Your Complete Guide To KPIs, ROI, And How To Win Customers

If you want to manage a successful website, then optimizing it for your
target audience is the most important thing that you should be doing.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is the process of
optimizing your website’s content so that more visitors in your niche
can find your site.

SEO could involve things such as optimizing your site for popular keywords relating to the product or services you sell. It could involve
proper use of schema HTML tags to create rich results in Google
searches, or it might be as simple as adding some more links to quality
sources to your content.

If you do your SEO right, you’ll get results. For most people, results
mean more traffic and visitors to your website, more sales and
conversions, and more articles linking back to your web page.

You’ll be able to keep track of your results by paying attention to
KPIs. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the indicators and
signs that your SEO work is paying off. In terms of SEO, some of the
most common KPIs would be greater amounts of traffic or visitors staying
on your pages for longer amounts of time.

Keeping a close eye on your KPIs and how they relate to your SEO is the
best way to track your Return On Investment (ROI). As long as your
SEO work is resulting in better KPI results, chances are that it’s a
good investment!

In this article, we’re going to provide you with an in-depth guide to
understanding the important KPIs of good SEO practices and how to use
data-driven marketing tactics to convert more customers and build your
brand. You’re going to want to bookmark this one!

KPIs: Understanding Benchmarks and Reports

So, as we mentioned, your KPIs are the key performance indicators that
will tell you whether or not your search engine optimization techniques
are working or not. Investing in SEO can often be costly.

Whether you’re contracting an outside marketing team or hiring your own
in-house SEO experts, the extra payroll needs to pay off. Otherwise,
it’ll just be money wasted.

KPIs are the only real way to tell if your SEO team (or just your own
personal SEO efforts) are paying off. Now, it can take some time before
you start seeing results. However, if you aren’t seeing serious results
in 45 to 60 days, then you need to revise your SEO plan.

Keeping track of your KPIs alone won’t necessarily tell you whether
you’re getting a return on your investment. This is why it’s necessary
to set benchmarks.

Benchmarks are goals that you set as the standard for your KPIs.

For example, one benchmark could be, “For every $1,000 we invest into
SEO, it should result in at least 20,000 new visitors and $2,000 in
product sales.”

Depending on the goal of your website, your benchmarks may be a bit
different and you may end up measuring different KPIs. Moving on, we’ll
discuss all of the various KPIs that you may want to consider and
explain how to set benchmarks for these KPIs.

Tracking Key Performance Indicators

Tracking key performance indicators on a daily, weekly, monthly, and
quarterly basis is the best way to ensure that you’re keeping track of
every small detail and measure of your success. This is known as
reporting.

It’s important to understand which KPIs are important to your business
so that you can refine your strategy to reflect this. Once you
understand which KPIs matter (and why), you’ll be able to generate
reports that contain your chosen KPIs, which will allow you to
accurately measure your ROI.

Some people choose to see SEO reports on specific pages, while others
prefer to view SEO reports on the entirety of their site. We recommend
both.

It’s important to track KPIs on your main parent pages just as it’s
important to see how individual blog posts, conversion pages, and even
your homepage is performing in search engine results.

Below, we’ll show you all of the top KPI’s that you should be aware of
so that you can start thinking about which ones you need to measure for
your own business.

Website Traffic

Tracking your site traffic is one of the easiest ways to tell whether or
not your SEO is working. Simply put, if you’re getting more traffic to
your website, then more people are seeing your site and being convinced
to check out what you have to offer.

Sometimes, you may want to track the traffic on specific pages of your
site as well. This will allow you to optimize the important pages on
your site and improve underperforming pages. You’ll be able to take
aspects of high-performing pages and apply them to lower-performing
pages so that your whole site performs better and gets more traffic.

Overall Impressions

If you’re running a digital marketing or Adwords campaign, then you’ll
track impressions rather than site traffic. Impressions are the
views that your ad or promotion receives.

For instance, maybe you’re running an ad for your local service-industry
business and it receives 10,000 views in the first month of running it.
This is a great indicator that your ad was well-written and is
performing well!

Conversions and Conversion Rates

While keeping track of website traffic and impressions is important, it
doesn't tell you much about your actual return on investment. You could
have thousands of people visit your online store, but if nobody ever
buys anything, then it won’t matter. For your SEO to have a good ROI, it
needs to bring your paying customers!

When it comes to this particular metric, you’ll track two things:

Total conversions.
Conversion rate.

Your total conversions will track your total sales revenue-resulting
actions (it could be a product being sold, a form submitted, or even
just a new subscriber on your YouTube page).

Your conversion rate tracks the percentage of your traffic or
impressions that actually convert. For example, maybe 20% of everybody
who views your ad comes to your site to make a purchase. This is
incredibly high for any SEO campaign, but for the sake of the example,
this would mean that 1 out of every 5 ad viewers makes a purchase.

Realistically, the average conversion rate on Google Ads is under 4%
on a good day.

Click-Through Rate

Your click-through rate is similar to tracking conversions. However,
instead of tracking the sales or revenue-generating actions that
visitors take on your site, your CTR tracks how many viewers actually
click your ad or link and visit your site or page.

Bounce Rate

If you operate a content-driven site, then your bounce rate is a very
important metric to keep track of. Bounce rate measures the average
amount of time that visitors spend on a page before they “bounce away”
to another site.

