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How to Measure SEO-kpi measurement

How to Measure SEO-kpi measurement

In this post, you can ref free useful materials about kpi measurement and other materials for kpi measurement such as kpi tips, kpi mistakes, kpi examples, kpi templates, kpi dashboard, kpi form, how to create kpi/performance metrics

If you need free ebook:

• List of free 2436 KPIs

• Top 28 performance appraisal forms

• 11 performance appraisal methods

• 1125 performance review phrases

please visit: kpi123.com

KPI guides

SEO is by its nature a job that never ends. Rules change, competitors come and go and all of this and much more require marketers to monitor campaigns on an ongoing basis to identify areas which can be improved upon.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are of course a large part of this and can be used to determine how well the site is ranking and what can be done to improve on this. However, what once worked for SEO really doesn’t anymore; as Google has evolved so has the job of the SEO professional. This is especially true due to the ‘not provided’ issue which means that many of us no longer have access to organic keywords.
The image below gives a brief timeline/overview of how the search giant has evolved in recent years.
All of this means that the job of the SEO when it comes to providing proof of ROI is now that little bit harder. So what can you do to measure SEO when it comes to organic search, especially in light of the ‘not provided’ issue?

Measuring Engagement

In order to do this effectively, you’ll need Google Analytics. This is probably the best free analytics package on the market and is very powerful. However, that’s not to say that it’s the only solution you should use, there are plenty of paid tools out there too which you can use alongside analytics, although some of these can be very pricey.
The KPIs you want to be studying initially are:

• Time spend on site
• Number of visits
• Pages visited
• Bounce rate

When it comes to the latter, it’s worth bearing in mind that the metrics can be misleading when it comes to a blog. By this I mean that it tends to be on the high side due to the way that Analytics counts a visit to the blog – which is a one page visit less than 30 seconds. So, if a visitor spends five minutes reading a post and then leaves afterwards, this will push the bounce rate up as it’s regarded as a visitor having landed on the site and then bounced right off again, no matter how long they’ve been there.
There is a way around this though and you can get a more accurate overview by altering the tracking code so that it executes an event when a user spends more than a certain amount of time on a page. There’s a great article which takes you through how you can do this step-by-step here.
For reference, these are the benchmark averages of what the bounce rates should be for different types of site according to Google Analytics.

• Content sites: 40-60%
• Lead gen: 30-50%
• Blogs 70-98%
• Retailers: 20-40%
• Service sites: 10-30%
• Landing pages: 70-90%

So as you can see, Google knows that it should be high for blogs and landing pages.

Engagement Metrics

The site above is a blog so naturally has a high bounce rate – the metrics you want to be looking at are Sessions and Pageviews. The difference between these is that the sessions is the number of times a unique visitor has landed on the site, whilst pageviews is how many actual pages have been visited. So we can see here that on average, a visitor looks at one and a half pages.
You can break this down further by staying with the Audience menu and choosing Engagement, which will tell you how long people are actually spend engaging with the content on the site.
A look at the Users Flow metric will also help you to see where on the site visitors tend to be dropping off. This will help you to find the content that’s been the most popular and the pages that people seem to like the least. With this information, you can then go on to tailor your content so that it is better suited to what your visitors want.

Conversion Metrics

These are great for retailers but can be a little less useful if you’re offering services rather than actual products. However, that’s not to say that they can’t be used if you’re a service provider, it just means that you will have to find something different to measure. Commonly, this is landing pages and pages which require some kind of action from the user as the starting point, with the ‘thank you’ page acting as the conversion.
For retailers, it’s more straightforward to some extent, as a conversion can be set up in Goals for shopping baskets and purchases, or even registration.
For a guide to setting up goals for conversions, take a look at the video below for a step-by-step guide to creating a custom goal and setting up conversions.

Analysing Content Performance with No Keyword Data

So since we’re rapidly approaching a time when keyword data for organic traffic is becoming less and less available, what other ways can you employ to analyse the performance of your content?
Firstly, you should monitor all organic traffic on an ongoing basis for specific time periods to see whether your content performs better as time goes on. Look at traffic month-by-month and also compare year-by-year to see if your campaign is working. It’s pretty simple doing it this way: if your traffic is dropping then you’re doing something wrong.
Look too at the conversion rates that you’re getting from organic traffic as this will give you an idea of the quality of traffic and whether you’re reaching those people that you want to. You should also use Analytics in conjunction with Webmaster Tools to see if you can identify any trends in keyword traffic.
Landing Pages
When you set up your landing pages, it’s likely that you optimised these in order to attract leads. With this in mind, you should also monitor the organic traffic to these pages in order to determine if the keywords that you’re trying to rank for are effectively driving traffic to the site.
Content Drilldown
In Analytics, you can also use the content drilldown feature in order to see which pages are getting the most attention. Of course, most sites will have a home page that is the most popular and that’s not a bad thing, but perhaps in some instances you should ignore the home page when looking at what other content is popular.
Looking closely at the engagement that content generates is a good way of tracking your SEO efforts as it’s one of the KPIs that’s increasingly important to both Google and your visitors. This is especially true if you tie content to goals and lead generation so that you can see its value to the business.
This can be done in a few ways, such as:

