In the evolving world of search, we need to always be thinking about how our brands and our content can be discovered. Competition for search audiences is fiercer than ever, search algorithms are increasingly intelligent and intuitive, and search lives well beyond the browser now, no longer tightly confined to a search engine search bar and results page. The web’s wild, wild west days are far behind, and the gleaming city filled with skyscrapers, superhighways, and a civilized society governed by law and order that emerged from the wild is now maturing, taking search right along with it.   

That evolution has put us squarely in the midst of an SEO data revolution with more ranking factors and data points to consider. It is forcing us to rethink the way we communicate with search engines and how we go about increasing our digital footprint. SEOs are having to become more like data scientists -- sourcing, compiling and analyzing data from any number of disparate sources to ensure their audiences can find them at the right moments. 

Fundamentally, digital discovery starts with crafting the message in the right way (content optimization) but also requires optimizing the delivery and description of the content (technical SEO). There is an essential symmetry between the two. If ACME Widget Makers manufactures the ideal product for its customers, but fails to secure distribution, it will fail. Conversely, if ACME secures targeted distribution, but produces a sub-par product, it will fail. It must master both. Search has always relied on both elements, but the complexity has increased exponentially.   

When we talk about SEO, the content optimization half of the equation gets a lot of the attention, but in 2022 and for the foreseeable future, technical SEO presents an equal if not bigger opportunity (or barrier, depending on how brands approach it) for maximizing digital discovery. How we approach technical SEO matters more than ever, because: 

1. Technical SEO is getting harder,  
2. The entry points to search and search results are expanding, and  
3. Customer behavior is less transparent  

Technical SEO Is Getting Harder 

With current advancements in search indexing, thanks in large part to machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), it seems paradoxical to suggest that technical SEO is getting harder, but as search engines have grown more sophisticated, so have websites. Search engines are increasingly adept at indexing content, but the way we build websites is, too. The W3C table of contents is 209 pages alone and we still must account for Google and user experience standards. we still have to account for Google standards and user experience standards.  

The focus for discoverability used to be almost solely centered on getting URLs indexed. Today we want search engines to not only index a URL, but to understand the context of the page, the format of the content to best match it to the right type of search results, and dozens of other signals embedded in our content and on our sites. Technical SEO is our best shot at controlling whether and how our content ranks in search. Consider the simple chart below, which puts in stark relief how progressively complex technical SEO has become. 

The increasing complexity of technical SEO means operators of enterprise-grade websites need to mirror what search engines are doing by employing automation, AI and machine learning if they are going to be able to conform at scale with the myriad standards that determine whether a page gets indexed and ranked. Advanced tools like BrightEdge's Anomaly Detection can help users cut through a site’s technical aspects to bring the things that matter into focus.    

The Entry Points To Search and Search Results Are Expanding  

Search is ubiquitous. Searches originate from traditional search engines, but they also come from sources like personal smart devices, home assistants, dedicated apps such as navigation apps, and are originated with natural language voice requests nearly as often as typed, keyword-based queries. Even the concept of a search engine has changed and become more specialized. A consumer looking to purchase a product is more likely to start at Amazon.com than they are to start at Google. Someone tracking the big stories of the day may turn to Twitter, while someone looking for instruction may rely on YouTube.  

The Google search engine results page itself is specialized, offering 26 places to click in mobile search alone. It’s not uncommon for a search to generate local listings, image and video results, quick answers and people also ask results, news stories, product/shopping results and more.  

It is not sufficient to publish a keyword-optimized piece of content and hope the search engines figure out how to use it. Technical SEO gives us the tools – schema markup, featured snippets, internal links, site structure elements, and much more – to tell the search engines how to use our content, giving it a better chance to be discoverable and to rank well. 

Customer Behavior Is Less Transparent  

Digital marketing ushered in an unprecedented era of personalization. Tracking technologies gave us the ability to connect a user’s actions to past, present and future behaviors. It made it possible to anticipate, encourage and respond with the content, products and services they wanted at a one-to-one level. Much of the digital marketing landscape – advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, etc. – relies extensively on these technologies to be effective.  

