What Is The Most Important SEO Metric for My Service Business?
SEO metrics should be defined upfront—we all know that. But what is the most important SEO metric to analyze? Is it Keyword Rankings? Traffic? Unique Visitors?
Most reputable SEO’s agree that success should be tied to a mutually agreed upon outcome because ranking #1 and not getting desired results is very possible when the wrong keywords are selected, a website design and content is poor, or if your business does not see desired actions by website visitors taking place, for example.
Your SEO Company’s Job
The job of your SEO company is to help you identify the online sales funnel, help drive quality traffic to your website and build a Conversion process into your website that is effective.
And Your Job Is…
Your job is to make sure your Sales team and business-side processes, promotions and communications plan are optimized to convert a lead to a sale. This includes being creative and aggressive, as needed, with your promotional strategy.
So, if I do all of these things, what is the metrics that I should look at?
The most important Metric to focus on is one tied to tangible results linked to financial performance. In most cases, especially for Service businesses on Long Island, that means counting the number of Phone Calls and Contact Forms filled out on your website.
You also want to look at the engagement and conversion rates of your landing pages, bounce rates, Users (unique visitors) and Goals that are met (these need to be defined in Google Analytics e.g. someone filling out a form).
With Google’s Hummingbird Engine, it is recommended that you evaluate your Landing Pages (and top landing pages) and correlate rankings and traffic as well as bounce rates with the quality of the content on that page. If you have pages that are not performing, you need to equally look at on-page content as much as you do the On page SEO, inbound links etc. CONTENT continues to be KING.
In sum, to get results, your service business has three main jobs to accomplish with your SEO company:
- You pick the right keywords and get rankings on page one of Google. These are in-demand keywords that will position in your market online as well as longtail and niche keywords.
- You then drive increased quantity and quality of traffic to your website from online channels where your target audience or a customer segment spends time.
- The website experience and Conversion Rate (number of visitors who took a desired action in a timeframe/ the total number of visitors in that timeframe) must then be optimized as well. This includes having a strong offer or “Call To Action.” A/B testing promotions and determining which marketing message is most impactful can help you get the best results, time and budget willing.
In sum, the key to getting SEO results is a holistic approach that ensures that your entire SEO Campaign is Optimized at all lead/customer touch points. Just optimizing your website for Keywords will not be enough to get a profitable Return On Investment (ROI) for most companies.
Related Article: This article is very helpful for discussing other important SEO metrics: http://www.inboundmarketingagents.com/inbound-marketing-agents-blog/bid/333001/5-SEO-Metrics-You-ll-Regret-Not-Measuring