However, to ensure that your SEO investment is paying off, it’s crucial to track the right metrics. Monitoring the performance of outsourced SEO efforts allows you to measure progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. In this article, we'll cover the key metrics you should track when outsourcing SEO services.
Organic Traffic
One important metric when outsourcing SEO is organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to the visitors who find your website through unpaid search engine results, such as Google. The primary goal of SEO is to bring more potential visitors to your website from search engines.
Analyze organic traffic by using tools such as Google Analytics to understand the number of visitors coming from organic search through your website. Monitor the trends over time and compare this organic traffic with your base-line before outsourcing the services of a third-party SEO company. A steady increase in organic traffic suggests that the strategy of an SEO firm is working fine.
Conversion Rate
SEO isn't just about driving traffic to your site; it’s also about converting that traffic into customers or leads. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.
To track conversion rates, use Google Analytics or another conversion tracking tool to set goals and measure performance. Suppose your outsourced SEO efforts are bringing in traffic but not converting well. In that case, it may indicate that your landing pages or website design needs improvement or that your SEO strategy isn’t aligned with user intent.
Page Load Speed
Page load speed is an important ranking factor in SEO and directly impacts user experience. Slow loading times can increase bounce rates and negatively affect rankings. When outsourcing SEO services, it’s essential to track your website’s page speed and ensure that your SEO provider is optimizing it as part of their strategy.
Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix to monitor your page load speed. If your site is taking too long to load, your outsourced SEO team may need to implement technical optimizations like image compression, caching, or reducing server response times.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage of users who click on your website after seeing it in the search results. A higher CTR indicates that your title tags, meta descriptions, and content are compelling and relevant to users' search queries.
You can track CTR through Google Search Console. If you notice low CTR for certain keywords or pages, consider working with your SEO provider to improve your meta titles, descriptions, and overall content relevance. Optimizing these elements can significantly increase your CTR and drive more organic traffic to your site.
Conclusion
Outsourcing SEO services is bound to improve the performance and visibility of your website, but it's very crucial to track the right metrics for success. Focus on organic traffic, keyword rankings, conversion rate, bounce rate, backlinks, page load speed, CTR, local search visibility, competitor analysis, and ROI for the assurance that your SEO efforts are performing appropriately. Regular monitoring of these metrics will help you stay on top of your SEO performance, make the best data-driven decisions, and optimize your strategy for long-term success.
