A good SEO strategy is a worthwhile investment. However, most investments if not properly implemented and monitored can prove to be risky. This is why you should consider regularly measuring the performance of your SEO campaign. We will take you through several SEO metrics for small businesses that you should keep tabs on.
Organic traffic
SEO is all about organic traffic hence the inclusion of organic traffic in the the list of essential SEO metrics. Measuring your organic traffic helps you understand the direct impact of your SEO strategies. This metric helps you get a clear view of the visitors your website gets specifically from organic traffic.
The information you get from tracking your organic traffic can help you determine the visibility of your keywords. If your keywords are highly visible, you’ll have increased organic traffic. Having less traffic could mean that your keywords are less visible. In this case, you can redirect your focus to using more relevant keywords that can attract more traffic.
You can re-assess the search intent of your target audience to improve your HVAC SEO. You could use Google’s Keyword Planner to help you come up with keywords that target your customers’ pain points. For instance, you can focus on long-tail keywords to attract users with more specific intent.
Not only do you need to focus on long-tail keywords but also ensure other factors of your SEO strategy are in line. For example, you can also focus on optimizing your on-page elements since around 50% of all SEO factors that contribute to the ranking of long-tail keywords rely on on-page optimization.
The data you get from tracking your organic search can help you make important decisions regarding your SEO strategies. To monitor your organic search, you can use tools like Google Analytics.
This tool helps you submit reports that are analyzed periodically. The tool shows you how your organic traffic changes over time. This way, you can determine whether to put in more effort or maintain your SEO strategy.
High-quality organic traffic leads to high conversion rates, which helps you to get a good ROI.
Click through rates (CTR)
Click-through rate is another of the important SEO metrics for small businesses that can help you determine whether your strategy is working. Your click-through rate data represents the number of people who click on your web pages after seeing them on the google result pages.
Tracking your click-through rates is important since it shows the effectiveness of your web pages at grabbing your searchers’ attention, on the result pages. The click-through rate metrics can also help you to determine the quality of your titles and meta descriptions.
High-quality meta descriptions and title tags can convince users to click on your web pages. A low CTR indicates that you need to review your title tags and meta description. Your title tag should communicate to your user that you have useful information that can solve their HVAC problems. Your meta description should give them a brief preview of useful information that perks their interest to read more by clicking on your page.
The data you get from the click-through rate metric can also help you to determine where your web page ranks on the result pages. More click rates mean that your web pages rank high and are more visible.
Most users probably don’t go beyond the first page of search results. This means that you should re-direct your SEO efforts to improve your ranking.
You can use Google Analytics to calculate your click-through rates. From the results, you can improve your SEO strategy to increase your CTR. You can focus on improving your website content to attract relevant traffic and help your page rank higher on search results.
You can also outsource quality HVAC SEO services that will help you devise a better strategy to increase your click-through rates.
Impressions
Before visitors and traffic, you need impressions. Adding impressions in your list of SEO metrics can provide your business a great deal of information. Impressions are the number of times your HVAC website appears on the search results page without necessarily attracting engagement. Tracking the number of impressions can help you track the performance of your SEO campaign.
An increased number of impressions could indicate that your website is ranking well on search results which means that your strategy might be working. It could mean that your keywords are ranking highly for relevant searches. A decrease in the number of impressions, however, could spell trouble. In this case, you might need to re-evaluate your SEO strategy and make improvements.
Google Console has a Performance Module in which you can monitor your impressions. However, impressions are not one of the SEO ranking factors. They just help you to track the performance of your website.
Organic conversion rates
If organic conversion is not added into the list of SEO metrics to track, you are failing. Tracking your organic conversion rates helps you to know the number of users who converted into actual paying customers for your products or services. Tracking allows you to note when the conversion rate is low or high
This SEO metric also helps you discover opportunities for improvement that can help you increase the conversion rates.
For instance, if your website is experiencing high traffic and low conversion rates, there could be something that is not right. It could be that your website content needs polishing. You can try to check on your landing page or the design. Your landing page might contain thin content that doesn’t prompt the user to take action.
What is the quality of your blog content? Your content should be of high quality and provide useful and engaging information to your visitors. The content should convince them that you can solve a particular HVAC problem they are experiencing. This way you might get a higher conversion rate. You can read more about interesting blogging ideas for your HVAC website.
You can set targets or goals that can help you measure conversion rates. You can use Google Analytics to set your conversion goals. For instance, you could set goals on particular aspects like:
- Number of leads
- Number of sales
- Number of email signups
Tracking your organic conversion rates allows you to make important changes and progress, helping you to achieve your goals.
