SEO Tracking: The Complete Beginner’s Guide
Do you want to track SEO performance but aren’t sure how to get started?
Tracking SEO data is a fantastic way to measure website performance over time.
It involves tracking key metrics for search engine optimization (SEO) by performing audits on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis.
In this post, we cover what SEO tracking is and which metrics we recommend tracking.
What is SEO tracking?
SEO tracking is the practice of revealing key performance indicators (KPIs) for your domain and recording the results over time.
You can do this manually or by exporting SEO reports from an SEO tracking tool.
Most changes to your traffic will come from changes Google makes to the algorithm and new backlinks you acquire, but you should still track key metrics on a monthly basis so you can see your SEO progress over time.
Critical SEO metrics to track your success
We recommend tracking the following SEO metrics:
- Organic traffic
- Keyword rankings
- Impressions
- Click-through rate
- Conversions
- Backlinks
- Domain authority
- Competitor metrics
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is traffic that comes directly from search engines like Google and Bing.
Organic search traffic is the cornerstone of SEO. Most SEO strategies are designed to bring you more traffic from search engines.
This is because organic traffic is free and only requires you to do what you already do: write blog posts.
Other marketing strategies require you to pay money for ads or create additional content for social media platforms.
With organic traffic, you know that every user represented in the figure your tracking tool presents used a search term related to your niche.
This makes this type of traffic valuable as it gives you better access to your target audience since users have to actively search for these terms and can’t just stumble upon them.
How to track organic traffic
Use an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, Clicky, Matomo or Bing Webmaster Tools.
These tools allow you to track a variety of different SEO metrics, traffic sources included.
In Google Analytics, open the Acquisition section under Life Cycle.
Then, click on the Traffic Acquisition section. This reveals your traffic from a variety of different sources, including organic search.
Metrics in Google Analytics aren’t as straightforward as you might expect, but here are the metrics to pay attention to:
- Sessions – The number of times users visited your website. Each time a user visits your website in a browser, Google Analytics counts it as a session.
- Engaged sessions – This is when a user spends 10 or more seconds on your site, views two or more pages, or triggers a conversion event.
You can also track users by clicking on the User Acquisition section.
Look at your data from the last 12 months or however long you’ve been publishing blog posts, whichever is greater.
Then, track this metric regularly every month.
You can export this data in a report.
Keyword rankings
Targeting relevant keywords is another cornerstone of SEO.
Ever since the helpful content update (HCU) that hit the Google algorithm in September 2023, Google has been ranking sites differently based on search intent.
Commercial intent keywords are now returning more results from user-generated content (UGC) sources like Reddit, authoritative sites and ecommerce sites.
Some commercial intent keywords are even returning more product-based results than articles.
Don’t give up on commercial intent keywords by any means, but always be sure to focus more on informative keywords.
These are big changes Google is making to its algorithm, making keyword tracking more relevant than ever.
How to track keyword rankings
Tracking keyword ranking is something almost every keyword research tool offers.
So, all you have to do is choose your favorite keyword tool, then input your domain and the keywords you want to track into it.
Most tools even allow you to export data so you don’t have to track this data manually.
SE Ranking is a great tool for this purpose. It’s affordable and easy to use.
Other SEO tools that are great for this purpose are Morningscore, Mangools, Semrush, Ahrefs, SEOptimer and SEO PowerSuite.
Impressions
Impressions represent users who viewed a search engine results page (SERP) that included your link.
Basically, each impression represents a user who had the opportunity to click on a link to your website from a search engine.
You can increase your impressions by increasing your rankings as well as improving your domain authority, which will allow you to rank for keywords that have higher potentials for search volume.
While this metric is good to know, it’s not useful on its own. So, let’s continue.
Click-through rate
Your click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks you received versus the number of impressions you had. It’s represented by a percentage.
This metric goes hand in hand with impressions. It represents the number of clicks you received based on the total number of impressions in which users had the opportunity to click on your website.
