What Key Metrics Justified Your SEO Budget?
KPIs allow you to understand what is working for your website and what is not. These control metrics help you identify tactics that are driving profit and you spend your valuable time and money on something that works for you. There are certain requirements for success and if you understand what these essentials are, then you can justify your SEO budget.
Many small scale businesses follow the old-school practices of keywords, on-page & off-page SEO, tagging, and meta text, among others, which do provide results but not if you have a strategy in place. These businesses do not even allocate a budget for SEO services, they spend as need be. Following the mantra of Plan, Execute, Analyze, Amend and Repeat helps you to strategize, understand what is working and spend money on what reaps benefits.
Check the list of KPIs that frame your SEO budget and drive profit.
1. Search Rankings
Search Rankings are directly related to your SEO success as once you obtain it- traffic, leads and conversions can be easily achieved. Track your performance for the right keywords and how targeted keywords change the search positions. Create reports for the relevant keywords, also the keywords working for your competitors to analyze it better.
2. Organic traffic
This can be interpreted as the most vital objective of digital marketing services is to gain more traffic as it would be beneficial in getting leads and then conversions. Using Google Analytics will help you to understand the sources from where you’re getting traffic, keywords that are working, which piece of content attracts more traffic, etc.
3. Links
Linking your content on your website and other websites is very crucial for SEO, which is at times neglected by experts. By linking your pages within the website, you can direct the visitor from one piece of information to another also implying that visitors are spending more time on your website. Gaining visitors from other websites through guest blogging or just reaching out to the relevant businesses to link your content can benefit you in link building.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is the ratio of clicks on links to the total number of people who viewed your link, which implies more CTR is more organic traffic. Therefore, even if your link comes in top searches but it does not drive traffic because it isn’t appealing or does not provide relevant information. SEO experts must look at this KPI to know why high impressions do not lead to more clicks.
5. Search Visibility
It is one factor that is sometimes overlooked by experts and is an important factor in SEO-based activity. It lets you monitor the results of website optimization as it allows you to know how often your domain is shown in search results for a targeted keyword. It becomes essential even before your website starts attracting traffic.
While there are many other factors like branded traffic, average session duration, bounce rate and more that affects your website ranking, the ones listed are the key drivers and should be considered while creating an SEO budget.
Shyam Kumar is an accomplished author with years of experience in crafting high-quality, engaging content that drives traffic and boosts rankings. He has a keen understanding of search engine algorithms and is skilled at creating content that not only ranks well but also resonates with readers. His dedication and expertise make him a valuable asset to any SEO team.