Though it may not seem very glamorous, carving out time on a weekly or monthly basis to monitor your SEO can help you shift and refocus your efforts drastically.
Considering that in 2017 Google changed its algorithm 13 times, it is critical to stay up to date on SEO trends so you’re not left behind.
Here are six easy steps to monitor your SEO, and stay on track with your marketing strategy.
Use Google Analytics & Search Console
Google Analytics and Search Console will allow you to begin tracking data for free, so take advantage. Google Analytics is extremely user-friendly and offers extensive tracking data and different options to report your traffic.
Understanding these tools will enable you to quickly spot trends on your website based on your target demographic, click through rate, and other important data that we’ll continue to discuss below.
Google Search Console will provide more extensive reports not found in Analytics, like your keyword queries.
Monitor your organic traffic
Your organic traffic is based upon the people who are finding you in a search engine by looking for your brand, offer, or product – and not by paid ads. Therefore, it’s important to know who’s visiting, where they’re visiting from, and how much they engage with your website.
Look at your data and study how many people are on your website, how long they stay, and what they’re searching for. All of these data points will help you analyze and adjust accordingly. Ask yourself, “what changes can I implement to be more visible and engage my audience longer?.”
Review your conversion rate
Organic traffic is critical, but once you’re past that milestone, your focus should be on selling.
Your conversions should not be limited to just selling, however. Depending on where you are in your business, your conversion rate could simply be having users take one designated call to action on your website. Maybe it’s taking the action to sign up for your email list, or following your directive to read your blog.
You won’t be able to monitor what you don’t measure, so setting up goals will allow you to see your conversion rate. On the GA or Google Analytics Dashboard, select Conversions > Goals > Overview, and set up goals just like the tab directs below.
Whether it be a destination, duration, or event goal, setting up these objectives will help you measure and define success.
Know your top pages for organic traffic
What pages are performing well? What pages does your target audience spend the most time on? Where is most of your traffic being directed? Take note, because these are the pages that are performing well.
But then, what pages are your lowest ranking pages, or exit pages? It’s critical to note at what point your audience is becoming disengaged, and thus leaves your website. If they’re becoming disinterested on your blog, be sure your calls to action are updated.
If your sales page isn’t converting, redefine your funnel. Knowing your highest and lowest ranking pages will help you celebrate your wins, but also retarget and reframe your losses.
Review your keywords
Using a free tool like SEMrush will help you stay on top of your keywords – because they can and will change over time, based upon what your audience is searching.
Are there words you would like to rank for but just haven’t yet? Then you can adjust your content marketing strategy. Try publishing blogs based on those keywords, or creating a free guide based on your audience’s search queries, and analyzing the results after a month of posting them.
Check your click through rate
Your click through rate is the percentage of people clicking your link once they see it rank in the search engine. You’ll want to revert back to Google Search Console, and here you’ll be able to view your total clicks, and the queries used to visit your website. Knowing your CTR, or click through rate, will help you understand once again how your target audience is finding you. But before you jump to changing all of your content, note that your titles or page descriptions can also have a high impact on your CTR.
Regardless of whether you’ve monitored your SEO for the first time after reading this article or if it’s your 100th time, stick with it. Continually monitoring your data and reevaluating your goals will set you up to continue ranking higher over time.