The lower your bounce rate is, the more time that visitors are spending
on your page; the higher your bounce rate is, the less time that
visitors are spending on your page. Obviously, if you want to drive more
conversions and improve your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking,
you want a lower bounce rate.

Track KPIs With Ranktracker’s Web Audit Tool!

One of the best ways to increase your site’s overall ranking is to keep
constant track of your site’s ever-changing KPIs. This is where our
patented Web Audit tool comes in handy. With it, you’ll be able to
track key performance metrics, such as:

Bounce rate.
Monthly traffic.
Site usability.
Number of indexed pages on your site.
How many backlinks you have.
Your XML site map.
...and more!

Most importantly the Web Audit tool will give you a simple,
easy-to-understand score between 1 and 100 (with 100 being the highest
score). Then, it will categorize each scoring area, letting you know
which areas need to be improved first.

How To Set Up Your SEO Dashboard

You’ll keep track of your KPIs and SEO metrics through the use of a
dashboard. Like the dashboard in your vehicle, this is a screen that
will allow you to track every important metric relating to your site’s
overall performance.

A good SEO dashboard will display daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and
annual results for all of your chosen KPIs. This will allow you to
track your SEO efforts on a day-by-day basis AND give you important
long-term data that you’ll need to present in meetings and strategy
sessions.

If you’re just starting to track your SEO, we recommend using
Google Data Studio.

For one, Google Data Studio is 100% free to use. Given that it has the
power and features offered by many paid data display apps, it’s an
obvious choice for beginners and professionals alike. Additionally, Data
Studio is compatible with Google’s other SEO tools, including:

Google Analytics.
Google Adwords.
Google Console.

This means that the data generated by Adwords campaigns, console
searches, and analytical data obtained directly from your site will
automatically be displayed in your Google Data Studio! Pretty handy,
right?

If you’re looking for something a little more advanced, then you can use
a paid service such as
Supermetrics
which will correlate with both Google Data Studio and third-party apps
and marketing services.

Pro Tips For Setting Up Your Dashboard

Below are some great tips to remember as you’re sitting down to set up
your SEO dashboard:

Use as many visual charts and graphs in your dashboard as possible.
Not only will this give you a better perspective about what’s
going on but it will make sharing reports with your team a lot
simpler.
It’s a good idea to track short-term benchmarks as well as long-term
benchmarks. This will give you a more accurate picture of how well
your site is performing over time.
Be sure to track KPIs and SEO metrics for both your entire site as
well as important individual pages.

How To Rank For Keywords

If you’re creating a piece of content for your website, then it needs to
be able to “rank” for the primary or secondary keywords in your niche.
Eventually, your goal should be to make it to the first page of Google’s
search engine results for the given keyword. If possible, you should be
in the top-3 results on Google’s first page. This will ensure total
domination of the keyword.

How long this takes depends on a number of different factors, such as:

The competition (monthly search volume) for the keyword.
The relevancy of the keyword.
The geographic location of your business or service.
The overall algorithmic ranking and authority of your website.

This is what makes it hard to nail down the precise amount of time that
it will take your page to rank. That being said, there are a couple of
methods that you can use to narrow down how difficult or easy it will be
to rank for your chosen keywords. Let’s take a look.

Method 1: What’s The Competition On The Keyword?

When you open Google’s Keyword Planner or your own keyword tool, you
should be able to type in specific keywords and search terms to see how
many monthly searches the keyword gets. Generally speaking, keywords
with more competition take longer to rank for, while keywords with low
to moderate levels of monthly searches are easier to rank for.

Method 2: Check Your Competitors’ Backlinks

Another easy way to check how easy a keyword is going to be to rank for
is to check the number (and quality) of your top competitors’ backlinks.
Backlinks are links back to the page from high-quality sources. The
higher the authority of sites that link back to the page, the better the
page will rank in SERPs.

Often, it can take time, money, and a considerable amount of reputation
to get high-quality backlinks from .gov, .edu, or popular news sites.

If your top competitors on Google results for your keyword have lots of
high-quality backlinks, then it will take a lot more effort to rank
high for your chosen keywords. Conversely, if your top competitors have
little to no quality backlinks, then ranking your page will be far
easier.

Estimating Your Return On Investment (ROI)

Since SEO can often take several weeks or months to start generating
marked results, you may not be able to tell whether or not you’re making
a good ROI for quite some time. By keeping track of your dashboard and
ensuring that you understand your key performance indicators, though,
you’ll know a lot sooner.

For most websites and businesses, a good ROI typically means positive
cash flow. If you invest $100 into something, you want to at least
make your money back. Preferably, you want to turn a profit.

However, not all websites are commerce-based. For example, if you’re
operating a charity, then your ROI could be measured by donations. If
you’re trying to boost a personal brand or a social media page, then a
positive ROI could be denoted by more comments, likes, or subscriptions.

This is why it’s important to define your specific KPIs before you
start your SEO campaign.

Below, we’ll discuss a few of the best ways to determine whether you’re
making a positive return on your investment.

Search Volume and Impressions

You should have a sheet detailing your primary and secondary keywords
for your site along with the total monthly search volume for each. Let’s
say, for example, that you’re trying to rank for “Bluetooth headphones”
and the keyword has 80,000 monthly searches.

If your page is getting 10,000+ impressions, then this means a huge
percentage of monthly searches are seeing your website listed, and means
your SEO is going great. This is a bit of a high number but would
indicate that you have a solid percentage of the market for that
keyword.

