89% of B2B researchers use the internet during their research process, which is why having a B2B SEO strategy is crucial for business.
If your website appears higher in search engine rankings it could result in more leads and more sales. But, how do you know if your SEO marketing efforts are resulting in a bigger audience and better quality traffic?
The answer is SEO tracking. It’s the easiest way to discover if your website is effectively attracting valuable visitors and gaining a return on your digital marketing investment.
To help you navigate the somewhat mysterious world of SEO tracking, here is our guide to the most important SEO metrics and why utilising them can lead to success.
What is SEO tracking?
SEO tracking is the process of regularly monitoring the metrics most important to your brand. However, with thousands of metrics available, which should you be tracking to benefit your business the most?
1. Organic traffic
Perhaps the most important metric of all, measuring your organic traffic reveals how many of your visitors arrived at your site as a direct result of your appearance in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The reason this is vital from an SEO perspective is that it highlights the effectiveness of your keywords in attracting the right type of traffic. If your organic traffic numbers are low, it could be that you need to update your SEO strategy with a new collection of keywords.
2. Click-through rate (CTR)
This metric refers to the percentage of searchers who click on a link to your site having seen it in a search result. The statistic indicates the effectiveness of your content at persuading people to click the link. If the content is relevant and of value to them, they’ll click through and arrive at your site.
If your CTR rate is low, it may indicate that you need to tweak your site’s title tags and meta descriptions to better match the needs of your target audience.
3. Bounce rate
If someone visits your site but leaves without clicking through to another page, that’s known as bouncing away. You want a low bounce rate as it suggests that your content is a good match with what your visitors are searching for.
A high bounce rate could suggest a disconnect between your target audience and content, or that you need to make it easier for visitors to navigate your site with additional links to other pages that may be relevant to them.
4. Keyword rankings
Only 0.8% of people click on the sites featured on the second page of search engine results. So if your business doesn’t appear on page one, you’re missing out on a wealth of potential leads.
As the name suggests, this metric reveals your site’s rankings for the keywords most important to your business. All is not lost if you’re ranking low, of course, you can adjust the content of your site and monitor how this affects your SEO standing.
5. Domain authority
When a website links to another site it is called a backlink. For example, if someone links to a blog on your site that would be a backlink from their site. Backlinks can affect a site’s ranking as search engines view them as a sign that your content is relevant to people searching for the keywords in the content.
Checking your domain authority reveals the quality of your backlinks on a scale of one to 100. The higher your score, the more likely it is that a search engine will regard your site as an authority resulting in a higher ranking in search results.
Bite-Sized Takeaway
Each of the metrics listed above give valuable insights into how your website is used. Tracking all five of them will help you optimise your SEO, make your website more visible to B2B prospects, and provide you with the data to prove the value of your digital marketing efforts.
Need help with your B2B SEO strategy? We can supercharge your digital marketing, help connect you with your audience, and track your metrics to analyse the ROI. Find out more here.
