The Easy Way to Track Your SEO Progress

• DATE: November 12, 2015
• POSTED BY: Sarah Carrillo
• CATEGORY: Technology

We’ve covered SEO (search engine optimization) before, and hopefully you’ve implemented some of our SEO expert Anthony’s suggestions into your organization’s website.

But now, you need to know if your efforts are making a difference, right? Luckily, Kissmetrics has outlined exactly how to track your SEO progress. See their full explanation here, and get started with a few of their tips below:

1. How to View Only Organic Search Traffic

This one might seem obvious. I’m always surprised at how many companies see a decline in overall website traffic and immediately jump to the conclusion that the traffic loss is due to a decline in organic search traffic. Many times digging a little deeper can actually reveal that organic traffic is up while other traffic sources are down which is resulting in the overall traffic decline.

The first step in looking at Organic Search traffic over time is to open your Channel Grouping report which can be found by clicking Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. There you will see traffic sources segmented by channel.

2. How to Measure The Quality of SEO Traffic

A lot of times I hear that “quality” is subjective, so you can’t really measure it. I don’t believe this to be true and in fact, I’d say there are a lot of ways to measure the quality of any traffic source, not just search.

The most common report I use to measure an improvement or decline in the quality of search traffic is the Assisted Conversions report (Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions). With this report active I like to start by setting the date range to ‘Last month’ and comparing it to ‘Previous period’. What you’re left with is a month-to-month comparison of conversions directly from search, or in the event of multiple visits to the site, conversions where search played a role but is not directly attributed with the conversion (ie: the visitor found the company through search, but returned directly and converted).

Likewise, if you begin focusing on a more refined set of keywords and see an improvement in conversions from search traffic, you can say your SEO traffic quality is improving.

Read More:

• Top 6 Resources to Keep in Your SEO Toolbox
• 3 SEO “Rules” You Definitely Shouldn’t Break
• 3 Easy SEO Changes You Can Make Today

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