Measuring keyword performance indicators means tracking the words and phrases that bring the most traffic to your site. It helps you determine the keywords to focus on. It can also help you determine if your keyword research strategies and overall SEO efforts are bearing fruits.
With this data, you can optimize your site for the search engines. This article will look at the benefits of keyword performance indicators and the significant metrics you should know.
Benefits of Keyword Performance Analysis
Here are some of the reasons you should consider doing keyword performance analysis:
Optimize Your Budget
If you are running a campaign, not doing a KPI analysis might waste your money as you spend money on keywords that do not convert. However, keyword ranking indicators can help you know which keywords to increase your budget and which to reduce.
Find New Keywords
When you do Keyword performance analysis, you can discover the keywords bringing in the most traffic. You can then change your campaign to focus more on related keywords likely to bring traffic.
Understand Search Intent
While all keywords can bring traffic to your site, not all will lead to conversion. By looking at the key performance indicators of a keyword, you can understand the search intent and increase the chances of the keyword converting.
Improve Your Landing Pages
By understanding the keywords visitors use to find your site, you can optimize your landing page with such keywords to bring more traffic.
Using Google Analytics to Track the Performance of a Keyword
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track the performance of a keyword. By setting up a Google Analytics report and linking it with your Adword account, you can track the performance of your keywords and determine which one brings the most traffic.
To see this data, go to the Campaign tab and click Performance. You will see the performance if you hover over any of your keywords. You can also see the performance of keywords on Google Analytics by clicking on Acquisition> All Traffic>Channel>Organic Search.
Paid Keywords Tracking tools
You can use various keyword-tracking tools to track a keyword’s performance. These include Ahrefs, Semrush, UbersSuggest, and Moz. While these are paid tools, they will show you various data on the performance of your keywords.
Key Performance Indicators in Keywords Research
So, which metrics should you look into when searching for a keyword research tool? Here are some of them:
Keyword Ranking
You should track where your keyword ranks on SERPs. This is a key indicator determining the amount of traffic a keyword drives to your site. Once you see where the keyword is ranking, think of ways to improve its position at the top. You can do that by creating better content that drives traffic to your site.
Impressions
Impressions are when your keywords appear on the search engine result page for the relevant query. The metric can be a good indicator of whether your site is reaching its target audience. If your keyword gets more impressions, you will get a better opportunity to drive traffic to the site.
Keyword Ranking
This is the position or page on which your keywords rank on the search engine result page(SERP). Your keyword ranks are a key performance indicator in SEO because they show the keywords driving traffic to your site and why. When more keywords are ranked on top of the search engines, these are likely to translate into higher traffic. You can tell if your SEO efforts are bearing fruit by measuring KPI.
Conversion Rate
Another keyword performance indicator you should pay attention to is the conversion rate. To measure the metric, consider the ratio of conversions to sessions or visits. The conversions can be in the form of leads, subscriptions, or buying decisions. A high conversion rate can show a high level of persuasiveness in your content. You can increase conversion by:
- Targeting high-intent keywords
- Improving your site experience to reduce bounce rate
- Creating high-quality content
- UIsing call to actions
- Creating clear high-value proposition
Keyword Traffic
You should also look at the number of visits a certain keyword brings to your site in a particular period. This can be an indication of the effectiveness of a keyword in bringing organic traffic to your site.
Some of the measures you can use to enable a keyword to bring traffic include:
- Targeting high search volume keywords
- Focusing on keywords with a low keyword difficulty
- Optimizing page speeds, navigation, and design of your site
Bounce Rate
Also, pay special attention to the bounce rate of your site. A high bounce rate can indicate that your site isn’t answering the search query well. This means many visitors click the back button when they visit your site. You should adjust your keywords or ads if you have a high bounce rate. Ensure that your landing page matches your keywords and ad texts. Therefore, when users click on your site, they will get what they want.
Click-through rate(CTR)
This refers to the number of clicks a keyword gets in relation to impressions. It shows the frequency people click on your page when they see that target keyword. A high click-through rate indicates that you have relevant titles, keywords, and URLs of the search query.
To increase your CTR, use attractive and compelling titles and meta descriptions. Also, ensure that they meet the user search intent. Include your target keyword in titles and meta descriptions.
Geographical Locations
You will want to see if your target keywords are a good choice for your target geographical location. Avoid reaching out too wide. Instead, focus more on your geographical location, as it’s likely to bring better leads and conversions.
Engagement
How a user interacts with your content is the level of engagement. A higher engagement level will show the effectiveness of your content in addressing the search query.
Final Thoughts
While doing keyword research and optimizing your site is good, a good SEO strategy requires more than that. It requires you to measure the performance of your keywords constantly. You can then know which keywords to focus on and which to do away with. By understanding the metrics in this article, you can determine whether a keyword will work for you.