SEO has benefited as well from the ability to connect a search result click to immediate and future behaviors. Knowing that a piece or type of content attracted the right type of customer behavior gives us the ammunition to refine other content to extend our reach for similar results. But now, two realities are disrupting the tracking-dependent worlds of digital marketers everywhere: zero-click results and privacy changes. 

Zero-click results – search results like quick answers, local listings and people also ask – give searchers the information they are seeking directly on the search engine results page (SERP). As a result, SEOs and digital marketers can no longer look to click data to evaluate the performance of such content, because there is none. Instead, the focus has had to shift to maximizing their presence in zero-click results by ensuring their Google “My Business” listings are up to date, their reviews are plentiful, and their site’s information with structured data in the feed is up to date and correct. They’ve had to be mindful of schema, too, which helps a search engine understand context on a webpage so it can see, for example, which part of the page is the price of a product, or which is a review, or which are entities like the author of the page. All of this relies on technical SEO, and now without direct visibility into the outcomes, structuring technical SEO properly is more critical.   

Another major change impacting digital marketers is significant new privacy protections. Apple started the ball rolling by opting users out of app tracking by default and, instead, prompting them to opt-in. Less than 5% of iPhone users have agreed to app tracking after being given the option. This is significant for any platform – like most social media platforms, for example – that rely on Apple-originated traffic. Google will be taking it a step further by phasing out third-party cookies and replacing them with: nothing. Google has said it will not build alternative identifiers. Customers have demanded data privacy and the marketing is responding. Soon, however, data privacy will no longer be just good business. Gartner predicts that by 2023, 63% of the world’s population will enjoy government-regulated personal privacy protections that by 2023, 63% of the world’s population will enjoy government-regulated personal privacy protections. 

All of this means that targeted digital marketing, which relies so heavily on tracking to understand and predict consumer behavior, is taking a big step backward in the service of consumer privacy. Search – both organic and paid – can help marketers fill in the blanks.  

Search is a gigantic marketing channel, but it's also a very important listening channel.  Keywords, the way search engines sense and respond to intents and the arbitration between what people want in a given moment and how it’s best delivered is something marketers can leverage. Search behavior is customer intent. The future of marketing will require turning all that intent data into a vehicle to deliver personalized experiences. Most importantly, we can do it without raising any privacy concerns whatsoever since we interpret a combination of anonymized and first party data to build our market analysis, leverage those insights to create winning content and optimize technical SEO to describe and present it in the ways consumers want to find and interact with it.  

Key Takeaways 

Several factors are elevating the importance of good technical SEO execution: 

• Search is getting smarter, but websites have become exponentially more complex, too 
• Search comes from many sources and search results take many forms 
• Extensive changes to the richness of search results and sweeping new data privacy changes are obscuring the brand-to-customer interaction 

In the face of these challenges, technical SEO is a key component to ensure we can be present in the right ways at the right times.  

 

 

In contrast to a hectic start to the month, which included a major algorithm update, the previous two weeks have been a little more subdued. However, we’ve still got an assortment of roundup-worthy developments for you, most concerning Google.

There have been several updates to Search Central documentation, including clarification around how Google crawls pages and important information about product variants which could affect ecommerce. Some interesting tests of new featured snippets have also surfaced.

Google Search Advocate John Mueller has announced some changes to Google Page Experience. And it looks like the format and frequency of his long-running Q&A series “SEO Office Hours” will take a new direction. Google has also made an exciting announcement about an AI breakthrough.

Finally, DuckDuckGo traffic has been decreasing. We offer a possible explanation as to why.

With all that in mind, here’s your twice-monthly roundup of the latest news, discussion and developments in the world of SEO.

Google Updates Googlebot Documentation

Google has updated documentation relating to Googlebot, a catch-all name for its various web crawlers. Specifically, the new information states that it will only crawl the first 15MB of data on HTML pages.

The relevant section about Googlebot in Google Search Central reads: “Googlebot can crawl the first 15MB of an HTML file or supported text-based file. Any resources referenced in the HTML such as images, videos, CSS, and JavaScript are fetched separately. After the first 15MB of the file, Googlebot stops crawling and only considers the first 15MB of the file for indexing.”