Page speed
Your page speed is how fast the content on each page on your website loads. Your page speed is important because any delay means one potential customer lost to your competitor.
When a webpage takes more than 3 seconds to load the probability of a bounce rate increases to around 32%. Therefore, page speed is one of the most crucial SEO metrics for small businesses you should focus on.
Your page speed determines user experience. When your web page loads fast, it results in a positive user experience. If your website loads slowly, a user becomes impatient and looks for information elsewhere. This visitor once gone, is unlikely to visit your website again.
Tracking your page speed can help you to discover if changes on your website affect the loading speed. You can easily monitor this metric using the page speed insight tool. This tool also suggests steps you can take to improve your page speed.
You can also use Core Web Vitals which are metrics from Google that help you measure user experience in regards to:
- Page speed
- Mobile- friendliness
Tracking your website’s speed can help you to understand how your website works in relation to user experience. If your page speed is low, you can call in an expert to restructure your website to improve user experience.
While at it, they can also check whether your website is mobile-friendly since a significant amount of users use their mobile phones to search for information.
Monitoring your page speed can also help you identify and rectify any issues affecting your page speed before you lose too many potential leads and customers. Tracking your page speed can also help you make more improvements which can generate more reliable traffic and increase conversion rates.
Keywords ranking
One of the most obsessed SEO metrics is keyword ranking. Tracking your keywords is important since they are one of the factors that contribute to the success of your HVAC SEO strategy. You can try to measure the performance of your keywords by typing them on Google. If your website appears, chances are your keywords are performing great.
If your website fails to rank for those keywords, you might need to devise a better keyword strategy. You can alternatively use a tool like Google Rank Checker which shows you what position your keywords rank at. When tracking your keywords, a sudden drop in ranking might indicate a problem.
This SEO metric for small businesses helps you to evaluate the progress of your SEO strategies. If your keywords are ranking high, it shows the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.
In case your website doesn’t rank for specific keywords, you might need to re-evaluate your strategy. For instance, you could select less competitive keywords that still nail the search intent of your target audience. Google’s Keyword Planner can help you come up with relevant keywords for your website.
Tracking your keywords also helps you determine whether you can gain a competitive edge over your competitors. You could discover opportunities and use them to increase your content visibility, leading to conversions.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the number of website visitors that leave your website after viewing just one page. These website visitors often exit without taking any action. A high bounce rate might indicate a problem on your website or some of your web pages.
If your page takes too long to load, you might experience higher bounce rates due to a negative user experience. To counter this, you can hire an expert to improve your website’s page speed.
Another factor that might contribute to high bounce rates is the quality of your content. A user might be looking for in-depth information while your site has thin content that is not helpful to them. In this case, you might need to refocus on generating high-quality blog posts for your users.
You can also invest in redesigning your website since a poorly designed website can create a negative user experience that drives website visitors away.
You can try to improve the navigation and incorporate more eye-catching themes and photos that capture your reader’s attention. Incorporating some YouTube videos might also help convert those bounce rates into higher conversion rates.
You can use Google Analytics to monitor and measure your bounce rate. When your bounce rate is low, it shows that your SEO strategy is effective. If your bounce rate is high, you can make improvements to reduce the bounce rates and increase engagement.
Mobile ranking
More than 40% of mobile users use their devices to complete the entire purchase process from research to making a purchase. Mobile ranking is one of the SEO small business metrics that you should focus on to increase sales and grow your HVAC business.
Google is using mobile-friendliness as a factor to rank websites. In this case, you should imprve your site to be on the safe side. When your website is only optimized for desktop users, Google might de-rank your site. You can use Google Console or Core Web Vitals to determine whether your website is optimized for mobile devices.
These mobile tracking metrics show you how your content performs on mobile devices, including tablets and phones. You can get data specific to each device. If your website performs poorly, you might need to take some steps to improve user experience and optimize your site for mobile phones.
Most of your target customers might be using mobile phones. You can get an expert to improve the structure of your website to suit mobile devices. Try to focus on keywords that most mobile users might key in on search engines.
You can even go a step further and optimize your website for voice search since most mobile users prefer to use voice search to find information. Most voice searches are very specific and you might need to focus on more concrete and specific keywords to acquire the relevant traffic.
Try to use Accelerated Mobile Pages to make your website responsive on mobile devices. A site that loads quickly is likely to create a positive user experience and even possibly generate viable leads.
