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What are the Most Important SEO Metrics for 2019?

Jul 19, 2019

Written by Casey Bjorkdahl

Profile Picture Casey Bjorkdahl of https://www.vazoola.com

Casey Bjorkdahl is one of the pioneering thought leaders in the SEO community. In 2010, Casey co-founded Vazoola after working for a Digital Marketing Agency for five years in New York City. Vazoola is now one of the fastest growing and most widely recognized SEO marketing firms in the country.

What are the Most Important SEO Metrics for 2019?

Business owners know that having a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is vital when it comes to digital marketing.

All your online activities are aimed at getting more traffic to your central hub, which is your website.

Optimizing it to rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) is essential.

Getting your website found in organic search is one of the most critical metrics that will determine your online success.

However, there are other metrics that you should pay attention to for your SEO strategy in 2019.

Which ones are the most important?

Lead Tracking

It is important to collect leads from your website whether you have an eCommerce site or a website that supports your physical location.  

Tracking the number of leads you get, where they came from, and any actions they take is a metric to help you track how your SEO campaigns are working.

Leads are usually collected by offering something of value in exchange for contact information like name, email address, and phone number.

Contact information can be used to qualify leads based on how much and what type of information they provide.

After a website visitor completes a form on your site, they should be directed to a "thank you" page where they are provided with the information they requested.

You can set up a goal in Google Analytics that tracks the number of leads based on how many made it through to that page.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate metric measures how long visitors stay on your website before leaving. If they land on one page and don't engage any further, they are considered to have bounced away from your site.

If they take some action such as clicking on a menu item or any other internal links, the bounce rate will be lower.

Lower bounce rates are preferred as they indicate visitors who stay longer on your site. You can use this metric as an indication of the quality of your page.

If you see pages with high bounce rates, you should try to optimize them better to encourage visitors to stay longer.  

Some suggestions on how to engage users more are to include images, embed videos, or display links to related posts that add more value to your page.

Backlinks and Referral Domains

Getting links from other relevant websites is an essential objective of SEO. When these links bring quality traffic to your site, there will also be an increase in your website's authority.

Referral domains refers to the websites that are sending the links. The ratio of backlinks to referring domains is important. If you have a ton of backlinks and only a few referral domains, your site is likely to get penalized. Why?

Because it is better to get less links from many high authority referral domains than many links from low authority or spammy sites.

Backlinks from highly reputable relevant sites make others aware of your brand and the higher your site will rank in search.

Monitor your backlinks and pay attention to the pages that are receiving the most links as well as the ones that aren’t.

Make changes to the pages not receiving many links to optimize them for search better.

Conversion Rate

At the end of the day, if your web site is about getting customers to buy your product or sign up for your services, then the name of the game is making the sale.

A common mistake when optimizing is to worry too much about what will rank higher instead of how many visitors convert.  

You would be better off keeping it simple. Some suggestions on how to increase conversions are:

  • Don’t offer to many options
  • Have clear calls-to-action
  • Use high-quality images
  • Include only essential fields on your forms
  • Focus on benefits rather than features
  • Make your headlines compelling

User Engagement

One of the best ways to make your users stay on your page is to provide valuable and helpful information that will encourage them to interact with your content.

The main goal of search engines is to serve up the content to users that best answers what they are looking for when they perform a query.

Engagement is measured by any action taken on your site by a visitor such as clicking through to another page on your website.

Pay attention to the meta descriptions and content titles that encourage user engagement. You can check your Google Search Console to see the keywords and pages that have a lot of impressions but few clicks.

The best way to make sure your sites are still in line with modern practices is to keep an eye on your metrics and make changes when the numbers start to dip.

 

See Similar Articles:  Reporting | Keyword Research

Related Posts

How to Do a Backlink Audit (Like the Pros!)

What is Keyword Stuffing? How to Avoid this Website Danger

Using LSI keywords in an SEO strategy

Types of Keywords for Improving SEO

The Top SEO KPIs To Track

The Power of Long Tail Keywords

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