This is essential information for SEOs that want their pages to rank well and highlights the importance of “lightweight” web design. You can test your site by generating a rendered view of your pages with the URL inspection tool in Search Console.

Google Tests New Featured Snippets Layout

Google is testing new snippet layouts, with Twitter reports of “info cards” and four and five-word answers that are visible without clicking a dropdown.

Featured snippets, which occupy “position zero” in SERPs, are considered prime real estate. And many SEOs target them aggressively, mostly due to the large increase in click-through-rates that come from capturing this coveted position. Keeping up to date with these changes enables you to adjust your strategy by accounting for new formats. Equally, you’ll be in a better position to explain fluctuations in your click-through rate.

Keep in mind that these are simply tests at this stage. They don’t constitute long-term stages. However, they’re worth keeping an eye on. If there is a full rollout, you’ll be ready to leverage the new formats.

Google Updates Product Variant Guidelines

Google made an update to Search Central guidelines covering markup for products, specifically pertaining to product variants.

The new guidance on Search Central reads:

“Currently, product rich results only support pages that focus on a single product. This includes product variants where each product variant has a distinct URL.”

This is an important point for merchants that use a single URL to display multiple product variants. In adopting this approach, it is highly likely that rich results will not accompany search results.

It is best practice to use a supported URL structure—either a path segment or query parameter—with a relevant canonical URL specifying the main product page. There is extensive documentation covering how merchants should deal with variants to enable rich results.

SEO Office Hours Announces Changes

Google Search Advocate John Mueller’s long-running SEO question-and-answer sessions will undergo several changes, to the chagrin of many SEOs who considered it one of the few direct channels to the search giant. SEOs often cite office hours directly when justifying decisions to clients and suggesting strategic changes to existing strategy.

The sessions will now only run once per month, instead of four times per month, and Mueller will only answer pre-submitted questions over a thirty-minute period. Moreover, the answers will be recorded and not live (as has been the norm).

Talking about the change, he has cited a lack of time on his part along with a desire to make the videos easier to digest.

Google Announces AI-Technology

Google announced a new AI technology called “Learning Multiple Modalities with One Sparse Mixture-of-Experts Model” (yep, it’s a mouthful) in a post on its AI blog.

LIMoE is a breakthrough technology because it leverages neural networks (computer systems that mirror the human brain) to accomplish multiple tasks that previously required individual algorithms. Crucially, it can process text and images simultaneously.

The technicalities are fairly involved. If you’re interested, Search Engine Journal has published an in-depth explainer article. These announcements are interesting because they are harbingers of a large-scale shift towards a search landscape that is underpinned by highly complex, AI-driven processes. Google already leverages artificial intelligence in the form of RankBrain, and SEOs should pay close attention to ongoing developments.

Google Redesigns News Interface and Opens Diversity Fund

The Google News interface has had a makeover. If you generate large amounts of traffic through the platform, you may see changes in visitor numbers.

In a blog post on The Keyword, Google says, “Our new look for Google News on desktop was inspired by feedback we received from readers. We’ve made it easier for you to catch up on the most important news by bringing Top stories, Local news and personalized picks for you to the top of the page.”

New features also include:

• Filters (which are great for adding multiple local news sections).
• An in-depth fact check section.
• Numerous customization options.

Google also announced the opening of the Global News Equity Fund, a multi-million dollar fund aimed at supporting independent, small and medium publishers that serve underrepresented communities. If you fit the criteria, it’s worth sending an application.

DuckDuckGo Traffic Declines

To round off, we have news about DuckDuckGo, a search engine that’s received a lot of attention in the past because of its heavy emphasis on privacy. It’s occasionally been hailed as the next big thing. Over the last several months, however, traffic has consistently been below 100 million searches per day.

Understandably, most SEOs don’t devote much time to DuckDuckGo. Its market share is a fraction of Google’s. As to the reduced numbers of searchers, people may be unhappy with DuckDuckGo’s decision to down-rank sites associated with what it sees as pro-Russian propaganda. This could be seen as a contravention of its commitment to “unbiased search.”

That’s it for this month! No seismic changes or big algorithm updates, but still plenty to be getting on with. To finish off, here’s an SEO joke. What’s Google’s favorite drink? Link juice. (It has to be organic, though.)

