Search engine optimization is a marketing tactic that every website owner must do if they wish to rank high in the SERPs. It is essential for the life of your website and for your business. But how do you measure success from your search engine optimization campaign? Many marketers use key performance indicators, or KPI’s, to gauge how well a client’s website is performing and how well their search campaign is working for them. These indicators can be things like traffic level, clicks, conversion and bounce rates, and more. However, if you are looking to see how well your SEO is working for you, it might be best to look at other metrics in order to gauge how well your optimization is working.

What KPI’s Tell You

In order to determine whether or not using key performance indicators will help you, you have to decide what it is you want to know or measure. Ideally, what you are looking to find out is how many conversions your search engine optimization tactics for helping you achieve. In other words, if you are trying to sell a product, how many products have you sold as a direct result of your search marketing efforts. Once you’ve decided what you want to know, you have to look at what exactly your KPI’s are telling you.

Things to measure with KPI’s

• KPI’s tell you things like how many people have visited your website
• How many people have clicks on the link that leads to your website
• How many people have watched a video on your site

These things may be nice to know, but in reality they don’t tell you how much money you’re making based on your optimization efforts.

Conversion As Performance

Key performance indicator is a misnomer for those who want to know how much money they’re making based on their search engine optimization efforts. In reality, KPI’s don’t tell you much about performance at all. They tell you about the performance of your website, but they don’t tell you about the performance of your SEO efforts. When it comes to search engine optimization, your conversion rate is one of the most important indicators of success. If you are selling something, you want someone to buy your product. If you offer a service, you want someone to request your services. In these situations, a sale or request for services is a conversion. To find out how your optimization tactics are helping you, you need to focus on your conversion rate. The higher your conversion rate is, the more sales and money you’re making, and the better your SEO is working for you.

Traffic Patrol

Another thing you will want to look for is traffic, but not in the traditional sense. Instead of worrying about how many people are coming to your site, you want to see where these people are coming from, whether they are following links you have set out in your SEO programs, and how many people are finding you based on search engines. Knowing the total number of people that come to your site is nice, but knowing where they’re coming from, especially if they are coming from organic search, is better for you when you’re trying to figure out how well your SEO is working for you.

Overall, KPI’s serve their purpose. Understanding your KPI’s and provide you with helpful analytics for the rest of your business and website. But when it comes to SEO, they are not the most helpful thing to look at. You want to know how many people are coming to your site from search engines, how well your keywords are working for you, and you want to see an increase in conversions based on your SEO tactics. Looking at these things as your true performance indicators where you are SEO is concerned will be far more helpful than traditional KPI’s.