If for some, SEO is a mystery, it is science. And what does a scientist deal with? With data. He analyzes them, understands what is happening, and then creates hypotheses and accompanies results. In SEO, when the job is done right, that’s exactly how it happens.
To support a scientific SEO approach, we have brought together the top 22 SEO metrics to aid in analyzing and measuring results.
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1. Choose Keyword
Keyword-level metrics are those that refer exclusively to a particular search term.
Search Volume
Search Volume is the number of searches performed for a particular keyword in a given period.
In some tools, such as Google Keyword Planner and KeywordTool.io, this data is updated monthly, while in others – such as SEMRush – this data considers a monthly average for an unspecified period.
Search Trend
The Search Trend, somewhat similar to the search volume, is a Google Trends metric that does not contain absolute but relative data, where 100 is the maximum and 0 is the minimum for that exact term. This ruler (0-100) will hold regardless of the query.
Note also that in the search trend, Google may not be restricted to a single term but, at its discretion, group similar terms. Google is not very clear about that.
Keyword Position
Keyword position is the order in which a page is displayed on the search results page, which generally has ten results.
Keyword Difficulty
The Keyword Difficulty, also known as KD, published by tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush, is an absolute metric that goes from 0 to 100 and points out the competitiveness of that keyword in the organic search about all the keywords in the market.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
CTR (Click Through Rate) is the click rate that a page receives. In other words, it’s the ratio of impressions to clicks on a page in search results.
2. Landing page or page level
Metrics at the landing page or page level refer to a specific URL.
Keywords Positioning
Keywords Positioning, or “Also Rank for,” is a metric that indicates which other keywords are given vital positions themselves.
Organic Visibility of Landing Page
Organic Visibility is a metric that estimates the number of visits a page has based on the keywords positioning, in the respective positions, and the estimated CTR.
This metric generally has no seasonal impact, especially on SEMRush. It helps compare a particular site to its competitor and is used in benchmarking.
Quantity of Keywords
The number of Keywords or Word Count is the number of times a keyword appears on a particular page.
Keyword Density
Keyword Density is the ratio of the incidence of a keyword in a text or page. For example, if a reader has 300 words and a given keyword appears three times, its density will be 1%. Very high densities can lead to punishment or simply declassification of the page.
Page Time
Page time is how long a user spent on that page. It is estimated that Google calculates this to verify the page’s relevance.
Upload Speed
The upload speed of the website is the estimated time for a page to load. It can be calculated manually or by using tools like Pingdom. The smaller, the better the metric.
File size
File Size refers to how much it weighs in KB (kilobytes) or MB (megabytes). The page’s an HTML file.
URL Length
The size of the URL or URL length is the count in characters of the width of the URL. There are indications of a correlation between Low Length URLs and better organic positions.
3. Off-Page Metrics
Off-Page metrics generally refer to aspects linked to link building.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority (DA) in the Moz or Domain Rating (DR) in Ahrefs, is a grade, generally from 0 to 100, which assesses how much the domain has authority over all others over the internet.
DA is improved by increasing the quantity and number of links pointing to the domain.
Curiosity: The only domain with a Domain Authority of 100 is facebook.com.
Page Authority
The Page Authority (PA) in Moz or URL Rating (UR) in Ahrefs is a grade, generally from 0 to 100, which evaluates the authority that owns a page about all other websites.
The PA is improved by increasing the quantity and quality of links pointing to that specific URL.
Backlinks
Backlinks are the links that a page or domain receives from other pages, the internet, or the site itself. In this sense, we can say that Backlinks refer to all incoming links, Internal backlinks refer to those of the site itself, and external backlinks refer to other places. However, in many cases, backlinks may be presumed to be external links.
Linking Pages
Linking Pages is a metric VERY similar to backlinks and little used since the only difference is to count a single link from each page. In contrast, in the case of backlinks, if two links are coming out of the same page, they can be counted as duplicity.
Linking Domains
Linking Domains or Referring Domains is a metric that indicates the number of domains related to a particular page or field.
External Links
External Links are the links that one page points to other domains.
Internal Links
Internal links are the links that a page receives from other pages in the same domain. It’s the same as internal backlinks. It may, in some cases, refer to links to other pages in the same field.
4. User Signal Metrics
User signal metrics are those that Google tries to understand user behavior to make sorting decisions. We repeat here the CTR metric since it fits into User Signals and Landing Page.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
CTR (Click Through Rate) is the click rate that a page receives. In other words, it is the relationship between impressions and clicks of a page in the search results.
It is considered a significant ranking factor.
Length of stay
Stay Time is how long a user passes on a particular site after clicking on an organic result. It is considered a significant ranking factor.
Rejection Rate
Rejection Rate has two meanings. In Google Analytics, the Rejection Rate is a metric that indicates the proportion of people who came to the site and did not navigate at least to a second page. In the Google algorithm, Reject Rate suggests the proportion of people who clicked on a page and returned to search results to find a more relevant result. It is considered a significant ranking factor.
These are the most common SEO metrics in the day-to-day of those who work on optimizing websites or even of those who have an SEO agency.
Remember, what you do with them is more important than the metrics themselves.