Google announced its Page Experience update in 2020, and officially rolled it out between June and September of 2021. The update was aimed at improving web page interactions for visitors. To put this in practical terms and give web developers targets for improvement, Google established Core Web Vitals to measure three key elements of the page experience: loading performance, interactivity and visual stability of the page. Today, Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking factor for organic search results.  

While many times we need to essentially trust that a particular Google update is improving the search experience for our users, the empirical nature of Core Web Vital (CWV) metrics makes it possible for individual websites and brands to measure the impact of CWV-oriented site improvements. BrightEdge has taken that a step further and measured the impact of CWV for four distinct markets: Education, Finance, B2B Tech, and Retail. The impact of Core Web Vitals has been significant in these markets.    

What are Core Web Vitals? 

Google defines the purpose of and metrics for Core Web Vitals as: 

“The page provides a good user experience, focusing on the aspects of loading, interactivity, and visual stability: 

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load. 
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. To provide good user experience, strive to have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds. 
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1.” 

Beyond improving a page’s prospects for a higher search ranking, improving CWV also affects key business measures such as conversion and brand loyalty.  

• Reducing loading time (Largest Contentful Paint) reduces user bounce rates and can improve conversion rates by as much as 15% 
• Improving interactivity (First Input Delay) helps a site respond more quickly to a user’s actions on the page. Better interactivity reduces bounce rate and helps ensure a user is more likely to return to the site.  
• Improving visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift) delivers a smooth, engaging experience. Shifting page elements are disruptive and detrimental to conversion.  

The Needle Has Moved on Core Web Vitals 

Leading up to the rollout of the Page Experience Update, we wanted to assess the top-ranking URLs' Core Web Vitals for the most popular search terms in four industries: Education, Finance, B2B Tech, and Retail. To do this, we identified 500 keywords in each industry and used BrightEdge's patented Share of Voice technology to identify URLs that were ranking the most. We measured mobile rankings because, with Google’s mobile-first indexing, mobile traffic is the primary source of visitors for most websites. When we ran this analysis, we found very few of the URLs were meeting what Google considers a good experience. Now with nine months of real-world data for comparison we can see whether and how the focus on Core Web Vitals has changed the user experience. Here’s what the analysis shows:  

Improvement Across the Board 

Across all four industries, we measured improvement in aggregate CWV scores.  While this means that, on average, sites classified under each industry banner have seen improvement it does not mean all sites in the industry have improved. In fact, some of the winners have shifted with domains that held high share-of-voice before Core Web Vitals falling in prominence and other previously less prominent sites gaining share-of-voice.

When we look closer at each CWV metric for each industry, remarkably, again we find universal improvement. 

Education

The results are based on measurement of 205 unique URLs ranking for top education keywords. In addition to the aggregate findings, we observed some changes the domains capturing top ranks including more .gov sites and the emergence of domains like Higherdjobs.com and Netflix that were not previously ranking for the keywords.  

Finance 

Within Finance, mortgage brokers saw the most gains this year among the 312 unique finance URLs that ranked for top finance keywords. Conversely, bank sites saw the fewest gains year-over-year (YoY). The finance sector saw the lowest differential in performance gains (YoY) compared to the other three markets we assessed, but it started with the highest performing Core Web Vitals.  

B2B Tech 

For the B2B Tech market we looked at 258 unique URLs. Prior to the rollout of CWV, we saw links from app stores occupying significant share of voice for productivity tools. This year, those seem  
to be won by publishers and resources from SaaS platforms. Pages on the domains with the biggest increased presence in search, like TechTarget.com, appear to load faster and have shorter delays on average.  

Retail

When we first measured retail keywords, one of the issues we saw broadly was the use of scripts that caused Cumulative Layout Shift issues. This year, the vast majority of the scripts we found previously no longer seem to be in use. This kind of sea change in site technology is a great example of the impact CWV is having on websites. Among the 459 unique retail URLs we looked at we saw a reduction in the presence of review pages and an increase in the presence of retail pages from sites like Amazon.com 

Key Takeaways 

Judging by these findings, it is safe to say that using the web is better today than it was a year ago. The results are certainly encouraging and represent the combined impact of the work marketers performed to improve their sites in response to the rollout and the effects of the Page Experience Update and how it factors into choosing which pages win higher ranks. It does not mean there is not more work to be done, however. Even despite the gains, in some instances the scores fall short of what Google deems “good” performance. For example, the average Largest Contentful Paint score of 5.52ms for retail sites represents a 40% improvement over last year’s measurement but is still below Google’s target performance.  

