You've poured time and money into your SEO efforts, putting all your energy into increasing your position on the search engine results pages. After all, that's how you attract organic traffic and produce meaningful results for your business— right?
While the answer to that is ‘yes’, there’s much more that you need to consider. When it comes to how to measure the success of your SEO campaign, being the first result in search engines is one thing, but it’s far from the only one. So what SEO metrics do you need to track, and how?
This article outlines the top five SEO success metrics and explains how to measure your SEO performance. For personalised advice, contact our team at practiceedge today.
5 SEO Metrics That Search Engines— And Potential Patients— Will Love
When you dip your toe into the SEO pool, it’s easy to feel like you could get in over your head, fast. However, don’t hold your breath just yet! Even if you don’t know your organic search traffic from your Google analytics or your referring domains from your indexed pages, there are resources at your disposal. Let’s begin with some key SEO metrics to track so you can see where your campaign is heading. With the data that these five insights into your SEO efforts can provide, you’ll be gliding your way to success in no time.
1. Keyword Rankings
Whatever industry you’re in, it has specific keywords that don’t apply to other industries. Whether you’re a dentist, chiropractor, or physiotherapist, you’ve got a niche within your local area. When you use your target keywords across your website, search engines can find you, which means more potential patients can find you. Sounds great! But what’s the catch?
While you’re targeting your keywords, every other business that does what you do is likely doing the same with the same keywords. Therefore, our first mission is to outrank.
Every page of your website should target a few specific keywords that are relevant to that page. The main focus of every page should be its primary keyword, which is the one with the highest search volume. The second focus should be on the secondary keywords, which will also flow naturally with the content on that page.
Once your keywords are in place, you’ll need to monitor them regularly to ensure they’re still performing well. You can do this using SEO tools that help you track any changes in keyword positions, such as RankTracker by Link Assistant. If you keep up-to-date with the latest when it comes to keyword rankings in your industry, you can watch as they help you climb up the search results and see your click through rate soar.
2. Organic Search Traffic
Getting website traffic is important, but organic traffic is even better. With the internet of today filled with bots and AI, it’s no use having those trawling your site when you have real-life potential patients looking for your services.
Organic search traffic is human users who come to your website through a search engine such as Google. In most cases, they’ve come to you by doing a Google search for your practitioner type in your area, and clicking on your particular page. Whether they’re drawn in by your locale or your copywriting, the fact is that they’re real people, and they’ve found you.
One of the best aspects of organic traffic is that it’s free! As such, you should aim to make the most of it. You can increase your organic traffic by:
- Improving your rankings— By increasing your online visibility, you’ll get more eyes on your organic listing and increase your chances of attracting even more traffic.
- Improving meta titles and meta descriptions— These are the pieces of information that are shown to potential website visitors on the Google search results page. By making your meta descriptions and titles more relevant and engaging, you’ll entice a higher percentage of people to click on your link, visit your website, and book an appointment.
- Improving your website content— If your SEO strategy isn’t seeing your pages rank highly, you’re missing out on attracting your target audience. Every keyword matters, but throwing them around anywhere isn’t going to lead to success— quality is crucial.
3. Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate is the percentage of people that visit your website and perform the action you want them to. Whether that’s clicking on a specific link, signing up for a newsletter, or booking an appointment online, every page has a purpose, and your conversion rate is what measures its success.
Your conversion rate looks at how many people perform that action compared to those who don’t. While this isn’t technical SEO (that’s another kettle of fish), it can get pretty technical— but essentially, conversion rates are calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors.
Conversion rates vary between industries, so there’s no one ‘acceptable’ level that fits all. And even then, a ‘good’ conversion rate for one action will be different to a ‘good’ rate for another action, even on the same website. For example, purchasing goods will have a different conversion rate than signing up for a newsletter. A general rule of thumb is to aim for a conversion rate of 3% to 3.5%. If it falls below 1%, it’s time to review your conversion factors and look into ways to bring that number back up.
In general, organic traffic tends to convert better than paid traffic sources such as PPC (pay per click) ads. With that in mind, it’s best to drive organic traffic to your site through SEO metrics focused on bringing in organic traffic, and optimise your website to convert that traffic into qualified leads.
Related Link: Boosting Your Conversion Rate
4. Clicks for Relevant Search Enquiries
One of the best ways to see if your SEO metrics are working is to look into the keywords that generate traffic to your website. You can do this through Google Search Console, which is one of the free tools Google provides for website owners.
Google Search Console helps people to monitor and analyse how well their site is performing in the Google search results by determining which keywords drive traffic to a website. For example, if you’re a general practitioner in Melbourne, you might find that terms like ‘doctor Melbourne’, ‘GP Melbourne’, or ‘best doctors Melbourne CBD’ generate a lot of traffic to your site. With this information, you can tailor your SEO strategy to focus on these relevant search enquiries.
Thankfully, Google Search Console is easy to use. While you’re logged in, click on ‘performance’ and select the date, click ‘compare’, and choose the option ‘compare last 28 days to previous period’. This allows you to compare traffic in relation to time periods, giving you the best opportunity to measure your growth for your most relevant keywords over time.
5. Bounce Rate
Have you ever gone to a website, viewed one page, waited for it to load, and then closed the tab? When somebody visits your site and leaves, this is called a ‘bounce’. As such, a bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who navigate away from your website after viewing just one page, not even taking the time to look at any additional pages.
There are many reasons why somebody might do this, and while a bounce rate won’t be able to tell you why each individual bounced, it can give you valuable insights into your overall page relevance and user engagement. A high bounce rate means that a higher percentage of people who visit your site would rather leave than click through to find out more, indicating that your page wasn’t relevant to them in one way or another.
You may be able to improve your bounce rate by ensuring you have:
- Good page speed
- Eye-catching web design
- Functional web design
- Search enquiries that match the page they lead to
Different types of pages have different ‘acceptable’ bounce rates, depending on what the aim of the page is. For example, a home page is generally expected to have a slightly higher bounce rate than a blog post page, as a home page allows for visitors to quickly view information and head to the page they need, while a blog post requires visitors to stay longer to read the post.
Not taking different types of pages into account, bounce rates should generally be below 30%. Between 31% and 60% is considered average, though pages with higher rates should be reviewed to see if they can be improved. A page with a bounce rate of 70% or higher needs attention— consider looking at your highest-ranking competitor and comparing your content and website structure against theirs to see where the differences lie.
Looking for Google Search Success?
If you’ve been wondering what SEO metrics to track so you’re not floundering, hopefully these important SEO metrics will keep you afloat! However, if trying to sort out your core web vitals and keep up with Google analytics data isn’t feasible for you right now, we’re here to help.
At practiceedge, we work with healthcare practitioners to improve their keyword rankings, organic search traffic, and overall SEO efforts. With knowledge and experience across all types of niches and a thorough understanding of AHPRA practices, we know more than just what SEO metrics to track. To get started, book your call with us today.