Crawler errors as one of the SEO metrics
Crawl errors happen when a search engine can’t access a page on your website. Crawlability is an important ranking factor. This is because if Google can’t effectively crawl your page and understand its content, then it would be unable to properly rank your website.
Tracking crawlability errors can help you discover blocked, unmarked, or deleted pages. Monitoring crawlability can also help you detect broken links or duplicated pages.
If, after evaluating the crawling data, you realize that there are multiple errors, you should consider identifying the issues and rectifying them. Crawlability issues can result in reduced organic traffic because your pages are not ranked on the result pages.
Monitoring the crawlers’ errors can help you avoid them by ensuring that pages on your website are tagged and properly labeled. You can use Google search console to track crawlability. You should also focus on fixing broken links. You might also find out that you blocked Google from accessing your pages accidentally.
A poor link-building structure can also block Google from crawling your website. You can work on a reliable link-building strategy that enables search engines to crawl your pages with ease.
Duplicated content can also hinder search engines from crawling your website which would result in a lower ranking. You can hire an expert content writer to create fresh and high-quality content that improves the crawlability of your web pages.
Number of indexed pages
Indexability is where search engines analyze your website content and adds your site to its index for ranking. Tracking the number of web pages indexed by Google is an important SEO metric for small businesses that you should consider. This is because when Google fails to index your web pages, you can’t rank highly on search results.
Tools like Google Search Console can help you discover whether all your web pages are indexed. If they are properly indexed, your SEO strategy could be working. However, if your relevant pages are not indexed, you can make some improvements.
You can consider hiring a professional HVAC SEO expert to help you uncover the issues and address them to improve your site’s ranking. Your SEO service provider can perform a content audit to get rid of issues such as:
- Thin content
- Duplicate content
- Invalid redirects
- HTTP errors
Backlinks and new referring domains
A backlink is a link from another website that directs users to your website. Backlinks are crucial SEO metrics for small businesses that you should keep up with. High-quality backlinks can help you improve your domain authority which could in turn increase website traffic.
You can use Google Search Console to track and monitor your backlinks. Try to focus more on the new domains that link back to your site. This is because these domains are more likely to increase your site’s authority than the high authority sites that have already been linking back to your site.
Try to source new links by reaching out to new websites. You can request to guest post on their website to earn new backlinks from their site. You can also invest in high-quality content that can attract natural backlinks from new domains.
Fresh blog content with valuable, interesting, and engaging information could be the key to acquiring backlinks. You can always kill two birds with one stone since valuable content will do so much more than just acquire backlinks. Quality content can help your website rank higher on search engines and increase sales.
How about high-quality infographics? Adding informational graphics to your content can attract high-quality backlinks from other domains which help you establish thought leadership in the HVAC industry. Once readers trust your information, they are most likely to return or even make a purchase.
Domain authority
Domain authority is a score that measures the success of your website’s performance on search engine results. Tracking your domain authority helps you find out how well your site is ranked by search engines.
You can use Website Authority Checker to check your website’s level of authority. Google uses a ranking factor that ranges between 1 to 100. The higher your website scores, the higher the level of authority goes. The level of your website’s authority mostly depends on your link-building strategy.
If your website has a high score, it indicates that you have a good link-building strategy that can help your target audience perceive your site as authoritative and trustworthy. On the other hand, if your website has a low score, you might need to review your link-building strategy.
You can try to get quality links from authoritative sites that point back to your web pages. You can also add internal links to your web pages to help Google crawl and index your web pages effectively. An effective link building strategy can improve your domain authority and help you acquire leads, customers, and make more sales.
Text readability
The readability of your content is a key SEO metric for small businesses that you should consider monitoring. This is because your content should mainly focus on user experience. Your users want to acquire value from your content. To get this, your content has to be crafted in an easy-to-understand manner that flows logically and engages your reader.
The Flesch Kincaid tool can help you check the readability of your content. If your content scores highly, your content is easy to read and understand. However, if you get a low score, you should invest in a better content strategy.
You can get an expert article writer who writes short, clear, and concise sentences that are easy to understand. Long sentences might take the meaning out of your content. Your reader might get a completely different message than the one you intended to pass.
Your writer should use simple language that doesn’t confuse your readers. Technical jargon might make your readers look for simpler information elsewhere.
Tracking your SEO metrics for small businesses can go a long way in ensuring you maintain a competitive edge. Monitoring your metrics helps you identify where your SEO strategy is coming in short. Once you identify the problem, you could make improvements that further contribute to your business’s success. In case you require to track and monitor the success rate of your SEO campaign, get in touch with us today.