How can you know whether what you’re doing with SEO is truly effective?- this is one of the trickiest aspects of the field. Answering the question is challenging. Particularly because it might take months for SEO to start to pay off. In this blog, we will discuss 5 SEO metrics that you must analyse and then improve efforts on the ones that give you the best results.

1. Clicks overall

At the end of the day, the goal of SEO is to increase Google traffic. How can you effectively determine how much traffic Google is sending your way? In the Google Search Console, click “Total Clicks” and exactly how many individuals clicked on your website from Google’s organic results will be displayed in this report.

Now, there is also a ton of additional useful material available here, like first impressions and CTR on average. But the overall number of clicks is far more significant than these. In fact, “total clicks” should be your SEO compass, in my opinion. If that figure is increasing, your SEO efforts are paying off.

If not, you should probably make a change.

That brings us to our second crucial SEO measure.

2. Key Web Elements

Google uses Core Web Vitals to evaluate the general user experience on your website. Why is this crucial?

As you may be aware, Google now bases some of how it ranks websites on what is referred to as “User Experience Signals.” To put it another way, Google doesn’t only rank your website based on standard SEO parameters like backlinks & keyword optimization. (Even though it’s still significant.)

Google wants to make sure your website is VERY user-friendly instead. Additionally, Google can easily determine how consumers engage with your website thanks to its AI-based RankBrain algorithm, because of this, user engagement measurements are becoming a significant component of the algorithm. Paying attention to your Core Web Vitals report analyses the user experience on your site based on page speed & efficiency.

3. Third-party Domains

My group and I examined 11M Google SERP results earlier this year. As you might anticipate, we found that links continue to be a significant factor in Google’s algorithm. This outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise to someone who has been doing SEO for some time. The problem is that we discovered more than simply a correlation between backlink volume and rankings. Additionally, we discovered that websites with many referring domains frequently appear higher in Google organic search results. The variety of websites linking to you is measured by the number of referring domains. not the overall amount of backlinks.

4. Natural Traffic

Another approach to gauge how much traffic you receive from Google organic is through organic traffic.

This SEO measure is simple to locate in Google Analytics.
Start by visiting Audience Overview.
Next, click “Add Segment.”
then select “Organic Traffic.”

Voila! You can count the number of search engine users who visit your website.

Isn’t this the same thing as “Total clicks” in the Search Console, you could be asking? Yes, sort of.

Total clicks and “Organic traffic” effectively measure the same thing. But they each approach it differently.

For instance, “Total clicks” MEASURES ONLY Google traffic. Additionally, “Organic traffic” considers all search engines, including Bing. They also use somewhat different methods for measuring traffic. This explains why the figures from each source occasionally vary. However, the general tendency frequently coincides. This is the reason I enjoy examining both metrics: if Total clicks and Organic traffic are both trending upward, that’s encouraging.

5. Metrics for User Experience

The Core Web Vitals report, which is the second SEO measure on our list, was already discussed.

The problem is that Core Web Vitals doesn’t give you the whole picture. The speed at which a page load is crucial. Furthermore, you do not want a sluggish website to negatively affect user experience. Because of this, Core Web Vitals concentrates nearly entirely on these two areas.

But if you only focus on Core Web Vitals, you won’t get the full picture of UX.

You want to concentrate on two more significant user experience signals that Google incorporates into its algorithm:
Bouncing frequency
Dwelling time

Please note that Google evaluates user interaction with your website in a variety of other ways as well.

However, they’re two of the most crucial. The study I described previously on the 11M+ results ranking criteria found a significant relationship between stay duration and first page ranks.

The second reason I suggest concentrating on these two SEO indicators is a useful one:

They are simple to gauge and enhance. In reality, Google Analytics makes it simple to locate both of these indicators. Simply navigate to Behavior Site Content Landing Pages to get started. Additionally, you’ll get an analysis of how visitors engage with each page on your website. Here, focus on the following two columns: Sessions’ average length and bounce rate. The average session duration measures how long visitors stay on your website after arriving (aka Dwell Time).

The better is the greater value for this number. Google seeks to provide users with results that satisfy their needs. Nothing more clearly conveys that a page is worse than someone spending only five seconds on it before returning to the search results. Additionally, pay attention to your bounce rate. My bounce rate is all over the place, as you can see in my report.

The bounce rate for some sites is high (for example, /hub/youtube/name). The bounce rate on other sites (/how-to-get-youtube-subscribers) is really low.

This is quite typical. Understanding WHY some sites have a high bounce rate is crucial in this situation. and making those pages better.

Conclusion

These are 5 of the many SEO metrics that can be tracked and worked upon to improve the results from your SEO efforts. To know more, contact us now.

Understanding how customers search for the products you provide can help you create and optimize pages that will rank higher for those phrases (keywords) and thus, increase the number of high-intent visitors to the website of your business. In this article, we will discuss 3 SEO factors that must be looked at while optimizing an e-commerce website.

1. Technical SEO

Although it may appear slightly difficult to begin with, technical SEO is an absolute essential for e-commerce websites.

HTTPS

A reliable approach called HTTPS is used to transmit data between websites and users. It stops hackers from collecting private data that customers frequently give to internet retailers, information about their identity, address, & credit card. Since 2014, it has furthermore had a small Google ranking component.

If your business uses HTTPS, you’ll be able to tell since the URL bar will display a “lock” icon:

The majority of well-known e-commerce systems come standard with HTTPS, therefore most users shouldn’t have any concerns. If it is, though, be careful to correct it.

Site Architecture

The organization and linking of the pages of your website are referred to as site structure.

Most online shops arrange their websites approximately along these lines:

These two factors explain why this arrangement makes sense:

It’s simple to use – Visitors can quickly locate what they’re looking for.

It makes it easier for Google to locate your pages since internal connections can be “followed” between sites. Creating your primary category pages is generally not that difficult. Simply make them your major selling items.

For instance, turntables, headphones, and speakers can be among the audio equipment you offer. You may target keywords that customers are looking for on your subcategory sites, such as “wired headphones” &”wireless headphones.” In the next section, you’ll discover how to locate these terms. It may be helpful for visitors, but in light of filter pairings frequently resulting in new URLs with parameters, it may seriously harm SEO.

There are hundreds of possible combinations even if you only have a few filters. This implies that Google may wind up crawling and maybe indexing thousands of new URLs. That’s not ideal since it could:

Reduce the ability of crucial pages to rank well – Filter combinations frequently result in the formation of several of the same-content URLs. The duplicate pages will each receive a portion of the ranking signals until Google detects this (which doesn’t always happen).

Stop the crawling of Google’s crucial pages – Google can only spend a certain amount of time indexing your website. It might lack the resources necessary to crawl all important pages if it needs to crawl a lot of garbage.

These problems can be resolved in several ways. The best method is often Jump to search faceted URLs for beginners to their parent category or subcategory and intermediates. Some SEO tools for e-commerce already accomplish this. Install the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, explore a few diversified URLs, and look at the “Indexability” tab to see if this is the case for your website. Likely, this is not a problem on your site if the canonical URL is not faceted.

2. On-page SEO

The practice of optimizing the content on your website is known as on-page SEO. It contains improvements to the programming behind the scenes and the material you see. Let’s go through some improvements and factors to think about for e-commerce websites.

H1s, meta descriptions and title tags

For their meta tags and title tags, the majority of e-commerce sites employ templates. Writing original material for hundreds of goods and category pages is hardly anyone’s idea of fun, so using a functionalized approach makes sense. Sadly, it could result in stale, redundant material that doesn’t encourage clicks. A hybrid strategy that uses templates for the majority of pages and unique content for the ones that receive the greatest search traffic can help you handle this problem.

Here’s how to locate the Google Search Console (GSC) sites that receive the greatest search activity:

Access the Report on Search Results.

Choose the “Pages” tab.

If you don’t utilize GSC, you may use your Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account to get a free estimate in Ahrefs’ Site Audit.

Choose your project from the Site Audit

Access Page Explorer.

Lookup Internal Pages

Arrange the results from most organic traffic to least organic traffic.

Keyword exploration

You can better understand how consumers search for your products by doing keyword research. This information may be used to develop product pages and subcategories that satisfy searcher demand. Let’s examine how to carry this through.

Finding keywords for subcategories

The sorts of goods you offer in a category are displayed on subcategory pages. For instance, there could be wired and wireless headphones within the category of headphones. Many of the divisions that make sense for your shop are probably already known to you. However, since there are several methods that people might search, it is advantageous for SEO to make subcategories that correspond to those phrases.

Just keep in mind that this isn’t only about search volumes. Use logical terminology and common sense while selecting subcategories. For instance, “audio Technica open ear headphones” is too specialized to constitute a useful subcategory. Unless you sell several sets of “bone conduction headphones,” the same is true. Listed below is a brief guide to selecting a category for SEO:

Keywords for product pages

If you offer branded goods, you don’t need to do product keyword research because customers will look for the goods themselves. For instance, there are an estimated 857K searches for “AirPods pro” per month in the United States: If you offer these headphones, the term is already targeted on the merchandise page.

However, if you’re selling unbranded goods or goods with obscure brand names, you could wish to strive for more detailed search phrases.
Let’s imagine, for illustration, that you offer a set of headphones with cat ears. It could be preferable to target a relevant phrase that people search for, such as “cat ear headphones,” unless they are expressly looking for the brand or type.

Conclusion

SEO for e-commerce is an elaborate process and we only scratched a small part of the surface in this blog. For effective results on your e-commerce SEO, contact us now.

Most frequently, it is seen that creative individual’s disregard SEO, and this is where they fall short. We are aware that originality and creativity are crucial for content that needs to be published online, but we also cannot ignore the significance of SEO. The following tips will help you in maintaining a healthy balance between creativity and SEO.

• Consult with specialists

It is generally advised to seek assistance from professionals that have already earned their spot for that particular subject before beginning something new. Similar to maintaining a balance between SEO and originality, if you are having trouble, just ask an expert for help, or even ask a few for different perspectives.

You may read pieces published by professionals in your field that are relevant to you and learn how they were able to be both inventive and keyword-centric.

Reading these blogs carefully will help you understand how professionals have managed to strike a balance between these two crucial aspects of digital marketing and what other strategies they have employed in their content to get awareness and attention. It is advised to look at as many instances as you can until you understand anything. Because you should be aware that learning is the finest way to improve.

• Share tales about leaders

Telling motivating tales of world leaders is another excellent way to be innovative while sticking to an SEO-driven plan. Here, you don’t need to choose a certain industry; simply share any tale that, in your opinion, will motivate others. Having some anecdotes about the pioneers in your industry can be beneficial. You will need to conduct interviews with those leaders to get their perspectives on this, which may not be a simple assignment for you to complete. If you can, try to communicate with them by phone, email, or even SMS. Ask them to respond to a few questions and express their opinions.

You don’t have to go for only huge names or people with a lot of popularity; instead, attempt to identify some of the best specialists in your city or region and make an effort to get in touch with them. For instance, if you own a digital marketing company, consider conducting interviews with specialists from some of the best local firms. Because incorporating their testimonies and mentioning them might help you.

• Humanize your relationship

We are aware of the value of keywords in your digital marketing strategy and the function they serve in all types of content. However, if your material is uninteresting, it will not garner much attention and eventually fall in the rankings. To capture the interest of your intended audience, every material must include an engaging element. Finding the human touch is one of the finest techniques to make sure that people will pay attention to your material properly. Demonstrate compassion, write in a manner that connects with readers, and be instructive & useful. People will be more interested while reading the information if you consider this, and your bounce rate will be quite low.

Asking why people will seek the issue you are going to write about can help you add a personal touch to your writing. After considering who your audience is, begin writing. By doing this, you may make your writing easier to read and more understandable for your audience. Starting with a problem that people are having and how your post will assist them to solve it is always preferable. Readers can determine that you are aware of their issue and have found a solution in this manner.

• Visuals and multimedia are beneficial

The use of pictures and multimedia is always beneficial whether you are producing fresh material or trying to modify an older piece. These components may add creativity and intrigue to your content and are also seen favorably by SEO. Any type of multimedia may be used, including photos, animated GIFs, films, infographics, charts, and even connections to YouTube. However, you must always employ pertinent graphics and make sure that they match the subject and information you have written. Using ineffective ones will not advance your cause; rather, it will harm your reputation.

Visuals are constantly introduced to websites to aid in reader comprehension and encourage longer visits. You should thus utilize pertinent, distinctive, educational, and engaging images in every post to improve its visibility. But keep in mind, not all of them have to be used; just pick the ones that may provide the most value, whether it’s just a picture, a video, or both; just don’t push anything into the material.

• Select a distinct writing style for your work

Finding popular subjects in your area and producing content that is superior to the competition is not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes you have to look outside the box and provide the material from a unique perspective that most people wouldn’t have considered. For instance, if you see that a specific topic is overrun with information that informs you what not to do, you may create content that exclusively explains what to do for that specific issue.

The information in your competitor’s postings can be explained here as well but in a different manner. People’s perspectives will be altered as a result, and they will find your material to be more appealing than that of competitors. Additionally, you won’t need to fool around too much with your SEO-driven approach because of this, which will help you rank well on search engine result pages.

• Communicate with your audience

One thing you should keep in mind is that using SEO best practices and being creative in your content are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Connecting with your readers and engaging with them whenever you can help you get awareness and build a better reputation. By doing this, you will have a better understanding of the target market’s issues. It’s a terrific idea to get in touch with them frequently to assure loyalty and build a sizable clientele of devoted supporters.

Engaging your readers will also allow you to keep an emotional connection with them, which is a terrific approach to developing stronger partnerships. You may also highlight one among your fortunate viewers in your post and discuss the issue he or she is having to help your results. Additionally, you may write a post to address the issue they are having. If you can take the actions outlined above, it will be very beneficial in the long term and more people will be drawn to you to communicate and discuss their difficulties. And keep in mind that everyone wants to be trusted, so if someone feels comfortable talking to you about their issues, it shows they trust you.

To sum it up

It is getting harder for new firms to establish themselves on the digital platform because of the intense competition there. However, just because something is tough doesn’t imply it’s impossible; you just need to put up substantial effort to firmly establish your presence.

Nearly all companies have a presence on the digital platform, and their numbers are in the millions and rising daily. The key reason for this sharp increase in numbers is that having a digital presence for firms is now essential; alternatively, they cannot survive. Therefore, everyone is working to develop their online presence. Having a digital presence does not ensure success; instead, firms must put up greater effort to draw in their target market.

To achieve this, two factors—content and SEO—are crucial, and combining them strategically will increase success. The true problem, though, arises when you attempt to creatively incorporate SEO into your material. Although creativity is necessary to keep visitors interested and spending time on your website, SEO is crucial to achieving organic visibility and good SERP rankings.

Both creativity and SEO are crucial for writing, and most people struggle to strike a balance between the two. This piece was prepared with that in mind, & we hope that reading it has aided you in figuring out how to include both creativity and SEO in your material. So long as you stick to your content-driven approach and exercise as much creativity as you can, success will follow.