Conversion Rate

The more visitors convert (buy something, subscribe, complete a form,
etc.), the better your conversion rate is. A perfect 100% conversion
rate is practically impossible. In fact, the average landing page has a
conversion rate between 2% and 4%. However, if you can get your page to
convert 10% to 12% of all visitors, then you have an incredibly
successful site!

Click-Through Rate By Industry

If you use the Google Search Console, you’ll be able to view the average
CTR based on SERP results for specific keywords and industries. This
will give you a good idea of the benchmark that you should set for your
own sites. Optimally, you’ll want your CTR to match industry standards
or do better.

Understanding Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a process that you’ll want to stay
on top of throughout the course of your SEO efforts. Essentially, this
involves optimizing your website itself to generate more conversions. As
we mentioned in the example above, it doesn’t matter how much traffic
you get in your store, if everybody walks out empty-handed, it’s simply
not profitable.

“What’s the difference between SEO and CRO, though?” you might be
wondering…

While SEO is the process of optimizing your site to get more visitors,
CRO is the process of ensuring that a greater percentage of those
visitors actually convert.

Below, we’ll go over a few key topics and strategies relating to CRO for
your website.

Conversion Rate Optimization For Click-Through Rate

If you want a better converting site, then you need to start by ensuring
that you have a decent click-through rate (CTR). For example, if you
notice that certain of your pages are converting more than others, it’s
a good indicator that your other pages need better CTR optimization.

If you take a little bit of extra time to improve the CTR of the
underperforming pages, then it can result in more total conversions for
your site. This is a great strategy for conversion rate optimization.

Make It Easy For Visitors To Convert

One of the biggest mistakes that websites make is that they make it too
hard or too complicated for their visitors to convert. The reason why
Amazon is the world’s biggest e-commerce platform is that they’ve made
the purchasing process incredibly easy.

You can go on the site right now, search for your product, and then buy
it with their one-click payment option in less than 60 seconds. The
longer that your visitor has to wait to buy your product, the more time
you give them to re-think their buying decision, and the higher the
chance that they’ll back out.

Making it easy for visitors to buy your product or convert can be
accomplished through multiple different tactics, including:

Offering fast, easy credit card checkouts.
Offering an on-screen chatbox assistant.
Creating an engaging sales funnel that draws the visitor in and
converts them.
Offering Afterpay or financing for your products or services.
Offering a free trial for first-time users or buyers.
Having clearly outlined buttons that encourage visitors to take
action, visit your shop, or add items to their carts.

How To Test For Good CRO Practices

The best way to see how optimized your page is for conversions is simply
to test it out in the real world. By now, you should have a good bit of
data on your existing pages. Take a snapshot of this data.

Then, work with a marketing professional (or lookup your own best
marketing practices) to create a better-optimized version of your
website or page. Give your updates a few weeks to generate data.

If the newly-improved site has generated more conversions, then your
improvements worked! If not, then go back to the drawing board and work
on new CRO procedures. This process is referred to as “split-testing.”

Advanced SEO and Improving CTR

As we’ve mentioned, you could have the most detailed, beautifully laid
out website… BUT if it doesn't get any visitors or convert any
customers, then all of your hard work goes to waste.

Search engine optimization is crucial given the highly competitive
nature of the internet in 2021. There’s a good chance that there’s at
least a moderate level of competition in even the most niche-oriented
markets and industries. The better your website’s SEO is, the higher
your brand will rank, the more traffic you’ll get, and the more sales
you’ll convert. Over time, this will lead to your site becoming an
“authority site” in the industry, and SEO will get a lot easier.

In this section, we’ll go into greater detail about advanced SEO
strategies, how to identify the best keywords for your site, and how to
improve your listing’s CTR to get more customers.

Remember, The Algorithm Is Always Changing

Every year, major search engines like Google make tons of small upgrades
to their algorithm. Periodically, their dev teams roll out major
upgrades with groundbreaking new features and functionality. This means
that you’ll constantly need to stay on top of the latest updates,
adapting and improving your SEO strategy so that your page continues to
rank well.

Improving Your Page Structure With Tag Tools

One of the best things that you can do for both your SEO and to improve
your conversion rates is to ensure that your page structure is well-laid
out. The easier that your content is to read and digits, the longer
visitors will stay, the more they’ll trust your brand, and the higher
the algorithm will rank your page.

One of the best ways to start with this is to use header tags. For
example, if you look at this article right now, you’ll notice that we’ve
used h1 tags to outline major topics, h2 tags to indicate sub-topics,
and h3 tags to indicate sub-sub-topics. This ensures that you always
know how each header fits into the general topic of the page and makes
it easier to absorb.

Another way to incorporate tags is to use anchor text that links to
other articles and child pages on your site, as well as linking to
high-quality external resources, such as medical journals, authoritative
news sites, educational sites, or government agencies.

To get a good idea of how you should be structuring your own pages, the
best thing you can do is to analyze your top competitors’ pages. Search
for the keyword you’re trying to rank for, and check out the top 5
results on Google.

Take note of how their pages are laid out, how long their articles are,
how many headers they use, and the overall keyword density of the
article. Then, use this data to create a benchmark standard for how your
own web pages should be styled and outlined in accordance with it.

What Should A Page With Good SEO Look Like?

Those of you looking to cut straight to the chase probably jumped
directly to this header…

Obviously, your on-page SEO will be different for various web pages and
sites. Overall, though, a page with good SEO is the result of a
combination of different factors, such as:

Use of primary, secondary, and supporting keywords related to the
niche you’re in.
External links to high-quality, authority sources.
Internal links to other related articles and posts on your site.
Appropriate usage of header tags (h1, h2, h3, h4) to divide your
page’s content.
Healthy use of keywords. You don’t want to have too low or high of a
keyword density.
Use of images and multimedia content throughout your page.
Engaging call-to-action statements, page titles, and meta
descriptions.
No duplicate pages within your site or plagiarised content from
other websites.

The more that you work on your page’s SEO, the more you’ll see results
in the form of better KPI metrics, higher conversion rates, and a higher
click-through rate on your articles.

Low-Cost Or Free SEO Tools To Take Advantage Of

It’s virtually impossible to do quality SEO work without some help from
several different tools. There are plenty of expensive SEO tools on
the market, but we figured that we’d start by providing you with a list
of some of the free or low-cost tools you can take advantage of.

When you’re first starting off with SEO, it’s always best to tread the
water with easy, low-cost tools before you go spending hundreds or
thousands of dollars on advanced software that you have no idea how to
use.

With that being said, here are some great free or low-cost SEO tools you
can use to boost your site’s rankings:

Grammarly (improves on-page grammar, spellchecking).
Copyscape (checks pages for plagiarism).
Google Keyword Planner (helps you find keyword search volume).
LSIGraph (helps to identify niche keywords).
Schema.org (helps you create rich results and interactive SERP
results on Google).
Google Analytics (keeps track of SEO metrics and KPIs).
Google Data Studio (puts SEO metrics into easy-to-read graphs and
charts).
Ahrefs (useful for backlinking and on-page analysis).
Moz (free SEO tools, paid SEO tools, and free trial periods).

If you want your SEO efforts to generate the best results, then you’ll
need to use multiple different tools. Some tools will help you write
great content, others will ensure that none of your content is
plagiarized, and some tools allow you to analyze your own web pages or
your competitors’ pages.

Before using any tool, you should verify that it meets several key
criteria:

It has a cost point that allows you to make a good ROI.
It has broad usage and is something that you’ll use regularly.
It provides accurate data you can use to generate reports and make
improvements.
The developer offers support whenever glitches or problems occur.

How To Keep Track Of Word Count

When it comes to writing content pages for an informational site, you
should try to ensure that your main parent pages and key articles are
between 1,000 and 1,300 words each. Shorter blog posts or social media
content should be anywhere between 500 and 800 words long. If you run an
e-commerce store, then product descriptions should be between 300 and
700 words long.

Many website creators like WordPress or Squarespace display the word
count of an article or page as you’re writing it.

If you’re creating a site from scratch or trying to analyze a
competitors’ article, then your best bet is to select all of the text on
their page and then past it into Google Docs or your word processor.
Then you can press [ctrl+shift+c] to display the total word count of
the article.

LSI Tools

You might be wondering, “What the heck is LSI?”

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Simply put, these tools
help identify keywords that are related to your main keyword (e.g.,
“natural weight loss” would be an LSI keyword of the primary keyword
“weight loss”).

One of the best tips to boost your SERP ranking is to not only include
primary keywords but also related keywords and terms. This indicates to
the search algorithm that your web page is well-written, covers the
topic well, and can help your page get new visitors who are searching
for related terms and keywords.

Using LSI tools will help you identify some great secondary keywords or
supporting keywords that you can use throughout your website in child
pages, main pages, or alongside primary keywords.

The best free or low-cost LSI tools to check out are:

LSI graph.
Niche Laboratory.
KW Finder.
Semantic Link Tool.
AnswerThePublic.

Use Ranktracker’s Keyword Finder To Identify LSI Keywords

One of the most comprehensive LSI keyword tools on the internet is our
patented Keyword Finder tool. With it, you’ll be able to type any
keyword you can think of into the console. Within a few seconds, you’ll
be presented with hundreds of high-quality LSI keywords related to the
main search term.

Unlike many of the free keyword tools on the internet, our Keyword
Planner will show you detailed numbers and data about monthly search
results. Instead of just seeing “[x keyword] gets 100k-300k monthly
searches,” you’ll see an exact number like 187k searches.

Tools For Identifying Primary Keywords

Your primary keywords are the main search terms that you’re trying to
rank for. These keywords typically have moderate to higher levels of
competition. However, if you’re in a niche market, then they can also
have a lower monthly search volume.

When selecting primary keywords for your site, you want to first ensure
that they’re terms that people use. Secondly, you want to identify the
level of competition that each keyword has, so that you know whether or
not you stand a chance to rank for the keyword.

Below are the best free or low-cost keyword tools for identifying
primary keywords:

Google Correlate.
Google Keyword Planner (Adwords Extension).
Moz.
Soovle Search Engine Aggregator.

How To Use Adwords To Find Key Search Terms

Formerly Google Adwords, Google Ads is one of the largest free SEO tools
on the internet. While it’s primarily designed to help create Google and
YouTube ads, you can use the same tools to identify primary, secondary,
and supporting keywords that you can use for on-page SEO.

In this section, we’re going to show you a few ways that you can use
Google Ads to identify keywords for your site. If you’re just getting
started with SEO, then this is a great tool to use as it’s 100% free and
offers reliable, accurate data.

