When you’re looking for ways to optimize your website and grow your online traffic, one metric that you should consider is your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance score. When a page on your website is audited with the many SEO tools available (more on this below), you will receive an SEO score or performance benchmark that identifies how well the page is optimized for search engines.
The SEO score that you receive is specifically designed to determine how well the technical and interactive aspects of your website are performing in regards to search engine optimization. The final score that you receive is tabulated using the results of four separate performance categories of mobile, technical, user experience, and content.
A “good” score will be anywhere from 85-100. On the other hand, an average score is between 50-85 with a poor score being 0-49. Even though the SEO score that you’re provided with can vary by the audit tool you’re using and should be taken with a grain of salt — there are ways that you can measure the performance of your SEO positioning with this metric.
Some of the other metrics that can help you measure the the performance of your SEO positioning and ranking include clicks, impressions, and click-through rate. The following will provide you with a guide on how to effectively maximize your SEO score for exponential traffic, which you can do by measuring certain metrics. Measuring these benchmarks can help you determine how effective your SEO efforts have been.
Using Google Search Console to Measure Impressions, Clicks, CTR
When you want to improve your site performance on the Google search engine, it’s important to understand how the different aspects of your website are performing. In order to help with this goal, Google offers a variety of tools that website owners can use to measure everything from impressions to clicks on the website. If you decide to use the Google Search Console, you’ll be provided with numerous actionable reports that will detect any website errors while also providing you with data that can be used to improve user engagement and site traffic.
This tool comes with several beneficial features that will allow you to effectively fix any errors on your website while also finding ways to improve the site layout and SEO performance. Among the most popular features of this tool is Search Analytics, which is an aspect of the Google Search Console that analyzes your position on the Google search engine as well as such metrics as impressions and clicks.
The reports that you receive from the Search Analytics tool will allow you to identify which queries are bringing users over to your site. It’s not enough for your website to rank highly with certain keywords. Instead, your website must rank highly on Google with keywords and key phrases that are regularly being entered into the search engine. If no one searches for the keyword that you rank highly with, your website won’t receive an increase in traffic.
The Google Search Console tool will also send you immediate email alerts whenever any issues are identified on your site, which should help you make quick fixes. Once you’ve fixed the affected URLs, Google will make a note of these corrections and update the report. The comprehensive URL inspection tool that’s included with Google Search Console will provide you with serving, crawl, and index information about all of the pages on your website, which allows you to better understand how Google positions your pages on the search engine.
Among the best aspects of this tool is that you can use it for free. All that you need to do to use this tool is to navigate to this page. From here, you can enter your domain, subdomain, or a specific page URL to obtain the information that you seek. Once you’ve entered your domain name or URL, you’ll need to verify that you’re the owner of the website in question, which requires downloading a file and uploading it to your website. After you have completed this step of the process, your website will be officially verified with Google Search Console, which means that you can start to obtain reports of your website performance.
Measuring Impressions
As mentioned previously, the main metrics that are measured by Google Search Analytics include impressions and CTR. By understanding these metrics, you can more effectively determine how well your SEO techniques are performing. An impression refers to how often your advertisement is shown. Whenever an ad of your website is displayed on a standard search result page, the Google Search Console will make a note of this for your report, which means that you can identify how often users are seeing your ads.
Every time that an ad of your website appears on the Google search engine, it is counted as a single impression. Even if only a portion of your ad is displayed on places like Google Maps, an impression will still be made, which means that the measurements you receive of this measurement are highly accurate. This information will be at the very top of the Search Analytics report that you receive. If your ad isn’t being seen, this means that the keyword or phrase that the ad is tied to isn’t being viewed by many users. It’s also a good indicator of the popularity of your website. If the Search Analytics reports that you receive aren’t coming back with high numbers for impressions, this means that your ad isn’t reaching the customers that you need if you want to increase site traffic.
Measuring Click Through Rate (CTR)
The CTR that’s measured with the Google Search Console is among the most important aspects of identifying and maximizing your SEO score. The click-through rate is the percentage of users who view your ad and end up clicking on it. While the impressions numbers that you obtain with this report will help you identify how often your ad is being displayed to prospective customers, this number alone isn’t enough to identify how effective your marketing is.
The CTR percentages that you obtain through the Search Analytics report can help you ascertain how well your ads and keywords are performing, the latter of which gives you the ability to alter your SEO techniques if necessary. If one or more keywords aren’t performing well, you can switch to better-performing keywords instead, which should effectively increase your SEO score. This percentage is determine by the number of clicks and impressions on the Search Analytics report.
If there were 10 clicks and 200 impressions with a specific ad or keyword, your click-through rate would be around five percent. The average CTR with search ads is right around 1.91 percent, which means that a five-percent CTR would be fantastic. Every ad and keyword that you implement will have its own CTR that you can see with your account. If you find that an ad or keyword isn’t performing well, you can make the changes needed to improve your SEO and marketing techniques. If you don’t measure these metrics, you might find it difficult to otherwise gauge how your site is performing with the Google search engine.
Using Google Lighthouse to Improve SEO & “Indexability” of Web Pages
When you want to improve your SEO and the “indexability” of your web pages, a great tool to use is Google Lighthouse, which is an effective way to audit your website. This is an automated Google tool that’s designed to help site owners improve the overall performance of their website. You can run this tool against any page on your website. When you do, you’ll receive extensive performance audits that you can then use to improve your SEO performance and the quality of your website. Once the site audit is performed, you’ll be provided with an SEO score of 0-100. As touched upon previously, a good score of 90-100 is what you should aim for. If your score is below this level, it’s recommended that you focus on making improvements to your website.
Once you receive an SEO score, you can use the information from the performance and accessibility sections of the report to make improvements to your SEO and the quality of your website. Once you make these changes, you should receive a higher score, which indicates that your SEO is performing like it’s supposed to. This tool is beneficial because it allows you to quickly identify your SEO performance so that you can make quick changes.
When you start to use this tool, you can do so via four separate workflow options, which include Chrome DevTools, as a node module, from a standard web UI, and from the command line in Google Chrome. The easiest way to use Google Lighthouse is by downloading and installing the Google Lighthouse extension into your Google Chrome browser.
Using SEMRush or Ahrefs to Grow Your Search Traffic
If you want to improve your SEO performance to grow your search traffic, you should heavily consider using either SEMRush or Ahrefs. Both of these tools provide keyword ranking reports and similar features that will help you bolster your current SEO performance. With SEMRush, the features are practically endless and include comprehensive analytics reports, tools, and projects that you can use for your SEO efforts.
For instance, the types of information that are analyzed by SEMRush include:
- Backlink performance
- Display ad performance
- Customer behavior
- Keyword positions
You can also monitor the marketing strategies and activities of your direct competition. Their site audit tool can identify any SEO issues and tell you how to fix these problems.
As for Ahrefs, their services are nearly as extensive as the ones available through SEMRush. The primary tools that they provide include a:
- Backlink checker
- SEO analyzer
- Website-authority checker
- Keyword-rank checker
- Keyword-difficulty tool
When you have access to these tools and features, you can measure every aspect of your SEO performance, which will help you identify any issues and make the necessary changes that will improve your SEO performance with search engines like Google.
Improving Your “SEO Score” to Increase Traffic
Even though you shouldn’t depend entirely on your SEO score to dictate what kinds of changes you make to your SEO and marketing techniques, this score is a good barometer for how effective your optimization has been. It’s essential to understand the factors of your website that contribute to site traffic if you want to actually increase these numbers. If some of your ads and keywords aren’t performing well on Google, this means that you won’t be receiving the kind of traffic that you need for your online website to be as successful as it can.
By measuring metrics like clicks, impressions, and click-through rates, you can react quickly to the data you receive, which should help your site perform better on search engines like Google. Without this information, it’s very difficult to know how well or otherwise your site is performing, which can lead to a worse ranking and a drop in site traffic.
When you receive your regular Search Analytics reports, the information you obtain from the website rankings, clicks, impressions, and CTR metrics can give you what you need to change or improve your SEO strategy. If an ad or keyword has hardly any clicks or impressions, this means that the ad/keyword isn’t effective.
If you need assistance in understanding the reports you receive from Google Search Console or want to bolster your SEO efforts for a better ranking and increased site traffic, contact Bryt Designs to get started.
