3 SEO Metrics to Consider
The statistics of your site provide you with a lot of information thanks to the tracking code of your site. The problem is that much of this information can be extensive, which can lead you to measure some indicators superficially or incorrectly.
The world of website rankings is very changeable and complex. SEO is one of the aspects that can give you more workload in maintaining your site. This happens because it is not an exact science and there are multiple variables that can raise or lower the position of your site.
Today I will show you 3 SEO metrics that you should look at differently to get the most out of your site information.
Your website traffic
Most people go to Google Analytics to see how much traffic their site has on a daily basis and it stops there. The number of visitors to your page is one of the metrics that many use to compare themselves with other sites. However, this is a measurement that does not say much by itself.
Just because one website has 10 times more traffic than another doesn't mean the same is true of your income. A site with "little" traffic can be much more profitable than one with millions of visits.
What you need to ask yourself is if the traffic that enters your site has served its purpose, for example: Take a certain action, purchase a product, leave a comment, subscribe to an email list, etc.
If you go to Google Analytics only to see the overall number of visitors to your website, you are wasting other very valuable information. If, on the other hand, you go a little further and periodically compare metrics such as the number of users, new users, sessions, number of sessions per user, page views and pages per session, you will obtain more interesting results.
There are cases in which negative trends appear in the statistics of your pages, which could make you think that you are doing the wrong thing. However, trends can give you partial information and not take into account events such as the pandemic to explain a drop in traffic.
Keep in mind that focusing solely on your site traffic is not a weighty indicator by itself, so I recommend that you address this metric in conjunction with the others to see if they are in effect, leading you towards your final goal.
Bounce rate
Another metric that tends to put off many website administrators is bounce rate. This dimension refers to the percentage of visitors who left your site when visiting a single page. If a visitor organically enters one of your pages to read a blog post and then leaves your site, you have a bounce. However, your post was read cover to cover, so it is not a negative metric in this case, as the goal was achieved.
The amount of information the bounce rate offers is highly debatable. Also, depending on the type of page you have, the bounce rate varies widely. For blogs you can have a bounce rate of 80%, while for an online store this same percentage can be much lower.
Similarly, the fact that a user leaves your site does not mean that they will not enter again in the future. A large number of readers of a blog can enter a site as soon as the publication is made, which will cause a large bounce rate simultaneously. However, many of those readers may be regular visitors who will return later either for that and another publication.
If your website works in terms of monetary gain, the bounce rate should not be a complication at first glance. On the contrary, paying attention to this metric in this situation could become confusing if you give it a disproportionate level of importance. In addition, many of the techniques that you can find on the web to reduce this bounce rate are nothing more than tricks to fool analytics measurement tools. I recommend that you avoid them and focus on what really matters.
Number of conversions
In most analytics tools you can define when a conversion occurs. This means that you can configure the platform to measure when a visitor performs a specific action that is important to you, how to purchase a product in your store.
However, only looking at the number of conversions that occur on your site for a period of time is the wrong way to look at this metric. This number is telling you only part of the story.
Suppose that 3 visitors make a purchase today, but yesterday you had 6 sales, does this mean that your site is performing worse today than yesterday? Not necessarily. If the products sold today are more expensive than those sold yesterday, or if the margin for today's products is higher than yesterday's, the number of conversions is giving you an incomplete picture of your site's performance.
Similarly, conversions can be extremely different, such as clicking a link or filling out a form. These events are not generating you any immediate income, which means that you can have a lot of "conversions" but not make any profit.
What is worth measuring?
If there is one event worth measuring on a website, it is the conversion rate. This metric is the percentage of visitors who finally took an action that you wanted them to do.
If, for example, you have a store, you should know what percentage of your visitors make a purchase. If your website's goal is to visit a particular page, you need to know what percentage of your traffic performs that action, or what percentage completes a form or clicks a specific button.
Keep track of your most relevant conversion rates and see how they change over time, based on the changes you make. Remember that every change you make to your website can affect these dimensions, so it is worth checking each modification and how it works before applying it.
