Metrics That Matter: How to Measure SEO Performance

Good SEO is about more than search rankings and traffic. Sure, ranking on page one will bring more visitors, but it doesn’t mean those people are exploring the rest of your site or even enquiring about your products or services. While rankings are an important indicator of success, they are by no means the be-all and end-all of SEO. Often referred to as ‘vanity metrics’, a fixation on this data alone is a common mistake. In order to measure the success of any campaign, it is important to track a breadth of metrics, offering a more comprehensive overview.

There are a multitude of metrics to accurately track your traffic, the quality of leads you bring in, and ultimately, how well your site is converting them to buying customers. This guide breaks down the essential metrics every business should track to evaluate SEO performance, from traffic and user engagement to the technical health of your site and, ultimately, conversions.

Which Metrics Should You Be Tracking?

When we talk about which metrics to measure, it’s not a case of focusing on one or the other. Rather, it’s about understanding the context in which to read a whole range of them. So whilst organic traffic is important, you need to be asking yourself ‘is it the right kind of traffic?’ Similarly whilst conversions are ultimately what you want to be seeing, you should also be asking yourself, are these coming from my organic traffic or are they the result of some other marketing activity or just a seasonal spike in demand?’

Understanding how your data fits together is crucial in establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) which will ultimately give you a health check on your campaign.

Let’s look at some important metrics in turn now.

Traffic and Visibility Metrics

Organic Traffic

Ask any digital marketer or SEO, and they’ll tell you that organic traffic is a cornerstone of performance as it reflects the number of visitors who find your site through unpaid search results. This metric provides insight as to how well your website ranks for relevant keywords and how effectively your content attracts users.

But make no mistake, a large amount of organic traffic alone is not entirely indicative of success; the quality of said traffic is key. In other words, are these visitors genuinely interested in your content, or are they bouncing away? I’ll talk about this more a little later, but it’s worth noting that tools like GA4 allow you to dive deeper into your traffic data, helping you to analyse the number of visitors and their engagement.

In order to measure organic traffic in GA4, you’ll need to visit “Reports” > “Aquisition” > “Traffic Aquisition”, shown below.

Keyword Rankings

Keyword ranking data lets you see where your website appears in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords. As these rankings typically correlate with increased visibility and traffic, it’s worth keeping an eye on them and adjusting your strategy accordingly.

Once you know the keywords your site is currently ranking for, you can begin to get a picture of your high-converting keywords and create more content around these, be it on your blog page or your transactional landing pages. If you’re not ranking for your target keywords yet, divert your resources to optimising for these keywords as a matter of priority.

Here at Superb, we use also use Google Search Console to track non-branded search terms, revealing which terms are actually driving traffic, regardless of ranking. For example, a website may rank first for the tracked keyword ‘solar panel installations Bristol’, but that KW might only contribute 3-5 clicks over a month. Whereas, ‘Solar panels bristol’ might rank 20th but contribute 30-50 clicks.

To do so, open Google Search Console > Select Property > Search Results > + New > Query > Custom (regex) > Doesn’t match regex > Insert Brand Term (separate multiple instances by vertical bar). 

Impressions

Impressions tell you how often your site appears in search results, regardless of whether it was clicked or not. Both Google Ads and Google Search use impressions. 

This metric helps you understand how often your site is being presented to potential visitors and can be a useful indicator of your SEO efforts’ reach and visibility. High impressions indicate good visibility, but if they’re not translating into clicks, it might be worth revisiting your meta titles and descriptions.

It’s worth noting that Google tracks organic impressions regardless of which results page your URLs show up. This can then give you data on keyword volumes. Once you find out your high-volume keywords, you’ll know which areas you should focus on and improve.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR measures the percentage of impressions that result in a click. A high CTR suggests that your content is resonating with searchers, while a low CTR might indicate that your messaging needs fine-tuning.

The following formula can be used to calculate click-through rate:

Number of clicks your URL receives / Impressions = CTR

For example:

5 URL clicks from the SERPs / 100 Impressions = 5% CTR

Taking a closer look at CTRs highlights why rankings are not the end goal for SEO; it’s not uncommon to rank high with very few clicks at all. After all, what’s the point in good rankings if people don’t end up visiting your site?

Improving CTR usually comes down to two things, the relevancy of your website for the keywords you’re optimising for and the quality of your meta titles and descriptions and sometimes your Schema markup. Both meta titles and descriptions will appear in the SERPs so if your pages get a high CTR, that means users are finding your titles or meta descriptions relevant and interesting enough to click on. Pages with low CTR, meanwhile, can mean users don’t find them relevant so you need to optimise your titles and descriptions better.

User Engagement Metrics

Bounce Rate

As the name suggests, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave (or ‘bounce’ from) your site after viewing just one page. Google defines a ‘bounced’ session as one that lasted less than 10 seconds, had 0 conversion events and/or had less than 2 page or screen views.