• Lightboxes – you must have seen the pop-over boxes that say things such as ‘want more great content like this, sign up for our newsletter’. Personally, I find these irritating and rarely enter my details, but many people find them an effective tool for building email lists and leads.
• CTAs – this can be as simple as a line or two at the end of a blog post relating to its content and your services/products, or it can be more complex. Links embedded into the post with a CTA included, newsletter signups at the bottom or in the sidebar which are clear.

You should and can also do what you can to encourage social sharing with sharing buttons. A popular tactic now is to include a sharing ‘bar’ which moves down the page as the visitor scrolls so that they don’t have to go searching for them.

Social Signals

These are becoming increasingly important to SEO and are most definitely worth tracking. Social signals are shares, likes and follows and to some extent prove some engagement with your content. Of course, where possibly, you want people to share and comment as well as just hit like or favorite.
Again, you can track social in Analytics and now, it’s even possible to track conversions through social too. It’s also worth pointing out that social media sites tend to have their own analytics tools which can be very effective.
For example, Facebook Web Custom Audiences are proving to be very effective for many as they allow you to remarket to a specific social audience who have already engaged with your content and your site.
In Analytics, choose Social then Users Flow to see where your social visitors are coming from, which content they are engaging with and where they are going on the site from there. Again, it will show you what content is popular and allow you to further hone your content and marketing message for the future.
I now firmly believe that a holistic approach should be taken to SEO and digital marketing and it’s necessary to look at the big picture, rather than to just concentrate on any one aspect of it such as SEO metrics like keywords etc. Google continues to make life difficult with the ‘not provided’ issue and unless you’re an AdWords customer, that’s not going to get any better anytime soon.
With that in mind, get to know Analytics thoroughly and utilise other software where you can, such as Positionly’s competitively priced product.

What is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
How to Develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

5 Important Web Site Metrics -kpi measurement

In this post, you can ref free useful materials about kpi measurement and other materials for kpi measurement such as kpi tips, kpi mistakes, kpi examples, kpi templates, kpi dashboard, kpi form, how to create kpi/performance metrics

If you need free ebook:

