How to Ensure Performance Tracking Matches Goals in SEO

It is critical to monitor SEO performance in order to determine which activities are beneficial and which are not.

However, there are several reasons why estimating the ROI (return on investment) of an SEO campaign is difficult, beginning with disagreement over which metrics are most important.

According to the State of SEO report, there is some agreement on which metrics are useful, but there is a lot of disagreement.

Top Three SEO Metrics

As can be seen, the relative importance of individual SEO metrics varies among respondents from in-house, agency, and freelance SEO firms.

However, the report's top three SEO campaign goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) are the same.

The top three SEO metrics, according to all three SEO demographics among report respondents, are:

• Rankings
• Page views
• Conversions

The SEO metrics listed above can be tracked using Google Analytics, Search Console, and third-party tools, making them useful for tracking the goals of an SEO campaign.

While there is agreement on the top three SEO metrics, there is considerable disagreement on the relative importance of the remaining metrics.

This is significant because the other metrics can represent campaign objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Why Is Measuring Key Performance Indicators So Difficult?

Even when everyone agrees on which KPIs are most important, the issue of accurate measurement remains.

Many forms of tracking are being phased out due to privacy laws.

However, there are also real-world challenges. Making 8 founders and search marketer Adam Humphreys explains:

"Communications with the client and their often high turnover of reception makes tracking conversions beyond our lead tracking more difficult. If the client receptionist forgets to confirm an appointment lead for tracking software, we only know that it was a leader/new call with call tracking. Client lifetime value can vary dramatically.

The kickoff meeting is the most important time for SEO professionals to learn what product service offerings are available, which are the most frequently sold, experienced with, and have the highest return.

With this, I cross-examine Google Sheets opportunities to see where they stand in comparison to what's on their site and prioritize content that needs to be optimized first. While we can track at a granular level, for service-based operations, I prefer to focus on tracked leads rather than return on ad spend (ROAS).

However, in the case of e-commerce, we can closely monitor ROAS. It's critical to understand that SEO is an investment, and it takes time to optimize everything, just like going to the gym.

This is why we have a proprietary triage formula for content that aligns with client needs. Lead tracking SEO is only as effective as clients' knowledge of their numbers. Some are incredible, while others are perfectly adequate.

The important part is that we constantly track and account for results. As a result, we can see the seasonality of SEO and when something needs to be optimized."

The Fourth Most Crucial SEO Metric

Revenue was ranked as the fourth most important SEO metric by both agency and freelance SEOs. Marketing Qualified Leads was ranked as the fourth most important SEO metric by in-house SEOs. There is an intriguing explanation for why in-house SEOs disagree on the fourth SEO metric.

The work environment is the reason why in-house SEOs disagree on which SEO metrics are most important. Surprisingly, the work environment influences which SEO metrics are deemed most important. This phenomenon is clearly visible in the State of SEO Survey's fourth most important SEO metric.

Revenue is, of course, critical for in-house SEOs. However, for reasons specific to the workplace, it is not listed as a top concern in the survey. Outside of in-house SEO, revenue is typically tracked. It is the responsibility of another department or management level.

Even in a smaller in-house position, the management layer may not share specific revenue figures. In some cases, especially in larger corporations, revenue figures are closely guarded and not shared with the SEO department.

Ash Nallawalla, an Australia-based search marketer with decades of in-house SEO experience, explained:

"In every large company I've worked for, revenue was never a reporting issue for me. That was done by analytics teams.

In some companies, the detailed revenue breakdown, such as which product was the most profitable, was kept secret. Even conversions are not always straightforward in large corporations."

In many verticals, the role of in-house SEO is primarily concerned with keeping the leads coming in.

So it stands to reason that Marketing Qualified Lead is ranked fourth by in-house SEOs. It reflects their responsibilities as well as how their work environment influences which KPIs are critical to their SEO implementation.

Revenue is ranked fourth most important by agency and freelancer SEOs, possibly because it is important to their small and medium business customers (SMB). The increased revenue metric (hopefully) validates the work of an agency or a freelance SEO.

However, there are several reasons why Qualified Leads may be a better metric for tracking SEO success.

Why according to Adam Humphreys:

"The problem is clients will game the revenue to avoid paying more, and if they have a satisfactory front end, etc., it could result in less revenue. Poor in-store experiences may also result in lower revenue.

This is why I believe it is not the best way to assess success. Qualified leads are, in my opinion, the best metric of success. It is up to the client what happens next."

The Top Five to Ten Most Important SEO KPIs

All three SEO demographics are completely divided on what the next top-ranked metrics should be.

The top three most important SEO metrics are widely agreed upon.

The fourth most important SEO metric reflects primarily on responsibilities.

However, the top metrics appear to become subjective in positions five through ten.

The following SEO KPIs were ranked by the various SEO demographics:

Agency

5. Marketing Qualified Lead: 5.8%.

6. Bounce rates: 5.4%.

7. Backlinks: 5.3%.

8. Page Speed: 4.6%.

9. Customer Acquisition: 4.4%.

10. Social: 4%.

In-House

5. Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic: 6.5%.