Google Adwords Keyword Planner

Once you create your Google Ads account, you’ll be able to access the
free Keyword Planner tool. This allows you to enter specific keywords
into a search console and displays the latest data on the keyword,
including:

Monthly search volume.
Average CPC (cost per click) for Google CPC ads.
Click-through rates.
The level of competition for the keyword.
Top-page bid (how much to get your ad displayed on page 1 SERPs).

One of the best features of the Keyword Planner is that it will display
a bunch of secondary and more refined keywords relating to your primary
keyword. This is a great way to start researching high-quality
keywords that you can use in your SEO efforts.

Google Adwords Campaign For SEO

Although Google Ads campaigns no longer convert as well as they used to
in the past, they’re still a decent way of gaining some traffic to your
site. They’re also a good way to split-test for specific keywords, page
titles, and meta descriptions.

If there’s a specific product, service, or main page that you want to
get increased traffic to, you can use your Google Ads dashboard to
create customized ads that will appear on YouTube or Google search
results. You’ll be able to write a brief title and a brief 2-3 line meta
description.

You’ll also be able to target your ad towards certain keywords. The
higher the level of competition for a certain keyword, the more you
should expect to pay per click.

The key to a good Adwords campaign is to achieve a positive ROI on it.
For example, if your CPC for an ad is 50-cents, that means you’ll pay
$100 for every 200 clicks you get on your ad. This $100 you invested
should optimally result in at least $125 to $200 of sales. If you can
double your investment in terms of conversions, then you’ll have made a
great Google Ads campaign.

Create Engaging SEO Campaigns With Adwords

Now that you understand how to better use Google Adwords for your
keyword research and to create data-driven Google Ads, let’s take some
time to discuss how to create engaging campaigns with Google Adwords.

The Importance of Call-To-Action Statements and Good Copy

Whether you simply want your web page to rank organically or you’re
paying for Google Ads, your copywriting is everything. Simply put,
people click on pages and ads that draw their attention, answer their
questions, or provide value.

If your ad or SERP result isn’t doing at least one of these, then
chances are that you’re not going to get a good ROI on your SEO efforts!

This is accomplished by:

Writing an engaging title.
Writing an engaging meta description.

Your title is either the meta title of your webpage or the title of your
Google Ad campaign.

Your meta description is the brief 2 to 3-line description that’s posted
underneath your main title.

For example, here’s what an engaging title and description might look
like in Google search SERP results:

Back Pain Got You Down? Free Consultations And 50% Off Your First Massage!

We’re Fix-Your-Back Chiropractics and our licensed chiropractors have
over 20 years of combined experience. Come see why we’re one of NYC’s
top-rated chiropractors today and get your FREE consultation!

See how engaging that was? The first thing you’ll notice is that the
example above made use of power words, such as:

Free.
50% off.
X years of combined experience.
Top-rated.

These are action words that automatically grab the viewers’ attention
and encourage them to read the rest of your call-to-action statement. If
you were reading that and you actually needed a back adjustment, there’s
a pretty good chance that you would click on it and take advantage of
the free consultation and discounted massage.

A good CTA should use simple, effective words as well as brief,
powerful, and engaging statements. Basically, you want to convey as much
authority, trustworthiness, and information in as short a space as
possible. If you can do this, you’ll dramatically increase your
click-through rate on your SERPs listings as well as your Google Adwords
campaigns.

How To Test Your CTAs

When it comes to your CTAs, SERPs listings, and Adwords campaigns, you
don’t want to waste any time or lose any money. Undoubtedly, of course,
you’ll lose from time to time. However, you can mitigate your risks and
loss by properly testing your CTAs, page titles, and meta descriptions.

The best way to test your CTAs is to split-test your Google Ads
campaigns. Targeting the same keywords and niche market, create 2 or 3
different variations of your ads, using differing titles and meta
descriptions.

Next, set a limit on the amount of money you want to spend on each
variation of the ad and run each one for a week. This should generate
enough data to give you an idea of which ad performs the best.

The ad that made the most impressions or had the highest CTR is going to
be the best. So, delete the underperforming ads and focus your money
on the ad that resulted in the best metrics. This method is also a good
way to test for meta titles and descriptions for your web pages.

If your actual Google Ads got good results, there’s a chance that you
can use the same title and description in the HTML meta tags for your
site’s individual pages to generate higher organic CTR.

Calculating Your Click-Through Rate

As we’ve discussed in-depth so far, your CTR is one of the most vital metrics relating to your site’s SEO. It tells you whether or not people
actually care enough about your listing or site to bother clicking it.
If you can’t increase your CTR, then there’s no point to even start with
conversion rate optimization efforts.

So, with that being said, it’s always good to know how to calculate your
exact CTR.

The simple equation for calculating your exact CTR is to divide the
total number of clicks by the total number of impressions. Then,
multiply that number by 100.

(Total Clicks/Total Impressions) * 100 = CTR

This will give you an exact percentage of the number of people who see
your site or ad and click-through to the website itself and take action.

How To Calculate Your CTR With Google Adwords

If you’re doing some keyword research and you want to see the average
click-through rate for a given keyword, then Google Adwords has a
simple, easy-to-use tool for you! Here’s how to use Google Ads to
calculate a keyword’s expected CTR (as far as ads go, anyway):

First, log into your Google Ads account.
Click the tab in the upper-right corner of the screen that says
‘Tools and Settings.’
Look on the left-hand side of the screen and select ‘Forecast.’
Here, create an Ad Group and select a keyword you want to research.
You’ll be presented with important data, including the average
number of clicks, impressions, and the pre-calculated CTR, based
on recent Google user data.

