SEO ROI: How To Ensure Performance Tracking Matches Goals

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by Lindsey Francy Nov 30, 2022 News
SEO ROI: How To Ensure Performance Tracking Matches Goals

It is important to know what activities are useful and which are not.

There are a number of reasons why it is hard to estimate the return on investment of an internet marketing campaign.

There is a lot of disagreement as to which metrics are useful.

Top 3 SEO Metrics

The relative importance of individual metrics varies between agencies and in-houseseo pros who responded to the survey

The top three goals from the report are the same.

The top three metrics in the same order are agreed upon by all three demographic report respondents.

  1. Rankings.
  2. Page views.
  3. Conversions.

The above metrics can be used to track the goals of an SEO campaign.

There is disagreement about the relative importance of the rest of the metrics.

The other metrics can be used to represent campaign goals.

Why Is Measuring KPIs So Difficult?

Accurate measurement is still a problem even though there is agreement on which KPIs are most important.

Privacy laws are no longer in effect.

There are challenges in the real world. Adam Humphreys is the founder of making 8.

Tracking conversions beyond our lead tracking is more difficult due to communications with the client. If the receptionist forgets to confirm an appointment lead for tracking software, we only know that it was a leader. The lifetime value of a client can be vastly different.

The most important part of the kickstart meeting is learning what product service offerings are available, the most frequently sold, and the highest return offerings.

I look at where they are and what they have on their site to see if they need to change anything. I like to focus on tracked leads, not return on ad spend, for service-based operations.

We can keep a close eye on the ROAS. Like going to the gym, it takes time to make sure you get the most out of the experience.

Our proprietary formula for content is based on this understanding. Clients know their numbers better than lead tracking. Some are great, while others are not.

We are accountable for the results. When something is off, we can see the seasonality of the search engine.

The Fourth Most Important SEO Metric

Revenue was the fourth most important metric, according to the agency.

The fourth most important metric is marketing qualified leads.

There is an insight into why in-houseseos don't agree on the fourth metric.

The work environment is the reason why in-houseseos don't agree on metrics.

The work environment has an impact on which metrics are considered most important.

The phenomenon is visible in the fourth most important metric.

Revenue is important to in-houseseos. For reasons specific to the work environment, it is not a top concern.

Outside of in-houseseo, revenue is tracked. It is the responsibility of other departments or layers of management.

The management layer might not give exact revenue numbers.

In some cases, the revenue numbers are kept closely guarded and not shared with the other departments.

Ash Nallawalla has decades of in-houseseo experience.

Revenue was never a problem for me in large companies. The analytic teams did that.

The revenue breakdown was kept a secret. Conversions in large companies are not clear.

Keeping leads rolling in is one of the main goals of in-houseseo.

It makes sense that marketing qualified lead is ranked fourth. Their responsibilities are reflected in how the work environment affects their key performance indicators.

It's possible that revenue is important to the customers of small and medium businesses.

It is hoped that the increased revenue metric will confirm the work of an agency.

There are reasons to think that qualified leads may be a better metric for tracking success.

Adam Humphreys gives an explanation.

If clients game the revenue as to avoid paying more, it could result in less revenue. A bad in-store experience could result in less revenue.

This is the reason I don't think it's a good way to measure success. The best measure of success is qualified leads. The client's actions are up to them.

The Five Through Ten Most Important SEO KPIs

The next top-ranked metrics are not all that different from what the other two demographic's think.

The three most important metrics are agreed upon.

A reflection of responsibilities is one of the four most importantseo metrics.

The top metrics seem to become a matter of opinion in positions five through 10.

The different demographic rankings of the next important metrics of the internet.

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.

All three groups agree on Page Speed.

There is a ranking factor called page speed.

It isn't likely to be a reason why a site is top-ranked in the search results.

Everyone knows that Page Speed is a useful metric. It doesn't matter as a ranking factor.

An interesting observation about page speed is that a higher page speed can help increase conversions, and sales, improve time on page, bounce rates, and a lot more.

There is a chance that page speed should be ranked higher than other metrics.

Mismatched Goals And Metrics

There is no consensus on which metrics are most important.

The result is that most of the metrics were split between the two groups of people.

bounce rates, backlink, and social engagement were all tied for the number five most important metric.

Customer Lifetime Value was rated with 5.1% of the vote. There is only a small difference between the fifth and tenth most important metrics.

Two percent is the difference between the fifth and tenth ranked metrics.

It is clear that no one could agree on anything. There was a three-way tie for the fifth most important metric and a two-way tie for the seventh ranked metric.

The votes ended in a tie for all metrics for the group of people.

The tied results show that there is a lot of disagreement about which metrics are the most important.

People who identified as freelancer may be more diverse than people who identified as agency or in-house.

Content writing, link building, site auditing, local search, affiliate work, or even a combination of one or more of these are some of the types of work that can be done by a person who is not employed by a company.

It makes sense that the freelancer demographic is almost evenly split as to which metrics are the most important. All the metrics are important according to their survey answers.

Disconnect Between Campaign Goals And KPI Tracking

The three demographic groups agree on three metrics that are used to measure the success of an internet marketing campaign.

  • Rankings.
  • Page views.
  • Conversions.

They are results-based indicators of success.

The metrics that are understood to be contributors to the success of the search engine are the ones that the three demographic disagrees on.

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

Uncertainty as to which of the above plays a role in the search engine results may be the reason why the industry disagrees with the above metrics.

The limitations of these metrics are pointed out by the uncertainty about the factors.

There is a reason for the uncertainty.

A black box is a situation where what is put into the box is known and what comes out is known.

The box's contents are not known.

What we put into the box are backlinks, social engagement, time on page, and bounce rates. The rankings come out.

Nobody knows what happened in the black box of the search engine.

Because you only see the outcome, not the process, nobody can accurately perform tests to find out what factors contributed to rankings.

It doesn't mean that social engagement or time on page shouldn't be tracked.

One needs to be aware of the limitations of these metrics.

The general uncertainty of what happens inside the black box is highlighted by the fact that different people don't agree on metrics.

Effect On Tracking SEO ROI

The truth is that it can't be tracked accurately and that it can only be estimated.

We don't know if it was a factor in the rankings. There can be no changes in rankings for a while.

The links may have taken a long time to affect the rankings.

It is said that social engagement is an indirect ranking factor that could lead to more branded traffic and links.

There is no way to correlate branded search traffic with social engagement.

Even if one could, they would not be able to confirm that the links played a role in the ranking process.

Ensure KPIs Support Campaign Goals

Picking the best metrics is important to your situation, according to the State of Search Engine Results.

The data is not always available. There are other data that can show the progress of the campaign.

To get a total picture of how well the different parts of anseo campaign are working together, divide the metrics between actualseo performance metrics (rankings, traffic), metrics that pertain to website experience (page speed, time on page, bounce rate), andseo improvements (backlinks) to

The measurement of popularity is a reflection of how well a site is growing as a brand and as a destination.

The second annual State of SEO Report can be downloaded for more information.

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