6. Backlinks: 6.1%.

7. Revenue: 5.6%.

8. Page Speed: 5.2%.

9. Bounce Rates: 5.0%.

10. Time on Page: 4.5%.

Freelance

5. Bounce rates, Backlinks, Social Engagement: 6.3.

6. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): 5.8.

7. Customer Acquisition, Page Speed: 5.7.

8. Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic: 5.6.

9. Email Subscriptions: 5.4.

10. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): 5.1.

The only metric on which all three groups agree is page speed. Page speed is an established ranking factor.

However, it is a minor ranking factor and is unlikely to be a direct reason why a site ranks first in Google's search results.

The survey results confirm what everyone already knows: Page Speed is an important metric to monitor. However, it is unimportant as a ranking factor.

An interesting observation about page speed is that it can directly help increase conversions and sales, as well as improve time on page, bounce rates, and pretty much all the other SEO metrics.

Given how page speed affects other SEO metrics, it's worth considering whether page speed should be prioritized higher.

Misaligned Objectives and Metrics

Aside from page speed, no one can agree on which metrics are the most important. Another interesting finding was that Freelancers were evenly distributed across almost all metrics. Bounce rates, backlinks, and social engagement were deemed critical by 6.3% of freelance SEOs, resulting in a three-way tie for the fifth most important SEO metric.

Customer Lifetime Value, the tenth most popular SEO metric, received 5.1% of the vote. That's only a 1.2% difference between the fifth and tenth most important SEO metric as voted on by freelancers. For the agency and in-house SEO demographics, the differences between the fifth and tenth-ranked SEO metrics were closer to two percent.

What is clear is that freelancers were unable to reach an agreement. The fifth most important metric was tied by three freelancers, and the seventh-ranked metric was tied by two (customer acquisition and page speed, 5.7%).

Freelancers were the only demographic whose votes were tied across all metrics. The tied results indicate that freelance SEOs are divided on which metrics are most important. Respondents who identified as freelance could represent a larger demographic than those who identified as agency or in-house.

A freelance SEO, for example, may specialize in content writing, link building, site auditing, local search, affiliate work, or a combination of one or more of these. When viewed in this light, it stands to reason that the freelancer SEO demographic is nearly evenly divided in terms of which metrics are most important. Their survey responses indicate that all metrics are critical.

Disconnection between campaign objectives and KPI tracking

All three demographics agree on three metrics for measuring SEO success.

• Rankings
• Page Views
• Conversions

These three metrics are success KPIs based on results.

The three SEO demographics strongly disagree on metrics that are known to contribute to SEO success and traffic growth.

• Bounce rates
• Backlinks
• Social engagement
• Time on page
• Page speed

Uncertainty about which of the above five metrics plays a role in Google's algorithm and to what extent could explain why the SEO industry disagrees with them. This uncertainty about SEO factors must be acknowledged because it highlights the metrics' limitations. The uncertainty stems from the fact that Google's ranking algorithm is a mystery.

A black box in computing is a situation in which what goes into the box is known (SEO), and what comes out is also known (rankings). What happens inside the box, however, is unknown. We put backlinks, social engagement, time on the page, page speed, and bounce rates into the box. What emerges are rankings.

But no one knows what happened inside Google's black box to produce the rankings. The mystery is exacerbated by the fact that no one can accurately perform tests to isolate what factors contributed to rankings because you only see the result, not the process.

This inability to see how the algorithm works do not preclude tracking of social engagement, time on page, or any of the other metrics. It simply means that one must be aware of the limitations of such metrics. The fact that different SEO demographics disagree on the relative importance of these metrics exemplifies the general uncertainty about what happens inside Google's black box.

The Impact on SEO ROI

Many articles discuss tracking the ROI of SEO, but the truth is that it cannot be tracked accurately; it can only be estimated.

For example, we don't know if backlinks influenced rankings. Rankings can sometimes remain unchanged for months.

Was it a coincidence that the links took so long to affect the rankings?

According to some, social engagement is an indirect ranking factor because it can lead to more branded keyword traffic and links, which influence rankings.

However, there is no way to directly attribute branded keyword search traffic and acquired links to social engagement.

Even if one could, it would be impossible to confirm with certainty that those links played a role in rankings because Google's ranking processes for each query take place in a black box.

Ensure that KPIs support campaign objectives

The State of SEO results demonstrate the importance of selecting the best metrics for your situation.

Sometimes data, such as revenue or sales figures, is unavailable. However, other data, such as leads or conversion rates, can show how well the SEO campaign is performing.

To get a complete picture of how well the various parts of an SEO campaign are working together, distinguish between actual SEO performance metrics (rankings, traffic), website experience metrics (page speed, time on page, bounce rate), and SEO improvements (backlinks).

However, consider indirect factors such as social engagement (where applicable) because, in addition to being an indirect SEO factor, it is a measurement of popularity, reflecting how well a site is growing as a brand and destination.

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