• List of free 2436 KPIs

• Top 28 performance appraisal forms

• 11 performance appraisal methods

• 1125 performance review phrases

please visit: kpi123.com

KPI guides

The first article of this series discussed page views per session as a kind of early warning system key performance indicator (KPI) for your website. The second discussed time on site as another warning flag. Both of these articles show specific measurements used to forecast site problems. There are lots of KPI’s you can set up to warn you of impending doom or better show your successes but to go through each one would take me till the end of next year. So to wrap up this series, this article will discuss the general metrics you should be looking at as an ‘e’ business and more importantly why you should be looking at them.
‘e’ Business metrics
The term ‘e’ business was coined by Ogilvy and Mather for IBM in November of 1997 and has stuck around ever since. Great advertising, of course it came from e-commerce which was a general term, but I can still remember the IBM jingle and the ads showing IBM’s vision of networked computing. There was nothing wrong with the IBM idea or their adverts. However, one problem with this ‘e’ part is that for some reason people decided that the Internet was not like other marketing mediums.
Everything became “e or i something”, it became associated with the brave new world of fast moving VC led consortiums buying and selling companies based on their business plans and little else. No-one measured success by ordinary standards any more, you didn’t need to pay rents, have credit history, loyal customers or reliable revenue, just a great idea and guts.
Great ideas aren’t measurable and neither are guts!
We all know what happened next of course. The normally cautious VC’s realized they had made some really stupid moves and pulled their money out before they went bankrupt. This starved the companies that they actually helped to mismanage and put a lot of otherwise talented individuals on the dole (sent them down the river, took away their jobs, you get the picture!). So why did ordinarily savvy business men and women jump on this particular bandwagon? And why did IBM, Dell and other notable bricks and mortar businesses survive the dot bomb where so many failed?
Survival was down to ‘e’ business as usual
IBM, Dell and the likes simply developed their businesses by doing what they already knew worked and applied what new business intelligence they could glean from the Internet to help them with their existing strategies. In other words they used new information from web analytics in combination with real business metrics to develop online business plans. There wasn’t anything particularly clever about it, it was common sense and all the metrics had one thing in common, they were controllable.
Web business metrics you can control
There are hundreds of reports you can get from web analytic systems and if you know what you’re doing they can really help you. Things like bounce rates, entry and exit pages, scenario analysis, first time versus repeat buyers etc. are all extremely important to measure and build upon. They are individual KPI’s I mentioned at the beginning of this article. However the only metrics which you as an e-business can directly control are average sale price, profit margin, overhead, conversion rate and visitors. You probably won’t see 2 or 3 of those 5 metrics reported in most web analytic systems, simply because it’s not down to a web measurement system to tell you what your profit margin or overhead is, though most good ones can manage average sale price, conversion rate and visitors.
Why these 5 metrics?
Let’s take a look at these 5 metrics and explain how you can affect them.
Average sale price – You can directly alter your product prices to be higher or lower thus affecting the average sale price.
Profit margin – You can reduce overheads or increase sales prices to improve profit margins. You can also reduce your margin if it’s strategically a good idea to reduce sales prices and you have no other way to reduce price other than eat into your margin. The idea being that more of your visitors will buy due to a lower price meaning overall you have a higher net profit.
Overhead – By reducing overheads you can improve profit margins, or affect the product sales price. One of our clients has sold a lot of one kind of product. Now he has a very low overhead for that product range meaning he can reduce the average sale price of the product while retaining the same profit margin. Because his overheads are low his prices are very competitive and he continues to do well with this product category.
Conversion rate – Believe it or not it is possible to control your conversion rate! By measuring other KPI’s mentioned using good web analytics tools you can see how people are behaving on your website. In a nutshell if you then fix the problems you will undoubtedly find, you improve the chances that people will buy your products. It’s not really that simple but that's the way it generally starts.
Visitors – The level of visitors you get is down to your marketing efforts whether that is paid or unpaid. You can engage in search optimization for critical keywords or PPC marketing to drive traffic for keywords you can’t rank for organically. You can pay affiliates to send you traffic that buy your products. You can put out press releases. You can engage in banner advertising or behavioral marketing. Or you can do nothing and hope that your content alone provides enough traffic from websites that point to you. All of these methods affect the levels of traffic. The key is getting relevant traffic rather than traffic that isn’t interested in your product range.
In Summary
I hope to have shown 2 uses of web analytics, using KPI’s to serve as warnings when things are going wrong and using web analytics in conjunction with metrics to help you start thinking of your web commerce as a business. By using the warning flags as indicators of where things might go wrong you can identify problems and figure out whether your website is visitor centric enough. By exercising control over the five metrics discussed here you can improve your bottom line.

What is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
How to Develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

What is the difference between a measure and an indicator?- kpi measurement

In this post, you can ref free useful materials about kpi measurement and other materials for kpi measurement such as kpi tips, kpi mistakes, kpi examples, kpi templates, kpi dashboard, kpi form, how to create kpi/performance metrics

If you need free ebook:

• List of free 2436 KPIs

• Top 28 performance appraisal forms

• 11 performance appraisal methods

• 1125 performance review phrases

please visit: kpi123.com

KPI guides

This question has become a perennial topic on many discussion forums:  measures, indicators, Performance indicators, Key performance indicators (KPIs).  In many organisations there is a very loose language that merges these separate phrases and words into a single thing.
I have seen organisations where every single measure on their scorecard is called a KPI:  obviously silly as not all are key – some must be more important than others.  Some measure results, rather than performance.  Some are measures, not simply indicators.
The problem is they are different,  or rather there is much to be gained by recognising that they are different things and therefore opening up a greater clarity and usefulness in how these measures, indicators, Performance indicators, Key performance indicators (KPIs) are chosen, designed and used.  You can benefit from understanding distinctions between these ideas; improving how you think about how you measure and manage performance, how people talk about performance and the basis upon which they take  decisions.

How do we break through the fog of language

Lets us get to the heart of the problem.  Indicators and measures.  What is the difference?  In reality there is a large difference.  Measures and indicators are fundamentally different.
To answer that, let us step in with some plain English – forget the jargon…
– An indicator indicates something.
– A measure measures something.
So a carpenter wants to know that a table is 6 feet by 3 feet. That is a measure.  There is a standard foot out there and we can all agree how long it is.
A restaurant owner wants to know that a table will seat six people. That is an indicator. It indicates it size, but does NOT measure it (by a universally agreed Metric or Imperial or Troy or any other system).
So a “performance indicator” indicates (not measures) performance. A “results indicator” indicates results. A “key performance indicator” is a “performance indicator” that is more important (key) than others.
This should not be made more complicated. I suggest it all starts here. Plain English rules, ok!

OK but which is the most useful?

