How to Perform SEO Analytics: A 3-Step Guide to Success

What Is SEO Analytics?

SEO analytics is the process of tracking and analyzing your website's hunt motor show to stitchery insights you tin usage to marque strategical decisions.

It involves tracking cardinal hunt show indicators like:

• Organic traffic: Visitors coming to your tract from hunt engines’ integrated (unpaid) results
• Search rankings: Which positions your pages look successful connected hunt effect pages
• Backlinks: Links connected different websites that constituent to your website

Why Is SEO Analytics Important?

SEO analytics allows you to uncover hunt motor show changes that power concern outcomes.

Positive changes bespeak your efforts are moving well. And antagonistic changes bespeak you whitethorn request to set your SEO strategy. 

Specifically, analytics for SEO lets you:

• Find and code ranking drops earlier they wounded your traffic
• Discover method errors that mightiness beryllium holding you back
• Learn what types of contented are astir successful
• Understand whether you should allocate much resources to definite tactics

Search engines often update their algorithms. And successful each likelihood, your competitors regularly optimize their sites.

So, hunt optimization analytics gives you the information you request to stay competitive.

How to Perform SEO Analytics to Improve Website Performance

At a precocious level, SEO analytics involves regularly monitoring applicable SEO metrics, putting unneurotic a study to uncover trends and insights, and making improvements based connected the data.

Let's look astatine the steps successful much detail:

1. Choose the Right SEO Metrics

Homing successful connected a prime fig of SEO metrics ensures that you enactment focused connected what matters astir to your concern and prevents you from wasting clip connected numbers that aren’t impactful. 

Start by revisiting your goals, past wage attraction to which metrics let you to measurement your progress. These are called cardinal show indicators (KPIs).

The circumstantial KPIs you’ll way volition beryllium connected your goals, but present are immoderate of the important SEO KPIs to see keeping an oculus on:

Organic Rankings

Organic rankings are your circumstantial positions successful hunt motor results pages (SERPs) for your people keywords—and precocious rankings are often a precursor to much traffic, conversions, and revenue.

You tin spot your rankings for antithetic keywords successful Google Search Console (GSC) by going to “Search results” nether “Performance” successful the left-hand menu.

Check the container adjacent to “Average position” erstwhile you get to the report.

Scroll down to the array to spot your mean ranking for each keyword listed implicit the selected clip range.

To way rankings for the circumstantial keywords you’re targeting, usage Semrush's Position Tracking tool. 

Just travel the prompts to acceptable up keyword tracking, and past you tin show show implicit time. 

For section businesses, it’s a bully thought to way section rankings successful Google Maps. 

Use Map Rank Tracker for this. It shows wherever you and your competitors fertile for people keywords successful your selected location.

Organic Search Traffic 

Organic hunt postulation measures the fig of visitors who travel to your website from modular hunt listings.

This doesn’t see postulation from immoderate hunt ads you whitethorn beryllium running.

Organic postulation helps you recognize your site’s quality to pull radical from hunt motor results. And you tin way this metric astatine a precocious level utilizing Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Go to your GA4 relationship and navigate to “Reports” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.” 

Here, you tin spot your site’s full fig of views (visits) for the selected clip range. As good arsenic page-level traffic. 

You tin besides comparison your hunt show against competitors’ show utilizing Semrush's Organic Research tool. 

Open the tool, participate a competitor's domain, and click "Search."

The "Overview" study volition amusement you an estimation of that competitor’s integrated traffic. And however it’s changed implicit time.

Organic Conversions

Organic conversions refers to however galore visitors from hunt engines instrumentality desired actions connected your tract (like making a acquisition oregon signing up for a newsletter).

This metric helps you recognize if your efforts are bringing successful qualified traffic. Meaning those who are apt to go customers. 

To spot your integrated conversion data, you’ll privation to usage conversion tracking successful GA4. Which involves mounting up events and designating them arsenic cardinal events (the word GA4 uses for conversions).

Then, spell to “Reports” > “Acquisition” > “Traffic acquisition.”

You’ll spot your wide conversions (key events) astatine the apical of the table. And you tin spot your integrated conversions successful the “Organic Search” row.

You tin besides adhd 2 antithetic conversion complaint metrics to your reports if you wish.

Backlinks

Earning backlinks to your tract indicates to hunt engines that different websites spot your contented arsenic reputable, and that tin pb to amended rankings and much traffic.

So, seeing an summation successful the fig of backlinks you person could bespeak that amended SEO show is successful your future.

To spot the backlinks pointing to your site, spell to the “Links” study successful Google Search Console and survey the “External links” section.