Perhaps more importantly, the highest performing sites today are outperforming the best sites from nine months ago. Because we have seen shifts among the leading domains in search results, brands need to be vigilant about monitoring Core Web Vitals performance and working toward continual incremental improvement.   

The world of search is abuzz with talk about Google’s first core update of 2022. And you may have seen ranking fluctuations over the last three weeks. If you’re reeling from a drop in traffic, don’t worry. We’ll outline several practical steps you can take to remedy possible issues. 

In other news, Google is showing rich video content on results pages, and has released guidance about using the correct data markup. The number of website-specific FAQs on SERPS also seems to have increased. Both of these developments present opportunities for traffic gains.

On a slightly more somber note, the CEO and founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, has resigned after the EU enforced personal sanctions as part of its response to the Russia-Ukraine war. 

With all that in mind, here’s your roundup of the latest updates, feature releases, and industry stories from the last two weeks. 

Google Rolls Out Core Update

The big news from the last two weeks is the rollout of Google’s first core update of 2022. If you’ve noticed any recent changes in your rankings, this is likely the reason. The update was announced on the Google Search Central blog on May 25th: “Today, we're releasing our May 2022 core update. It will take about 1-2 weeks to fully roll out.” On June 9th, the rollout was confirmed as complete. 

So what do we know? All signs point to the fact that it was a large update. It applies globally to all regions and languages and targets the full range of content types. 

A significant amount of volatility in relation to rankings has been reported, more so than the previous core update in November. It’s also been noted that changes were very quick to take effect. In particular, the real estate niche has reported sizable fluctuations. And sites hosting AI-generated content have taken a beating by most accounts. 

If you feel you’ve been hit, your first step should be Google’s troubleshooting questions. Going through these may help you identify problems. If this doesn’t work, a content audit may be in order. Specifically, it’s worth reviewing the Google search quality rater guidelines, one of the most in-depth official resources available. 

Google Displays Rich Video Results: Learning Video

Google has added new rich content—called “Learning Video”—that showcases education-related videos on search results pages. Google Search Central documentation has been updated as well, so check that out. The new features are available in all regions in English-language results. 

If you publish video content or depend on media for acquiring visitors, rich video results are a prime opportunity for increased traffic. Familiarize yourself with both the Video Learning markup and the general video schema. You’ll also need to ensure that you meet technical guidelines for factors like media length and accessibility (outlined in the documentation). 

Google Showing More FAQs in Search Results

Google is displaying FAQ snippets more frequently in search results. FAQ rich snippets are taken from a page’s frequently asked questions section and are shown under a specific search result. There is currently a cap of two FAQ snippets per result. 

It is still somewhat premature to make definite statements as Google hasn’t officially acknowledged the change. That said, the third-party data seems to be reliable. If you publish FAQs on pages, ensure that you’re using the relevant schema markup to enhance your chances of better visibility. Rich snippets tend to drive comparatively more clicks than generic results, so it is advised to make your structured data as complete as possible.

Yandex CEO Resigns

The founder of Russia’s largest search engine Yandex, Arkady Volozh, has resigned from his position as Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The European Union imposed personal sanctions on Volozh as part of its border package of measures against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Volozh gave his voting rights to the company’s board, and Yandex itself hasn’t been sanctioned.

If a large portion of your site’s traffic comes from the Russian search engine, you don’t need to worry. However, you should stay abreast of relevant developments that could impact your organic performance if you depend on them to reach audiences. The official announcement from Yandex reads, “We do not believe that these developments will affect the company’s operations, its financial position or its relations with partners.”

Google Clarifies Best Practices for Author Markup

If you attribute content to authors, an update to Google Search Central documentation regarding author markup will be of interest. If you don’t credit writers, you should consider doing so, as authorship is a possible ranking factor.