I bet you did not expect that question did you?
To the carpenter, the standard measures 6ft x 3 ft is most useful.  Knowing it needs to seat six people does not help him to order wood.  The carpenter needs very precise measures.
To the restaurant manager, knowing you can get six people around a table is more useful – the specific measurements do not matter.  It is more useful to use the indicator.

Some measures are measured – some are  indicators

Notice an interesting twist in the last story.  To the restaurant manager the “measured” size of the table is less useful than the indicated size; the size based on judgement.  The measured size is a poor measure of how many people the restaurant could seat at any one time.
This is important.  What is measureable, is not always useful.

Give me an example of indicators and measures

Let me give a commonplace example. I am trying to use PLAIN English to illustrate the difference between measures and indicators and emphasise the importance of utility (Usefulness)
a) I fill up my car with fuel. It is measured to 1 part in 10,000 and I pay accurately to 1 part in 10,000 ie 70 litres costs me £100.01 precisely (and there are clear standards for litres and money – in the UK anyway).  Accurate and useful for paying, or calculating fuel consumption.  (Actually to be accurate this volume will also depend on the temperatur, as the fuel expands on warmer days, so the volume will be set at a particular ambient temperature).
b) My fuel gauge is electronic, and is measuring the fuel remaining in a precise objective way. It is probably modelable in that someone knows all the parameters that went into it, but only gives me an INDICATION that is it a quarter full; a useful indication; useful and reasonably accurate, but an indicator.
c) My trip computer calculates instant fuel consumption. It is a measure (probably poor). It measures it. It is useful to adjust my driving. However, I can’t influence it much, apart from slowing down and taking my foot off the pedal.
d) My trip computer calculates miles travelled and fuel used to give me an objective average fuel consumption. An explicit measure.
e) My trip computer also calculates distance until empty: very useful.  However, that is only an indication of how far I might be able to travel assuming conditions going forward are similar. It is a good measure of what I have used.  It is an indication how far I might get. It has not measured the fuel consumption going forward. It does not know the terrain that I am heading for and how different it is. I do.  It is useful, and looks like a measure, but for my purposes it is ONLY an indicator;  indication of how far I am likely to get.
All so far are objectively measurable. For my practical purposes, some are measures (They are measurable – standard exists) – some measures provide an indication. All are useful.
f) I know I am heading for the car park that is the motorway around London on a busy Monday morning and my fuel consumption will increase dramatically in a traffic jam. I can use my judgement to estimate how far I will actually get, or whether I will enjoy a pleasant morning on the side of the road waiting to be recovered.
Now I apply subjectivity and experience to work out whether to pull over now, or risk carrying on.  The measure/indicator is only so useful. It needs judgement to be really useful, to me, in this circumstance.
A restaurateur knowing a table is 6ft by 3 foot is not a very useful measure, as it is only a indicator of how many people could sit around it.  The real question is how many people can I squeeze into the room and still serve and be comfortable?
Both measures and indicators can be useful. The question is how useful and to whom. All can be “objective”.

The essence of the difference between measures and indicators – what people forget

Let me get to the essence of that story. The difference in my mind between a measure and an indicator in the context of organisations and management.
An objective measure (exclude subjective for the moment) does not exist in isolation.
It must serve some person, some purpose.  This is really important and the missing piece of this discussion.
There are two questions:

• Does it accurately assess (measure) what I am interested in? Accuracy.
• Is it actually useful? Utility.

A formal measure does accurately assess the tangible qualities of interest – there is a standard out there (somewhere) and we can all agree what that standard is, inches, metres, pounds, litres, number of customers.
But the measure of that characteristic might not be useful.
An indicator suggests, gets close to, approximates, the qualities, but not to a necessarily agreed standard. (If dealing with children more could sit around the table).
But the indicator is still useful. It is a useful indicator to me running the restaurant. The measure (6×3) is not useful. The indicator is not helpful to the carpenter who needs to order wood.
So an important part of this discussion is not just accuracy but utility – usefulness. To a particular person (the carpenter or restaurateur). An indicator can be just as useful as “a measure” (measure here used in a much looser sense).
The problem in my mind is that in many organisations, both get called measures. Both get called indicators, but they are different in nature. They can both be useful in different circumstances. An indicator can be a useful proxy until a measure is ultimately developed. It can remain useful after the measure is available. Both answer the question “How do I know?”.
The lack of a distinction between an indicator and a measure clouds people’s minds. The distinction is actually useful, as it opens up more options as to what is an acceptable way to assess something for somebody.
To answer the questions “How do I know?” and “How well is this known?”. Accuracy and utility.
(Note I am ignoring for the moment that in business we often find that our measures are not to a proven agreed standard and that a whole industry of data cleansing has emerged to solve this precise problem and to get to “one version of the truth”. That is a whole different discussion.).

What is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
How to Develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)