As providers of search engine optimisation (SEO) services that work, at the Pressroom we rely on metrics to constantly monitor the SEO health of the pages and sites we build. Providing the ability to respond to performance issues immediately, having a strong monitoring process in place can highlight strength areas and points where improvements are needed.

There are a host of metrics to help maintain your SEO fitness and start resolving issues and strengthening strategy.

Changes to organic traffic

The constant quest for organic traffic is where SEO has its roots and trunk, and spurts in growth are welcome to branch out. However, what about when that traffic just ups and leaves?

To ensure traffic changes can be adequately watched over, it is best to set up an alert for when traffic changes rise or fall 5% or more above the norm. When this happens, the traffic data should be split over mobile and desktop platforms, the rest of the site’s traffic figures collated, and all should be analysed.

Response rates to all channel marketing efforts should be analysed too. This process, along with other metric tools, will give a strong foundation to determine what action to take.

Changes to direct traffic

Direct traffic is underrated by many, resulting in a huge missed opportunity. With direct visitors likely to have first come by way of a search query though, and increasing levels of traffic date encryption, monitoring this can be insightful.

An alert process is needed here too, with the first action point to be checking direct visits against organic visits and comparing platform data. An increase in mobile traffic will likely lead to a decrease in desktop traffic, for example.

These are the first metrics to put in place for any site, and naturally are suitable for all websites. As things move on, monitoring other traffic changes from referrals, campaigns and direct marketing will be the natural progression.

Steven Morris