SEO Industry Benchmarks: Benchmarking SEO Performance

SEO Benchmarking

Search Engine Performance Metrics

Business owners need to know how to measure SEO performance for dollars invested.

“You need to measure it to improve it.”

➢ Earning free organic search engine traffic is what SEO is all about! The more free search engine traffic the better as long as it’s qualified traffic.

The more website clicks per day you get the better! Free website clicks are better than impressions for measuring productivity and performance metrics. Search engine clicks mean that people actually clicked on to your website and saw or visited your website content or blog, and you actually had an opportunity for a sale or customer conversion. That’s the goal of online marketing – getting a human being in front of you, onto your website, or into your business location, or to read your content to build your reputation, authority, and expertise, and even follow you on social media.

➢ Tracking and measuring SEO key performance indicators (KPIs), along with knowing the right SEO metrics to measure in the first place, helps business owners evaluate the ROI of SEO campaign performance. Paying attention to SEO Benchmarks and metrics provides the day-by-day data for SEO benchmark reports which should be reported every three months.

How To Benchmark SEO Performance: Tracking SEO Performance Metrics

Measuring key data points, collecting diagnostic data, recording website KPIs, and paying attention to website analytics, online metrics, SEO baseline reports, and SEO benchmarks provides the marketing intelligence tools to improve both On-page, and Off-page SEO performance metrics. Website owners wanting to know how to improve SEO should look into free tools for analyzing website statistics such as Google Analytics for measuring SEO key performance indicators (KPI).

Google Analytics tracking data is valuable for measuring website statistics, web page traffic data, landing pages traffic, live data metrics measuring real-time traffic visitors engaging currently on your website, and keyword performance reports for important key benchmark SEO performance metrics data points. Recording baselines compared on your current site compared to top industry competitors is a first step towards learning how to increase business visibility on Google compared with competitors’ websites. I like this on page SEO tool that’s free for gathering key SEO KPI metrics for your site versus your online competitors’.

➢ At a bare minimum you need to have Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and a company branded Google My Business Profile established with accurate NAP data.

Benchmark Your SEO Performance

You’ll need to benchmark SEO performance over a three to six month period of time in order to gain valuable before-and-after perspective and insights. The three categories for measurements include: Keywords Rankings, Conversions, and overall Marketing Channels Traffic throughput.

The initial SEO consultation and SEO Audit Review collect your beginning SEO benchmark metrics, numerous SEO KPIs and data points, key performance indicators, baselines, and additional data insights for key quality components.

SEO Key Performance Metrics + SEO Benchmark Metrics

• Unique and Returning Website Visitors. Overall website traffic count for visitors leading in from all marketing channels
• Average Page Load Speed Benchmark.Find ways to get your average page load speed down to below 2 seconds.
• Business Leads Generated.If sales leads are on an upward trend without advertising your search engine optimization efforts are working. Sales leads are indicated both from organic traffic and foot traffic in-the-door.
• Click Through Rate. CTR, click through rate percentage from organic search results listings pages
• Google My Business Page Performance. Number of monthly impressions for G+ Local page, Google My Business page
• Average Google Rankings. Average Google ranking positions found in Google Search Console statistics.
• Achieve Increased Search Engine Rankings. Achieve increases in search engine rankings position for primary targeted keywords.
• Organic SEO Visits. Percentage of Traffic from Organic Search. Organic search engine traffic monthly trend versus traffic through other marketing channels: Direct Traffic, Referral Traffic or Social Media Traffic, Paid Search Traffic PPC.
• Time Spent on Page.Time spent on web pages is an important indicator of value as is pages per visit.
• Conversion Rate Optimization. Measure the number of customer conversions turning into sales generated as a percentage of all live site visits.
• Segmenting Conversion Rates by Source. Call-to-action completions as a percentage of traffic origin or source: Organic Traffic, Referral Traffic, Direct Traffic, Social Media and Paid Search traffic.
• Landing Pages Bounce Rate. Document the percentage of how often visitors leave your pages or blog without clicking through to more internal web pages for measuring behavioral factors. Designing landing pages that convert is critical.
• Session Duration Time. Human sessions Average Duration Time reported in Google Analytics when humans interact with your website. The goal is to maximize the average time spent on site before leaving.
• User Engagement Metrics. User experience metrics such as Average Duration of time in minutes spent on site, along with how many Average Pages Per Visit
• Non-Branded Keyword Rankings. Rankings achieved for non-branded keyword traffic versus branded keyword traffic. Non-branded queries are more difficult and more valuable because visitors are newly discovering your brand.
• Unique Pageviews: The total number of pages viewed in a user session.
• Cornerstone Content Length: What is the number of words per page on your most important web pages versus competitors?
• Website Load Speed Time: What is the website speed load time? 4 seconds load time or less is critical!
• Google Indexed Pages: Number of Google indexed pages as reported from Google “Site” operator command
• Monthly Site Visits: Number of monthly new and returning site visits coming from all marketing channels
• Top 10 Google Page 1 Rankings. How many different pages or posts are attaining first page (ie. Top 10) Google rankings
• Inbound Links from Unique Domains. Unique domains linking to your domain, versus multiple links coming from the same domains
• Number of Local Business Citations Acquired. Monthly trend for building local search citations and local business listings visibility.
• Scroll Depth. Scroll depth measures how far users are scrolling down to the bottom of your cornerstone content versus abandoning the page.
• Incoming Links Popularity Count. Total quantity of incoming backlinks from reputable websites pointing to your website is one of the most important key performance indicators and SEO kpi metrics, which is also known as the backlink profile.
• Number of Backlinks Acquired. From how many different unique domains, the diversity of types of links acquired, and anchor text diversity
• Google Analytics Page Impressions. Number of total impressions shown in GWT for last 30 days for entire site, or search engine impressions for individual Landing Pages
• Google Analytics SEO Queries. Amount of keyword phrases leading to page impressions in Google search results pages
• Goal Completions. Expressed as Call-to-Actions completions such as newsletter subscribers or opt-in subscribers achieved.
• Keyword Click Throughs. In last 30-days, total number of entire website organic traffic click-throughs earned, and individual targeted keyword click throughs.
• Returning Visitors vs. New Visitors. Compare new visitors to returning site unique visitors to identify trends. People returning multiple times is a good leading indicator of quality content
• Average Dollar Transaction Amount. Monetary value received per business transaction
• Domain Authority. Numerical value of consolidated domain authority measured and reported by Opensiteexplorer.org
• Landing Pages Performance. Landing pages sending measurable traffic clicks or click throughs.
• Social Media Engagement. Amount of social media shares, social media presence, and human interactions when content is shared or bookmarked in your marketing funnel.
• Hosting Server Uptime Performance. SEOs also pay attention to hosting statistics such as server uptime and downtime, and web page speed.
• Google Page 1 Search Results. Keyword phrases that consistently achieve Google USA #1 – #10 search engine rankings