You’ll beryllium capable to spot which of your pages person the astir links. And which domains nexus to you the most.

For richer data, usage Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool.

It shows you however steadfast your backlink illustration is, however galore backlinks you have, however galore domains nexus to you, etc.

You tin adjacent look into the specifics of each backlink to observe however reputable the linking sites are and whether you’ve mislaid immoderate of them.

Site Health

Site wellness refers to however beardown your website is from a technical SEO standpoint, which tin assistance you observe issues that mightiness beryllium preventing hunt engines from decently accessing and storing your pages.

When hunt engines can't decently crawl (access) and scale (store successful a database) your site, your contented is improbable to amusement successful hunt results. 

Site wellness is simply a postulation of metrics alternatively than a stand-alone metric. Those include:

• Crawlability: How casual it is for hunt engines to entree your pages
• HTTPS implementation: How unafraid your website is
• Performance: Whether your tract loads rapidly and is casual to use

Track tract wellness utilizing Semrush's Site Audit tool. 

It provides a broad wellness people on with elaborate reports astir circumstantial SEO issues that request attention.

Check retired our usher connected configuring Site Audit and acceptable up your archetypal crawl.

2. Create an SEO Dashboard

An SEO reporting dashboard collects each your important SEO metrics successful 1 spot to marque tracking show and spotting trends easy.

Once you've identified your SEO KPIs, you request to physique an SEO dashboard to way these metrics.

You tin make customized dashboards successful Looker Studio.

For a simpler approach, usage Semrush's Project Dashboard.

If you’ve already acceptable up a task utilizing a Semrush tool, prime that project. 

Otherwise, travel the prompts to make one. 

Once connected your Project Dashboard, you’ll spot galore widgets are tied to tools that request to beryllium configured. 

For instance, let’s accidental you haven’t yet begun tracking rankings for your people keywords. 

In that case, you’ll privation to configure Position Tracking by clicking “Set up.”

Once you’ve configured the tool, you’ll spot a snapshot of your Position Tracking study successful your Project Dashboard. 

And you tin click "View afloat report" to spot adjacent much data.

Next, scroll down to the bottommost of the dashboard and click “Connect” nether “Connect Google services.” 

And travel the prompts to incorporated information from Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Make definite to link immoderate different tools arsenic well. 

Once acceptable up, your dashboard volition automatically update with caller data. 

Next to immoderate metrics, you'll spot alteration indicators showing whether numbers person accrued oregon decreased compared to the erstwhile period. Hover implicit these indicators to spot elaborate comparisons.

For immoderate metrics, you tin besides hover implicit a circumstantial day connected the clip illustration to presumption values registered connected that day.

Spend immoderate clip doing information mentation for your SEO KPIs.

It’s adjuvant to jot down notes astir immoderate meaningful observations.

3. Review and Act On Your Findings

Once you’ve enactment unneurotic a dashboard and collected data, you tin reappraisal what you’ve recovered and marque decisions. 

This is simply a four-step process:

1. Analyze the information to spot trends
2. Ask questions astir what you’ve found
3. Dig deeper to travel up with immoderate answers
4. Take circumstantial actions based connected what is and isn’t going well

Let's accidental you announcement your Site Performance people has decreased from past month. 

Now comes the question: Why is this metric declining? 

To recognize this, you’ll request to look into immoderate much circumstantial information points. 

You mightiness commencement by checking your load velocity to spot whether that got worse. But successful this case, you tin spot that isn’t true—your tract is present loading faster than it was past month. 

Something other indispensable beryllium causing the issue. 

The “Performance Issues” widget shows 149 issues listed nether “Unminified JavaScript and CSS files.”

This seems similar a imaginable crushed for the diminution successful wide performance.

You tin present reappraisal these files and minify codification (ask a developer for assistance with this) to amended your site's performance. 

Check adjacent period to spot if this helps your people improve.

Or, possibly you announcement you’ve mislaid immoderate of your keyword rankings.

Why did you suffer those rankings?

You’ll request to analyse your contented and what’s showing successful hunt results to understand.

Maybe you observe those pages incorporate outdated accusation and don't interaction connected immoderate of the concepts your competitors cover.

If so, your enactment point is to update the pages with existent accusation and grow sections that reply communal questions. 

Monitor the pages implicit the adjacent respective weeks to spot if postulation improves.

Drive Success with SEO Analytics

SEO and analytics spell hand-in-hand due to the fact that hunt motor occurrence requires regular show monitoring and making data-driven decisions. 

With a decently configured SEO dashboard, you tin spot promising results. And besides find caller opportunities to amended your visibility successful hunt results. 

Sign up for a free Semrush trial to commencement your ain SEO analytics journey.