CTRs: Niche Topics Vs. Broad Topics

Keep in mind that the broader the topic you’re trying to rank for is,
the lower the expected CTR will be. This is because there are more
competitors in the space, more ads, and therefore your own listing will
be watered down and less relevant.

This is why it can be useful to target certain key niche topics and
keywords. The reason why is that people who take the time to search for
niche topics often are more determined to find a solution or a result.

For example, if you just search for leather boots on Google, the chances
are that you’re still trying to figure out what type of boots you even
want, in the first place.

Now, let’s say you’ve spent an hour researching the type of boot you
want and have narrowed it down and decided that you specifically want a
pair of Prada leather boots. By the time you’re searching for niche
keywords like “Prada leather boots,” you’re already ready to make a
buying decision and will be more likely to click on ads and links for
the Prada boots you want.

Traffic Tip: Identify Under-Performing Keywords

Just because you did some research and think that a certain keyword is
going to perform well doesn’t necessarily mean that it will. Some of the
possible reasons why a particular keyword on your site may not be
performing up to part could be:

There’s too much competition in the niche.
There aren’t enough searches for the keyword.
Your keyword-containing content is poor or being down-ranked by the
algorithm.
The keyword is no longer trending (e.g., “fidget spinners” had huge
search volume a few years ago, but now have very low search volume
as they’re no longer a trendy toy).

Before you rule your keyword out entirely, it’s a good idea to identify
exactly why it’s not performing. This can be achieved by using the
Adwords Keyword Planner as well as viewing page-specific SEO metrics
that show your traffic and which keywords bring them to your page.

Whatever the case may end up being, you’ll need to do one of two things
once you identify those under-performing keywords:

Switch the keyword out for another keyword.
Improve your site and on-page SEO so it will rank for your chosen
keyword.

Correlation Does Not Always Equal Causation

There’s an old saying in the scientific community that states that
correlation does not equate to causation. For example, just because
people who ride trains are more likely to catch a cold doesn’t mean
that the train itself is causing people to get sick. The more plausible
cause is that the people on the train are causing people to get sick.

The same applies to research data and SEO metrics. Just because a
certain tool (or even your own research) shows correlation, doesn’t
necessarily mean that it’s a law.

For example, let’s say there’s a revolutionary new product on the
market…

You do your keyword research and see that the product is a
low-competition keyword and decide that it must be a bad product. In
reality, it could just be that the company hasn’t gone public yet and
not many people are aware of the product.

If you had just been patient for a few more weeks, there may have been a
huge explosion in searches for that product.

So, that being said, you need to rely on your own intuition and market
research as well as correlating data that you get from SEO tools such
as Google Keyword Planner.

How To Algorithm-Proof Your Site

One of the largest and most comprehensive updates to Google’s algorithm
was performed in 2018 and dubbed the “Medic” update. It was so-called
because scores of sites in the medical and health sectors that had
previously ranked higher were down-ranked overnight by the algorithm.

This was because Google introduced a new, simplified scoring mechanism
known as E‑A‑T, which grades all search engine results using 3 main
tests:

Expertise.
Authoritativeness.
Trustworthiness.

The update was done to stop the growing number of untrustworthy,
non-authority sites that were claiming to be “experts” in medical and
health-related fields, causing confusion and misinformation to be widely
distributed.

Well one thing’s for sure, it caught thousands of top-ranking websites
off guard and they had to spend the rest of the year trying to up-rank
their sites again.

This is why it’s important to not only keep track of Google’s latest
updates (and any chatter surrounding potential updates). For now,
though, just keep a few key tips in mind if you want to ensure that your
site is as algorithm-proof as possible:

Make sure that your site is cross-referenced across the web. If
possible, try to link your site to social media business pages, a
Google business listing, and reputable third-party review sites.
Ensure that whenever you’re giving information (especially if it’s
medical or financial data), the article always references
authoritative sources such as medical/scientific journals, college
studies, or popular news media sites.
Make sure that your sites are clean, well-organized, have good
grammar and tag structure, and don’t have anything that remotely
resembles scammy behavior.

Beyond The Basics: Advanced Keyword Research

Alright, so by now you should have a pretty solid understanding of how
keywords work and why they’re important.

To recap, your site should be focused on a few primary keywords that
really outline the theme and topic of your site, service, or product.
Additionally, you should also identify a list of secondary and support
keywords that you can use to attract niche-level traffic and rank for
lower-competition terms relating to your primary keywords.

Not only will this increase your chances of being found organically by
Google search users, but this will also help with your algorithmic SERP
ranking, as it will make your site appear more relevant.

Selecting the best keywords for your site requires a fair amount of
research. While the primary keywords may be easier to discover, choosing
from the long list of secondary and support keywords that may be
displayed on Google’s Keyword Planner and Forecast tools can be a
challenge.

You’ll need to analyze factors, such as:

Monthly search volume.
CPC costs.
Average CTR rates.
Average number of impressions.
Mobile Vs. Computer keyword performance.
Locations where the keyword performs the best.
… and expected future forecast for the keyword’s performance.

Sounds like a lot, right?

Well, at first it can be. However, once you run some of your own
split-tests (as we described above), spend some time doing your
research, and run a few successful SEO campaigns, we promise it’ll get a
lot easier. Eventually, you’ll be able to nail down important KPIs and
use your own intuition to intuitively select the best keywords for your
site.