Despite Google claiming they would remove bounce rate from the GA4 interface, it’s still there. You will, however, need to customise your reports to include it. 

To view bounce rate in GA4:

1. Select “Reports” from the menu on the left
2. Click the report you wish to customise
3. Click “Customize report” in the upper-right corner of the report.
4. Click “Metrics”, in the report data section of the right-hand panel.
5. Add “Bounce rate” and click Apply

While a high bounce rate might indicate that users aren’t finding what they’re looking for, it’s essential to consider the context. For instance, a high bounce rate on a blog post isn’t necessarily bad if the content meets the user’s needs. For this reason, Google doesn’t necessarily view a high bounce rate as a negative SEO ranking factor. That said, it does take into account the overall engagement of your website visitors.

Pages per Visit

Pages per visit tells us the average number of pages a visitor looks at during a single session on your website. As you’d expect, a higher number of pages per visit usually indicates that users are engaged with your content and find it valuable.

This is a good engagement metric to look at if you want your visitors to go to a different page (e.g. buy a product, inquire about a trial, etc).

If your product landing page, for instance, is also one of your top exit pages, then you need to figure out why visitors are not buying or taking the next step. If, however, your page’s goal doesn’t require visitors to go to another page, then a low page per visit is not an issue.

Time on Page

Sometimes called ‘engagement time’, this metric tells us the average time a user spends on one of your web pages. This can offer valuable insights into the usefulness and relevance of your content. For example, if visitors spend a significant amount of time on your service pages, it likely means they’re finding the information useful and are considering your offerings.

Monitoring time on page helps identify which content resonates most with your audience and where you might need to make improvements.

Exit Pages

Exit pages are the last pages users visit before leaving your site. While it’s natural for users to exit after finding what they need, a high exit rate on key conversion pages could indicate issues that need to be addressed. Understanding which pages are most commonly exited can help you refine your content and user journey to improve overall site performance.

To view your exit pages in GA4, you’ll need to create a custom report, or ‘exploration’. Here’s how:

1. Click “Explore”, to the left of the GA4 dashboard
2. Choose ‘blank’ exploration
3. Click the “+” icon, next to “DIMENSIONS”
4. Select “Page path and screen class” (under Page/screen) and click “Import.
5. Click “+” next to “METRICS”, select “Exits”, “Views” & “Bounce Rate”, and click Import.
6. 4. Drag “Page path and screen class” into the “ROWS” area.
7. Drag your metrics into the “VALUES” area.

Technical SEO Metrics

In addition to traffic, visibility and engagement metrics, it’s important to measure technical SEO metrics. These offer valuable insights into the health of a site as well as user experiences. 

Page Load Time

There’s nothing worse than a slow website – page load time is a crucial metric as search engines and visitors alike expect a fast, user-friendly experience. Think of your site speed as the first impression people get of your business. If it slows down to a crawl, users are bound to leave, leading to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. 

Several studies have pointed out the negative impact of a site’s slow load time. Google, for one, found that 1 out of 2 people expect pages to load in less than two seconds, while 53% of site visitors will leave your page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to analyse and optimise your site’s performance. Improving load times, especially on mobile devices, can enhance user experience and increase your visibility in search results.

Crawl Errors

Google ranks websites by sending crawlers to assess their quality. For your website to rank, they need to be able to see its content. Crawl errors (e.g. 404 errors, pages not indexed, etc) occur when Google’s crawlers can’t access certain pages on your site. Google will not show these pages on the SERPs. You can identify these errors on Google Search Console.

Mobile Usability

With mobile traffic dominating search, having a mobile-friendly site is non-negotiable. Google’s mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version of your site is the primary version considered for rankings. It’s important to ensure that your site is responsive, loads quickly, and offers a seamless experience on all mobile devices. Tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can help you identify and resolve mobile usability issues.

Conversion Metrics (GA4 Key Events)

While driving traffic to your site is important, ultimately, the success of your SEO efforts is determined by how well that traffic converts. Conversion metrics, now know as ‘Key Events’ in GA4, provide a clear picture of how effectively your site is turning visitors into customers, leads, or subscribers. These metrics go beyond traffic and help you measure the real impact of your SEO strategy on business outcomes. Key events might include, ‘purchase’, ‘email link click’, ‘sign up’, ‘telephone link click or ‘contact form submission’. In order to track these, you’ll need to set them up in GA4.

Here’s how to set up and track custom key events in GA4:

Step 1: Log into your GA4 account and head to Admin > Data Settings > Key Events

Step 2: Click ‘Create Event’.

Step 3: Give your event a name. 

Step 4: Under ‘Matching conditions’, set the Value to “page_view” to specify the type of event you’re targeting.

Tracking the right SEO metrics can make or break a campaign; they allow us to understand how a website performs and identify opportunities for growth. From measuring organic traffic and keyword rankings to evaluating conversion rates and technical SEO health, focusing on the metrics that matter can help refine your strategy and deliver tangible results.