News and Insights
7 SEO and marketing KPIs you should include in your business strategy
October 6, 2021
Any business that you run online should stick to a certain marketing strategy. This strategy aims to build awareness around your brand, promote your product or service, and help you make more sales.
However, if you want to see if your digital marketing strategy works, you must track specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
We have outlined the are the most important SEO and marketing KPIs any business owner should take into account.
SERP visibility and share of voice (SOV)
You might wonder why two different KPIs are combined in a single section. The thing is that SEO-related KPIs linked to SERP visibility are related to a marketing KPI called share of voice (SOV).
So, what is the similarity between these two KPIs?
SOV measures your advertising share compared to your competitors. But the practice shows that the brands compete with each other to be more visible across organic channels. In other words, SOV measures how your brand is visible in the market online.
Hence, the higher SOV of your brand, the more visible it is. And if the online visibility is estimated via the number of organic traffic your website drives, the SERP visibility is a KPI that is worth your attention for sure.
How to measure these KPIs?
One of the easiest ways to measure SERP visibility is to compare your website’s traffic with the competitors. For this, you can use the Batch Analysis tool from Ahrefs. Just copy/paste the domains in question and review the traffic column.
You should take into account that these numbers are not a hundred per cent correct. They include traffic that these domains get from branded keywords. To put it simply, your website won’t rank for the branded keywords of your competitors. As a result, the website won’t get the traffic from these keywords as well.
To get more correct results for SERP visibility KPI, you should rely on the Rank Tracker tool. Analyze those keywords that would be related to what a target audience searches on Google. Draw your attention to the “Visibility” column available in the “Competitors overview” report.
Track this KPI and know the current SERP visibility situation of your competitors.
Organic conversions
The next important KPI for SEO is organic conversions. In fact, this is the only SEO KPI that almost every business owner tends to measure.
You might wonder why this KPI is on the list if it is measured by default? When you measure organic conversions, you should bear in mind three fundamental aspects:
Set up conversion goals carefully
Assume that you are an owner of an eCommerce website that sells different goods. However, you set up a conversion goal that tracks those visitors who go through the checkout but don’t buy products that you sell. It makes no sense in terms of business value. The best KPI would be the average order value in this case.
Set up your analytics software
It is a good idea to make whatever marketing decision you want based on the analytics. But if the analytics software isn’t set up correctly, your decision might fail.
Analyse the data painstakingly
Even though your analytics software is set up perfectly, you can’t rely on the data completely. The conversion may vary from period to period. Thus, you should run a comparative analysis of the periods from time to time. It will help you estimate the real situation with your organic conversions.
Assisted Conversions
First and foremost, this SEO KPI works as a supportive metric. The main goal of assisted conversions is to help deal with flawed attribution.
What does it mean?
The “last non-direct click” attribution model in Google Analytics doesn’t work perfectly. All the credits of attribution go to one channel.
How is it reflected practically?
You can consider traffic as a source of leads. The more traffic your website drives, the more potential customers you’ll get. What’s more important, the site gets traffic at every stage of the marketing funnel. Say you published 50 blog posts on your blog – each page will drive traffic. Some of the users get converted after reading your content. But the rest – after clicking a retargeting or search ad.
If that happens, you will need to figure out this initial organic search contribution.
You can do this by visiting the conversions’ report. Click the “Multi-Channel Funnels” and pay attention to the “Assisted Conversions” option. Then choose the main type of conversion you want to track and the number of days prior to conversion.
The final stage of the process is to overview how each channel contributes to conversions. And analyse the periods.
Brand awareness metric
The first stage of the marketing funnel is called “awareness.” This stage has a direct correlation with the awareness of your brand. While brand awareness indicates how your brand is popular within the niche. This marketing KPI is quite important to track.
What do you need to know about awareness KPI?
Before tracking this KPI, you should know what the percentage of the market knows about your brand. Secondly, make sure that your marketing communication creates the correct associations with the brand.
For example, your company creates tools that help make content more visually appealing. The most prominent tool that you’ve created is your presentation software. When your awareness is on the highest level, the first brand they recollect in their mind is your one.
It is just like when we think about smartphones. What is the brand we’re thinking about right off the bat? Right, it is an iPhone.
To measure awareness KPI you need to run market research. It is a pretty challenging task. Hence, it is worth delegating this KPI to a market research agency.
Set sales KPIs for your business
Setting sales goals will help you reflect on the actual growth of your business online. Sales KPIs all depend on what type of business you have. For instance, if your business is about SaaS products, you should rely on tracking such KPIs as monthly recurring metric(MRR) and annual recurring metric (ARR).
It won’t be difficult to measure these KPIs as you know their value. However, if you have some doubts about it, you should use some financial system (CRM as an example) and track these numbers.
Leads quality and quantity
This KPI is for those businesses who are curious about how their marketing communications channel works. If you track the quality and quantity of your potential customers, you will always be able to control the sales growth.
If you use a CRM, it won’t be difficult to track the number of leads you get. But when it comes to the quality of leads, you will need to use a lead scoring system.
The lead scoring system is based on the data your potential customers can provide you with. It is up to you what triggers will give you a clear vision of the lead quality. However, there are a few points you should include in your lead scoring system:
- User behavior on the site
- The communication between users and your support team
- The history of using the trial
- Some specific data that are taken from the process of user registration
To get a better result from tracking and analyzing this marketing KPI you should consult an analytics expert.
Customer lifetime value KPI
This KPI stands for estimating how much money a customer is ready to spend purchasing your product. If the CLV metric is high, you will be able to spend more resources to acquire new potential customers. Plus, it has a positive impact on your overall financial growth.
To calculate CLV and track this KPI, you will need to use this formula:
Avg. Order Value x Avg. Annual Purchase Frequency x Avg. Customer Lifespan
Now, let’s see how you can do this practically.
Assume that your AOV is $200. Your customers buy the product each month (12 months per year). Moreover, the customers show their loyalty to your brand for 2 years.
CLV=200*12*2=$4,800
This KPI is worth tracking if you have a few years of sales history. Otherwise, the results won’t have any value.
Conclusion
Marketing and SEO KPIs suggested in this post are fundamental metrics you should take into consideration. By tracking these KPIs you will be able to clap your eyes on the progress of your business online.
However, there are other KPIs you must never forget about – return on investment, customer acquisition cost as a part of marketing. domain rating, organic traffic, keywords positions for SEO. For further guidance with SEO, contact us and we can chat about how we can support you.