This is one area where practice is everything!

With that being said, there are two advanced keyword topics that we want
to cover briefly:

Lost keywords.
Cannibalized keywords.

These are both problems that commonly arise among webmasters and SEO
specialists alike. Knowing how to fix them will serve you well if you
want to increase your site’s SERP ranking.

Advanced Keyword Research With Our SERP Checker

One of the best ways to perform advanced keyword research is to use
Ranktracker’s high-performance SERP Checker! This tool allows you
to check the exact performance metrics of any keyword you can think of.
Unlike Google’s free tool that just displays a few average numbers, the
SERP Checker tool will show you details, such as:

Which sites rank highest for the keyword.
Number of backlinks by competing sites.
Keyword difficulty ranked 0-100.
Top stories and trending topics related to the keyword.
The citation flow (CF) which measures the authority of a page from
0-100.
… and a whole lot more!

If you want the latest, most accurate data on specific keywords, there
are no tools on the market today that can compete with Ranktracker’s
SERP Checker tool!

Lost Keywords

The first thing we’ll discuss are “lost” keywords. So, what are lost
keywords, to begin with?

Lost keywords are keywords that your page or site previously ranked in
the top-100 search engine results for, but no longer does. Once you fall
out of the top-100 range of results for that key search term, you have
officially “lost” it to your competition.

Many of the same SEO tools that are able to generate lost keyword
reports are also able to generate declining keyword reports. These
will show you keywords that you’re in danger of losing if improvements
aren’t made.

Lost keywords are harmful to your site because they eventually lead to
decreased traffic to individual pages and eventually your entire site!
Reasons why your site could “lose” keywords include:

New competitors with better-ranking sites/pages for the keyword.
Loss of relevance for the keyword.
Censorship of the keyword.
Algorithmic down-ranking of your page/site due to E‑A‑T factors.
Indexing problems or glitches with the main pages of your site.

How To Track Keywords Using Google Analytics

Whenever possible, you want to do your best to
catch declining keywords before you lose ranking
on the pages that contain them. Once you’ve lost a page’s (or your
site’s) ranking, then it can be a tough uphill battle to regain your
ranking.

The best way to catch declining keywords or know which new keywords to
update your old web pages with is to use Google Analytics and the Google
Search Console. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to track keywords
with Google’s free SEO tools:

In your Analytics dashboard, find the ‘Acquisition’ filter and set
it to [acquisition > source]. This will allow you to filter
your keyword results based on Google traffic.
Next, select a specific date range that you want to check keyword
performance and ranking over. You can also view comparisons
between different date ranges. For this, the best bet is to start
by checking how keywords have performed over the past few 30-day
periods. This will allow you to identify the exact month that
changes started to occur.
Now, assuming that you’ve linked your website to Google Search
Console, navigate to the ‘Performance’ tab. Under this select
[performance > pages]. This will show you the performance of
your pages in Google search results over time.
Go back to Analytics and use it to find the particular page that saw
a decrease in traffic.
After identifying the problem page, go back to Google Search Console
and find the page in the [performance > pages] results.
Now, you’ll be able to see exactly which keywords have been
affecting that particular page and its traffic. You can use this
data to implement new keywords, get rid of old keywords, or to
create new content based on better-performing keywords.

Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization is a common problem that occurs with larger
websites. When you have too many pages that rank for the same
keywords, it can confuse the Google algorithm as it’s not sure which
keywords and pages to give priority ranking to.

It could have two negative results:

An unimportant page gets unexpectedly up-ranked.
Important pages (or your entire site) get down-ranked.

Fixing Cannibalization Issues

One of the biggest causes of keyword cannibalization is outdated
“keyword stuffing” methods. In the old days, you could rank your site
simply by putting as many keywords as possible in your content. Today,
the algorithm will red-flag this and down-rank you as it’s considered
spammy.

Here are a few tips that you can do to fix keyword cannibalization
issues:

If you have similar pages with similar keywords, consider merging
them into one larger piece that targets those keywords.
Try changing the internal linking structure of your posts and pages.
Alter the linking to ensure that more of the less important pages
link upwards to the higher-priority pages and posts. This gives
the algorithm a clear signal as to the hierarchy of your site and
which pages should be given priority.
Cut down on excessive keyword usage. If you notice “stuffing”
anywhere in your articles, replace the excessively used keywords
with supporting keywords (or delete them altogether).

All About “Poking”

For those who remember, NO - we’re not talking about Facebook’s old
“poke” feature…

Poking refers to the methodology behind testing how “hard” or “soft” a
certain keyword, niche, or industry is. Hard keywords are those which
are going to be hard to rank for, while soft keywords are those that
will be relatively easy and inexpensive to rank for.

Performing some upfront tests (or “pokes”) is a great way to test the
waters before you jump in and spend a bunch of money and time on SEO.
There are two main types of poking that SEO specialists use:

Video poking.
Long-tail poking.

Disclaimer: “Poking” methods are considered to be SPAM by
Google and its algorithm. A few well-placed pokes here and there won’t
cause your site to be flagged. However, if you do it too often, it could
cause your site to get down-ranked. It’s a good way to find one or two
new primary keywords to rank for here and there, but don’t go crazy with
it.

YouTube Test Poking

This is a secret that not many people know about, so use it wisely!
Start by going on YouTube and scheduling a live event video on YouTube
(don’t go live, just schedule a future event). Your video should contain
the primary keyword in the title, description, and a meta tag.

Then, after 30 minutes, go to Google search and type that same keyword.
If it’s a “soft” keyword (easy to rank for), then you’ll be able to see
the scheduled live video listed in the top 5 pages of SERP results for
that keyword. If not, then chances are it’s a “hard” keyword.

Long-Tail Test Poking

This is a more traditional method that involves creating a new silo post
on your site and then checking its performance with the Google Search
Console tool.

First, create a 750 to 1,300-word blog post or sub-article on your site
that’s designed to rank for your desired keyword you’re testing. Then,
give it a week or two to rank.

Now, after the time has passed, enter the URL of the testing post into
the Search Console and check how it’s been performing. If it’s already
ranking on page 5 or above, then it’s a “soft” keyword and one that you
can easily rank for. If not, then it’s time to go back to the drawing
board.

Dominating Page One Of Google

If you’re a new site trying to dominate the first page of SERPs results
in Google, then it can be hard, especially if it’s a competitive
industry. However, it’s totally possible to rank for niche keywords
within your industry! Here are a few tips to improve your chances of
dominating page one results for a keyword on Google.

Branding

Branding is your site’s overall presence across the internet. The more
you can cross-reference your various internet real estate and link it
back to your main brand the better.

The best way to start is by creating a solid, 100% completed,
fully-optimized Google My Business page. Your My Business page should
rank for your chosen niche keywords, contain tons of posts, authentic
reviews, contact info, business hours, and link back to your main site.

Additionally, you can accomplish this by creating a YouTube channel for
your page and adding quality informational content. It also helps to
create a Facebook and Instagram business page, linking them both to your
main site domain.

Adwords Campaigns

If you’re trying to rank for a niche keyword and there’s not a lot of
Adwords competition, then it may be helpful to run a few Adwords
campaigns for that specific keyword. If your Adwords campaign dominates
(and links back to your main site) for long enough, you’ll be well on
your way to page one dominance.

Third-Party Reviews

If you can, try to get your site or brand reviewed by reputable
third-party sites. If you can get sites like Glassdoor, Yelp, business
listings, and Reddit to link back to your main domain, then it will
increase the validity of your site.

Rich Results and Schema Markup

Last but not least, we strongly encourage you to look into using schema
HTML tags (freely available to copy/paste at
schema.org). Inserting these HTML
snippets into your pages allows Google to scan them and produce “rich
results.”

For example, visitors will be able to view snippets of product listings,
answers to direct questions, video snippets, and other key information
directly from their Google search results. This makes your site appear
to be an authority site and will increase your CTR, thus increasing your
ranking.

Final Tips and Tricks For SEO

Before we go, we figured we’d leave you with some final SEO tips that
will increase your KPIs and result in a better ROI on your SEO
investment. Take a look!

How To Test Your SEO

So far, we’ve gone over a few key methods you can use to test your SEO
efforts. So here’s a quick recap, so you can figure out the best testing
method for your site.

The most reliable method of testing your SEO is to make use of Google
Analytics and Search Console tools. By embedding analytics codes
throughout your site, you’ll get accurate real-time data that will
display your KPIs. You can use the Search Console to double-check KPIs
and search for ranking-related issues.

Poking, as we discussed in the previous header, is a great way to
experiment with new keywords and determine if they’ll work in the future
or not.

Lastly, you can modify your Adwords or site page’s call-to-action titles
and meta description to see if they produce differing results over time.
Split-testing with different CTAs, meta titles, and meta descriptions
and recording KPIs over a period of a week to a month will indicate what
you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.

Silo Structure For E-Commerce Sites

As we’ve discussed previously, your silo structure is the way that you
organize your site to ensure that the algorithm is able to tell the
hierarchy of each page of your site. In normal sites, this is simple:
you just have enough child pages that point upwards and link
internally to target pages or parent pages.

Since e-comm sites are slightly different and aren’t usually
informational in nature, you’ll need to go about this a different way.
Here are some quick tips to help you improve the silo structure of your
e-commerce site or online retail store:

Make sure individual product pages rank for specific keywords.
Enable the “similar products” feature on your product page that
links to other related products on your site. Double-check to
ensure that they’re static links, so your site appears more
reliable and steady.
Include a navigation aspect to your site.
Make sure all product pages are listed and categorized underneath
the main parent page, such as “Store” or “Shop.”
Reference and make internal links to key products and top-sellers in
your blog posts or other information articles on your site.

Ranktracker’s Tools Can Help

If you’ve made it all of the way through this guide, then you are now
equipped with some excellent knowledge that you can start applying
today to your SEO strategy.

To tell whether or not your SEO strategy is working or not, make sure
that you always keep track of your KPIs through the use of a free SEO
tool like Google Analytics or using Ranktracker’s Web Audit tool.
Always be willing to tweak and adjust your pages, keywords, and content
to ensure that everything performs up to your standards.

Ranktracker’s highly advanced toolkit contains all of the specialized
SEO tools that you need to perform advanced keyword research, analyze
your competitors, audit your site, and track the ranking of individual
pages on your site as they move up or down Google’s SERPs ranking.

Having a site that ranks in the top 5 results of Google is worth its
weight in gold, and our patented tools can help you get there faster
than ever.

The only question is, “Are you ready to rank?”

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