3. Tracking takes you one step further than your potential customers and your goals

Below we share Jeremy’s tips on how to follow this 3-step process and more meaningfully link your SEO results to the ultimate end goal: revenue.

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Step 1: Understanding rankings in the context of How precious traffic is in the sense Revenue

According to Jeremy, before you can start meaningfully tracking your progress in SEO, you need to reshape your way of thinking (and measuring) research and keyword rankings.

A typical way to evaluate certain keywords is to look at the search volume, perhaps the difficulty of the keyword, and move on from there. But, as Jeremy said, “the scope of the search is only part of the puzzle, because not everyone looking for something will buy your product.”

“At the beginning of the flow,” he added, “your goal is to show up for more people searches who are willing to buy. And that’s the last thing people forget. “

A better way to think about keywords and rankings is to link them to commercial goals such as revenue. To do this, Jeremy uses a 5-point scale during basic keyword research to assess the level of purchase intent for each keyword. After pulling out a list of current keywords (with Raven Tools’ SERP Tracker keyword suggestion tool), Jeremy assigns a point value to each keyword.

• 1 point: Keywords of competitors
• 2 points: Related keywords that don’t suit you
• 3 points: Keywords that are in the same neighborhood as your product or service – someone doing this search maybe eventually you need your offer, but it is not directly related.
• 4 points: These are closely related to your product, but not exactly 5/5.
• 5 points: These are your slamdunk keywords that signal high purchasing intent for your customer’s specific offer. They are high quality, at the bottom of the funnel and close to conversion.

Here’s an example of keywords that could fall into each of these segments if you’re looking for keywords for a customer’s site audit tool.

1. “Woorank API”
2. “Google mobile friendliness”
3. “How to check the ranking of keywords in Google Analytics”
4. “Website Audit Guide”
5. “Website Assessment Tools”

As Jeremy explained, “not all of these keywords are quality – some are 1 in 5 when it comes to the purpose and goal of a search.” And this is important information you need to know when it comes to measuring rankings and tracking SEO performance (not to mention focusing on your SEO campaigns).

“If you don’t rank your target keywords accurately, you’ll run in a circle every time the algorithm changes. Get the job done ahead of time and combine keywords with an understanding of how close conversions are, for, for example, online fundraising software the site would like to group its keywords by things like auction, sweepstakes, fundraising, program terms. he said.

Without understanding how valuable the keyword phrases you target are, you can’t effectively measure your customers ’ranking progress. “A successful website doesn’t always mean that everything keywords grow the same, ”Jeremy warned. “Not all search traffic is generated the same. Not all rankings are the same. “

Step 2: Track conversions

Once you understand how valuable keywords and rankings are, Jeremy recommends that you take the time to set up Google Analytics target conversions correctly.

As he explained (and experienced SEOs know), “It’s about linking the keywords you’re targeting to the potential traffic you’re going to generate. But then you have to take the next step – and here’s a big disconnection – to set up Google Analytics for proper conversion tracking. “

But according to Jeremy, too many businesses and SEOs just don’t follow right measurements in Google Analytics. Or spend time setting custom goals for wrong measurements. “Perfect implementation means that the conversion point is where your customers are they give you their contact information follows in Google Analytics, ”Jeremy explained.

For many businesses, this means tracking more than online conversions. It also requires that you have proper procedures in place to track offline conversions, most often over the phone.

To track these conversions and link them to your SEO progress, Jeremy recommends using tools like CallRail. “You enter your actual phone number in the code, and CallRail dynamically replaces it with a unique number based on the source of the call. So if someone comes out of an unpaid search, they will see one number. If they come from a paid search, they will see another number. “

Apply for a 7-day free trial with Raven Tools to measure SEO results and monitor progress. Integrate more than 30 data sources with the reporting dashboard and provide your customers with automated reports with white labels.

“CallRail tracks these calls on their site and reports the call and its source to Google Analytics (when you connect them). You can then set up CallRail conversions as a custom goal in Google Analytics, and you’ll be able to identify calls (and corresponding conversions) coming from each source. “

Footnote: Because you will need event tracking codes to accurately track this information on your site and obtain it from Google Analytics, you can use Raven Tools event tracking code tool to generate the codes you need.

Once you’ve installed the event tracking code on your site, you’re ready to set your custom goals in Google Analytics.

Step 3: Exceed your conversion tracking

Now that you’re set up to track SEO conversions, the final step is to take it a step further and link each of those conversions (plus the search terms and rankings that spurred them) back with commercial metrics, to the end result. Specifically, Jeremy recommends looking at revenue.

What happens to him when an SEO leader fills out a form and becomes a sales potential? How is internal management conducted? Usually, as Jeremy explained, “it’s left to someone else. If it’s a form, someone needs to call and connect with that person. If it’s a follow-up call, the potential customer needs to talk to someone. “

Understanding how potential customers are treated after a conversion is a key part of measuring SEO results. The measure Jeremy is descending on is conversion rate from potential customer to sales: “Included is the rate from the start of the sale, which you need to multiply by the average revenue per purchase.”

You just need to know, “how many of the potential customers do you need to sell to a customer?” Once you know your stage from start to finish, you can determine:

• How much is my new client worth on average?
• Do they usually buy 1 product, 2 products, 3 products?
• Is that $ 500 per product? $ 1000 per product? $ 10 per product?

From there, you can turn this information into an assessment of return on investment and SEO efforts. To put it all together, Jeremy pointed out that you need to consider several numbers:

• Estimated organic traffic for your keyword (based on ranking position)
• Page conversion rate
• Potential sales rate
• Turnover

Once you have all this information, the ROI formula looks like this:

Traffic value = [Traffic estimate for keyword] x [Conversion rate] x [Lead-to-sale rate] x [Revenue per sale]

According to Jeremy, when you reach this level, a lot of doors open for both home SEOs and SEO agencies. “Once you get the last part, how much per conversion, and determine your potential customer’s rate of sales, then you can go back and do cool things with your prediction.

“Then you can say. “If we were on the front page of Google for this term, we could earn $ 1,000 / month. We are not on the first page, but if we were – depending on our conversion rate and our potential customer level – we could earn so much money. “

Linking keywords, search rankings, organic website traffic and other SEO metrics back to revenue potential takes SEO tracking to another level. As Jeremy said, “Revenue is a much more compelling argument for a customer than ‘Hey, we can give you a first-place ranking.’ You can prove the value and design a reasonable path to the first page. “

Track and measure your SEO progress through obvious measurements

Measurements are the starting point for producing complete and convincing SEO reports – but they are not the only important thing. If you want to meaningfully track the results and progress of your search engines, you need to build a link between SEO and revenue metrics in your entire SEO strategy from start to finish.

By using our three-step process described above, you’ll be able to incorporate revenue from start to finish into your SEO process – and be better equipped to track progress and results in a meaningful way.

Apply for a 7-day free trial with Raven Tools to measure SEO results and monitor progress. Integrate more than 30 data sources with the reporting dashboard and provide your customers with automated reports with white labels.