How to use Analytics to check whether your SEO efforts are working

Posted by Chris on 5th December 2017 (about a 2 minute read).

SEO can produce a maze of metrics, rankings, and results. Which ones matter? Which ones don’t?

Let's keep things simple...

Here are two groups of metrics that you can easily pull from your analytics or Google Search Console for a simple performance measure. Pull out these numbers once each month. The first time you might find the results surprising, and they will almost certainly inspire you in new directions for your SEO efforts (that are more constructive than keyword rankings).

Organic Search (Branded) permalink

How many people are searching for your brand name, and then coming to your website? You might also choose to include searches for senior management names if significant.

What are the search terms?
What is the click-through-rate?
What else do the visitors do on your website?

Organic Search (Unbranded) permalink

How many people are searching for generic terms related to your product or industry, and then coming to your website?

What are they searching for?
How many search impressions?
What is your click-through-rate?
What else do these visitors do on your site?

That’s it! permalink

Sounds simple and it is. These numbers will be far more useful than many of the ranking charts and other vanity metrics that we all get excited about.