As such, the higher this metric is, the better.
While a lower number of impressions indicates a need to increase your rankings overall, a low CTR may indicate a need to improve your SEO titles and descriptions.
Even so, most clicks will go to the one of the top three results on SERPs, so increasing your ranking on the first page can also increase your CTR.
How to track click-through rate
Google Search Console is the best option for tracking impressions, clicks and click-through rate.
This tool is owned by Google, so it has the most accurate data when it comes to tracking your organic click-through rate.
Open your site in Google Search Console, then click on Search Results from the Performance section.
You’ll see four pieces of data here: total clicks, total impressions, average click-through rate and average position.
Change the range to the last 12 months or however long you’ve been publishing content for, whichever is greater.
Then, track this metric on a monthly basis thereafter.
You can export data from Google Search Console to make creating reports easier.
Conversions
Conversions are the number of completed actions users took versus the number of users who had the opportunity to take action. It’s presented as a percentage in a metric known as “conversion rate.”
Conversions are mostly known in the ecommerce world in which your conversion rate represents the percentage of customers who completed orders versus the total number of website visitors you had.
With SEO tracking, you can track conversions for any type of campaign so long as that campaign has an end page.
For example, conversion tracking for list building usually involves a Thank You page in which you thank your new subscriber for joining your email list.
You can track conversions for this type of campaign by recording the number of visits you had to your Thank You page versus the number of visits you had to the page that hosts the email opt-in form for the campaign.
Conversion tracking won’t allow you to measure SEO success for SERPs, but it will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.
How to track conversions
You can set up goal tracking in Google Analytics to track conversions.
The tool even has its own parameters for tracking conversions. They’re known as “key events,” and they’re recorded for direct visits, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, organic social traffic and more.
You can even use Google Tag Manager (GTM) in Google Analytics to track conversions.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links that point to your website but are inserted on other websites.
If the link is set to “dofollow,” which instructs search engine bots to follow the link and crawl the web page it leads to, it’ll count as a backlink.
If it’s set to “nofollow,” search engine bots will ignore it, so it won’t count as a backlink.
Backlinks are important for SEO because they allow you to establish authority. When an authoritative website links to your website, it sends a signal to Google that your website is to be trusted and seen as an authority as well.
This is why quality trumps quantity when it comes to backlinks.
You don’t necessarily want more backlinks in general. You want more backlinks from authoritative websites.
How to track backlinks
Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs are seen as the most trusted sources for viewing backlinks from your website and competitive websites. They even have limited tools that allow you to check backlinks for free.
However, any tool that offers a competitor analysis tool should have a backlink checker.
Two that tend to fly under the radar are SE Ranking and SEO PowerSuite. Both have huge backlink databases and pricing that is more affordable than other tools.
Domain authority
Each SEO tool has their own metric for tracking the authority of a domain. This is usually a score from 0 to 100 that represents how authoritative your website is.
It’s hard to track because it’s not a real metric. Each SEO tool calls it something different, and each one has their own process for measuring it.
For example, Moz has Domain Authority (DA), Ahrefs has Domain Rating (DR), and SE Ranking has Domain Trust (DT).
At a basic level, these metrics are measured by viewing the number of backlinks a domain has, the quality of a domain’s backlinks and the number of keywords a domain ranks for.
Each tool’s calculations are a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of how DA is measured.
How to track domain authority
Because each tool’s calculations for this metric are different, you’re best off recording this metric from whatever tool you use for competitive research, and sticking with it.
This will make tracking this metric much easier.
SE Ranking, Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush are great tools for tracking authority, but any tool that offers competitive analysis will usually have a version of this metric.
Conclusion
Tracking SEO performance is vital for any website owner.
It will allow you to pick up on tactics that aren’t working, or maybe some key areas you need improvement on.
Keeping tabs on key metrics such as traffic, conversions and backlinks will enable you to assess how your domain is fairing within search engines.
If you want to learn more about key SEO metrics, check out these posts: