It's a popular notion that quality is subjective and thus cannot be measured. Well, that's not always applicable.
SEO has gained much significance today more than ever. It has become essential for you to measure your SEO performance, tweak or change what is not working, and keep it up with what is.
But what is SEO analytics? It refers to collecting, monitoring, and analyzing your marketing data to improve your website's organic traffic. You can employ tools like Google Analytics to measure your SEO data.
Following are the crucial metrics to measure your traffic quality:
Engagement Metrics: time on site, pages per session, exit rate
Conversion Metrics: conversion rate, form submission, other target completions
Relevance Metrics: bounce rate, new and returning visitors
1. Engagement Metrics
Time On Site
The time on site measures how much time a user spends on a site; it doesn't matter if the site is being used or not. For example, if a user has many tabs open but does not necessarily use them all simultaneously, Google Analytics still counts the time they were open.
If a visitor exits your site after 30 minutes without clicking on other pages, Google will count that session as a bounce. Knowing this, it's clear that not all users who lands on your website are highly engaged.
The more time a user passes on your site, the better. Thus, your SEO strategy must deliver high-quality content. Moreover, how you structure your site makes it easy or difficult for users to find the content or info they need. If you offer a well-defined structure, users won't just find what they want but also engage with other topics or services on your site.
Therefore, you can ensure that users spend enough time on your time by offering the following:
- Good site architecture
- High-quality content
- Great UX design
- Proper internal linking
- High-quality traffic that shows interest in what you are offering
Ideally, users that spend an average of four minutes and a minimum of two pages per session can be considered to be well-engaged with your content.
Pages Per Session
Pages per session correspond to the average number of pages viewed by a user in one session. It basically indicates to what extent or how deep a user navigated through your site. Thus, it is among the most vital behaviour metrics within Google Analytics.
Typically, the more pages users view, the corresponding interest level is more. Mostly the first page of your site where a user land on is your home page, but your special offerings are on your service or product pages. Having said that, you should target to have a minimum of two pages per session on average.
However, if you don't see the desired results, you will probably need to investigate what isn't working. There might be various reasons. Maybe you are targeting the wrong keywords, or your user is from a different country, and thus they bounce.
Your users might not be moving ahead of your home page, probably because your homepage is too slow when loading, or it isn't correctly linked to consecutive pages, or it can be because the overall architecture of the site is complex and confusing. Make the required modifications, and see what happens. It's often best to make your site as easy to use as possible!
Exit Rate
The exit rate indicates how often a customer leaves your website from a particular page. Unlike the bounce rate, the exit rate shows how often a customer leaves one page and goes to another.
In order to decrease the exit rates, you will have to work on the following elements:
- Website copy
- Site load time
- page design
- Images/videos
- Conversion Metrics
Conversion Rate
To calculate the overall website conversion rate, Google Analytics sums up all the goal completions of your site. However, you should look at each goal exclusively to check how they perform. You will know which goals you are fulfilling and which conversion goals need to be tweaked or modified.
Let's imagine a scenario. Suppose your conversion rate may have dropped while your organic traffic has increased, meaning you are targeting the wrong keywords, resulting in fewer qualified visitors to your site. Here, you need to analyze which keywords to be used and which ones to be replaced.
- Relevance Metrics
Bounce Rate
It corresponds to the percentage of visitors who land on your site and then leave immediately without exploring further.
In the case of a service brand, you may have a high bounce rate, which shows that visitors are not finding the information or content they were seeking on your site and leave.
The Role Of Google Analytics In Enhancing Your Your Website's SEO Traffic Quality And User Engagement
With the help of Google Analytics data, you can strategize how to enhance your SEO traffic quality to optimize your SEO strategy. To realize the actual benefits of using Google Analytics and improve your site's traffic quality, you will have to keep track of engagement, conversion, and relevance metrics. But that won't be sufficient. To achieve sustainable growth, you will have to take part in continuous research, analyzing, and modifying your site.
Measures To Improve Underperforming GA Metrics
A) Measures To Improve Engagement Metrics:
- On-page optimizations through applying the keyword research
- Enhance user experience
- Make design and copy more engaging.
- Develop comprehensive articles
B) Measures To Improve Conversion Metrics
- Remove distracting elements
- Direct-response copywriting
- Optimize call-to-actions
C) Measures To Improve Relevance Metrics
- Review search intent
- Localize your content
- Target the right keywords
Towards The End
To convert mere website visitors into loyal customers, you will have to strive for high-quality content creation and enhance the overall user experience. Read through the blog to understand the top three metrics discussed here. Also, work on measures to improve the underperformance of these GA measures. If you employ Google Analytics in your SEO strategy, you will surely improve the quality of your SEO traffic. Thereby attaining sustainable growth for your business.