Search engine optimization (SEO) can drive organic traffic to your website, but without tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), it’s difficult to know whether you’re on the right track or throwing resources at inefficient strategies.
There are a range of KPIs worth tracking, but some might be better for your business goals than others. Here’s a guide to 10 important SEO KPIs to consider measuring and the best tracking tools to use.
What are SEO KPIs?
SEO KPIs are metrics—like organic traffic, backlinks, and click-through rate (CTR)—that you can use to track the effectiveness of your SEO strategies. Regularly analyzing these metrics allows you to adjust and optimize your site for better SEO performance.
Why is it important to track SEO KPIs?
Effective SEO leads to higher visibility in search results, which can ultimately lead to better sales and business growth. However, SEO is a long-term strategy. It can take three to six months to start seeing an impact.
Because it’s unrealistic to wait for six months to measure success, tracking SEO metrics allows you to see a mix of short-term (leading) and long-term (lagging) indicators on how you’re moving toward your ultimate goals. Leading indicators are predictive measures that signal future trends, aiding in proactive planning and forecasting, while lagging indicators are descriptive, meaning they reflect past results to help measure long-term trends and performance.
Tracking the right mix of leading and lagging metrics helps you:
- Anticipate performance
- Align SEO goals with business objectives
- Make data-driven strategy decisions
- Benchmark against competitors
- Demonstrate ROI to stakeholders
10 important SEO KPIs to track
- Organic traffic
- Backlinks
- Keyword rankings
- Organic conversions
- Branded vs. non-branded traffic
- Search visibility
- Organic CTR
- Google Business Profile metrics
- SEO ROI
- Core Web Vitals
There are many SEO KPIs you can monitor, along with SEO tools you can use to track them. Choose four to five that align with your business objectives:
1. Organic traffic
Organic search traffic is an essential SEO metric that measures all traffic that comes from non-paid search sources, including Google, Bing, and other search engines. More organic traffic to your site indicates that more people are learning about your business. Traffic growth should lead to increased conversions and improved revenue.
When measuring organic traffic, compare year over year, rather than month over month, to account for seasonality (like sales and holidays).
Tools to use: Google Analytics, Google Search Console
Leading or lagging: Lagging
2. Backlinks
If a friend recommends a certain store to you, you’ll be more likely to visit it, right? Backlinks work similarly. They’re links that point back to your site’s content from other trustworthy sites and are a direct ranking factor for Google. The more backlinks your site has (from relevant, authoritative sites), the more likely it is to rank highly. You can view your backlinks in third-party SEO tools or get your number of backlinks from Google Analytics’ “referral traffic” report.
Tools to use: Ahrefs, SemRush, Moz, Google Analytics
Leading or lagging: Lagging
3. Keyword rankings
Tracking keywords helps you understand where your traffic is coming from and from what types of search queries. In the past, one page ranked for one keyword. These days, thanks to semantic search (where search engines use context and meaning, rather than exact keywords to provide relevant results), one page can rank for hundreds or thousands of keywords in varying contexts. Understanding which keywords are driving the most traffic and where you’re falling short can help you switch up your strategy accordingly or double down on what’s working. Aim to track the rankings of one to four keywords per SEO-focused page on your website.
Tools to use: Ahrefs, SemRush, Moz
Leading or lagging: Lagging
4. Organic conversions
As a business owner, your main goal is to increase profits and revenue. All the traffic and high rankings in the world won’t be valuable if they don’t convert to sales. Tracking conversions from organic traffic is the most clear way to tie your SEO efforts to business revenue.
Determine which conversions are important to you, according to your goals and business context. Conversions could include:
- Sales
- Newsletter sign ups
- Free trial requests
- Checkouts
- Any other action that ties to business outcomes
You can track conversions as events in Google Analytics. You can also assign dollar values to conversions that aren’t specifically purchase-based (like a $10 value to every newsletter form submission).