All website performance statistics are important. Once a website is earning traffic from multiple sources it’s time to have a meeting of the minds to begin seriously tracking and identifying the web statistics most important for increasing sales and achieving specific business goals. You’ll definitely need to earn high domain authority incoming links from domains that are registered for more years without a history of changing domain ownership or spamming behavior. Learn more about how to measure domain authority which is an indicator of meaningful SEO performance metrics.

Linking Strategies Help Direct Traffic to Content

Your off-site inbound linking, and on-page internal linking strategy should consist of linking more frequently to the highest priority web content (ie. highest volume keywords and most important web pages).

Identify top Landing Pages. in Google Analytics determine your top Landing Pages deserving of higher traffic and improve that page content quality, AND, then promote content further through social sharing to earn editorial links. Share genuine added-value content in social media that has links leading into your important landing pages.

Measure Website Performance On Topics & Keyword Themes

Your objective is to increase the quantity of search engine hits and actual human site visits and sessions for as many head keywords, keyword phrases, and long tail keywords as possible, for the home page and internal web pages, from as many marketing channels as possible, that will not only earn targeted traffic and clicks but lead to measurable increases in sales or lead generation. Don’t merely focus on individual keyword rankings, cover an entire topical theme to earn traffic..

Pay particular attention to reducing bounce rates percentages on key landing pages. The goal is to keep site visitors engaged with your site for longer time intervals.

After keyword “Not Provided” became Google’s status quo, SEO campaign effectiveness conversion tracking for individual pages and keyword phrases became more difficult, but can be overcome by an experienced SEO expert.

Don’t obsess on one specific keyword ranking achievement which is shortsighted thinking. Create comprehensive content that covers many related topics under the primary keyword theme, and then measure Organic SEO page traffic. A competent organic SEO agency can coach in the areas of setting realistic goals, measuring goal achievement thresholds, and identifying the best website performance metrics for your particular business niche and stage in the SEO process.

Are KPIs Always Important?

Not all web pages have a goal to rank for keywords and have specific key performance indicators to convert users into taking call-to-actions. Some pages are strictly published to serve a other purposes, such as Privacy Policy pages, Terms and Conditions pages, Contact Us, etc. Whether it’s a web page or a blog post, decide in advance your expectations for the content’s value regarding keyword performance indicators (kpis). KPIs have goals such as generating incoming links from other websites, or attaining top search engine rankings positions, or user engagement, shares or likes, content amplification, low bounce rate, interaction on blog posts, or people talking about you, your brand, or content.

Write freely and passionately on non-kpi pages to tell your individual story and connect with the reader. On all other pages have goals and try to accomplish at least two or three objectives and SEO kpis on a page or blog post to get more traction out of the content written. Content is hard to write! If it’s non-kpi content consider creating an outline of headings and subheadings prior to starting the writing process.