Tools to use: Google Analytics
Leading or lagging: Lagging
5. Branded vs. non-branded traffic
Branded traffic comes from searches that include your brand name. These users are those who already know of your business. Non-branded searches come from searches based on keywords you’re ranking for or products you carry. These users don’t necessarily know your brand exists.
These two types of searches can tell you very different things about your SEO success: branded traffic signifies brand awareness, while non-branded traffic signifies new visitor acquisition from SEO efforts. Splitting reporting up into branded versus non-branded can help you better understand both facets.
Tools to use: Google Search Console
Leading or lagging: Lagging
6. Search visibility
This is a measure of how much your website shows up for a specific keyword when compared to your competitors. For example, if your target keyword gets 1,000 searches a month and you get 10% of those clicks, your search visibility is 10%. Understanding your search visibility for high-value terms compared to your competitors tells you where you stand in your industry and can help you make optimizations accordingly.
Tools to use: Ahrefs
Leading or lagging: Leading
7. Organic CTR
Organic click-through rate (CTR) is a measure of how many search impressions result in clicks to your site. Although CTR doesn’t tell you the full story (What happens once they land on your site? Do clicks convert to purchases?), it does tell you whether your appearance on the search engine results page (SERP) is compelling enough to drive users to your site. For example, if you find that you have high rankings and impressions but low CTR, it may be a sign that you need to improve your metadata (title tags, meta descriptions, other schema) to entice more clicks from the SERP.
Tools to use: Google Search Console
Leading or lagging: Leading8. Google Business Profile metrics
A Google Business Profile is a must for stores with brick-and-mortar locations. This allows you to manage how your business is listed across Google platforms like Google Maps and search results (via the Local Pack). With Google Business Profile, you can measure low-funnel metrics such as “clicks to call” or “clicks to website.”
Tools to use: Google Business Profile
Leading or lagging: Leading
9. SEO ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is a measure of how much revenue you’re making from SEO efforts against the total amount spent. A positive ROI means all the blood, sweat, and tears spent on content creation, site maintenance, and link-building were all worth it.
Use this formula to calculate your SEO ROI:
(Total organic revenue – total cost of SEO investments) / total cost of SEO investments x 100
While the formula is simple, SEO ROI can be difficult to measure. The cost of optimizing your site is usually fixed (in the form of paying for blog posts or a full-time SEO specialist), but it can take months to see a return on your SEO efforts. Certain pages might also prove to have more value than others. Top-of-funnel blog pages, for example, play an important role in awareness but don’t always generate revenue. Meanwhile, an optimized product page may get much less organic traffic but generate more sales.
Tools to use: Google Analytics, your ecommerce platform, your CRM
Leading or lagging: Lagging
10. Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a set of technical SEO metrics Google uses to measure user experience. Core Web Vitals scores are a ranking factor, so it’s worthwhile to keep on top of them. The three core web vitals to measure are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Does the main section of the page load within 2.5 seconds?
- First Input Delay (FID): Is the page responsive to actions? (Note: This metric will change to Interaction to Next Paint (INP) in March 2024.)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Is the page visually stable with no unexpected movement?
You can optimize these metrics by using the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console.
Tools to use: Google Search Console
Leading or lagging: Leading
SEO KPIs FAQ
How do you improve SEO KPIs?
You can improve SEO KPIs by first establishing which KPIs are relevant to your business and then setting clear benchmarks and goals. Analyze these over time and make tweaks to your strategy as needed to ensure they’re always improving.
Are there SEO KPIs that you shouldn’t track?
Engagement metrics like bounce rate, average time on page, or exit rate are less relevant to track. Although they help show how your users interact with your site, they usually don’t translate to business growth and need a lot of segmentation to be valuable.
How do you measure SEO success?
You can measure SEO success by calculating the ROI of your efforts (the business impact divided by the investment made in it). A positive ROI means your SEO investments are successful.