The guidance covers best practices for applying structured data markup to information about authors, thus helping Google “understand and represent” content creators. The best practices cover specifying multiple authors, which additional fields to include, using the author.name property correctly, and which types (Person, Organization, Thing) to use. 

There’s very little to lose in applying author markup to your content, and it will likely lead to increased exposure for relevant searches. Moreover, this is not the first time that Google has tried to promote its authors. In 2013, Google Search Central published an article outlining the use of rel=”author”, and it includes several FAQs for improving author markup.

John Mueller Clarifies Role of CDNs in Rankings

Google Search Advocate John Mueller has clarified the role that CDNs play in rankings. In essence, he said that CDNs don’t provide any intrinsic value for sites that are already relatively fast.

CDNs improve site speed by storing cached web pages on a network of geographically diverse servers. When somebody visits your site, they are served from the nearest server. 

In an SEO office-hours session, Mueller said, “...if users…are seeing a very slow result, because perhaps the connection to your country is not that great, then that’s something where you might have some opportunities to improve that.”

In summary, you should absolutely leverage a CDN, but don’t anticipate a huge boost in rankings and traffic unless your site speed is particularly slow—your primary gain will be through engagement on the site.

John Mueller Advises Against Use of Company Name as Default Image Alt Tag

To round off, here’s another quick piece of advice from John Mueller. Don’t set the default alt tag for your images as your business’ name. One admin wanted to set all of a website’s image tags to the company brand name as a supposed workaround of the long-winded job of filling the tags individually. Mueller’s response? Doing so would be a complete waste of time. You probably weren’t planning on this anyway. But, well, now you know.

 

Search for guides about measuring the success of your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and you’ll be met with an array of what are, in effect, glossaries—lists of metrics and accompanying definitions. Unfortunately, there’s very little information about organizing those metrics into an effective plan. 

In order to track your SEO activities in a valuable and sustainable way, you need to organize metrics into a broader long-term plan. What’s more, it’s crucial to leverage the right digital tools, preferably in a platform that allows you to manage data effectively and scale your strategy.

This post will show you how to craft a high-level SEO measurement strategy. We’ll also demonstrate how SEO tools strengthen reporting processes, with examples from BrightEdge, a software solution that provides dozens of features in a comprehensive enterprise SEO platform. 

1. Choose Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

A relevant selection of SEO metrics forms the foundation of a strategy that drives ongoing improvements to rankings.

However, it’s essential to remember that your chosen metrics should reflect the broader consensus about which outcomes are important within your business. Linking SEO targets to more general digital and organizational goals ensures they support the bigger picture.

When choosing KPIs, metric “glossaries” are helpful. Determine which metrics are meaningful in the context of your search strategy and high-level goals and use them as the basis for your reporting. If you’re in a growth phase and want to reach more audiences, focus on methods that reflect that. If you’re currently trying to improve the conversion process on your site, perhaps focus on site engagement through organic search and apply resources towards on-page.

Typically, the following metrics will be applicable: rankings, search traffic, organic conversions, engagement, and to a lesser extent, backlinks. That said, every company will have its own mix that mirrors its unique goals. 

Example: BrightEdge Keyword Reporting and Instant

Keyword Reporting and Instant are BrightEdge’s main rank-tracking tools. They generate reports over specified periods of weeks and months and on a daily basis.

Rank tracking is the bread and butter of SEO measurement, and fuels content creation and optimization of existing pages, among other things. 

Keyword Reporting and Instant provide the following functionality: 

• Keyword Reporting is an example of a dedicated feature that provides insights into keyword-focused ranking improvements and fluctuations. Reports are generated for specified periods and filtered based on device, location, search engine, and more. 
• Keyword Reporting also provides data related to organic impressions, clicks and traffic. 
• Instant provides real-time information about mobile and desktop rankings, across multiple locations and languages, thus giving an up-to-date picture of a site’s current keyword status. Instant also incorporates ranking information from search engines like YouTube and Amazon in addition to Google. 

 

2. Establish Metric-Based Targets

Once you have identified which metrics are important within your organization, use them to create tangible goals. 

Setting goals is tricky. In SEO, many variables can’t be fully manipulated. These include competitor activity, market share, and available resources for off-page optimization. Therefore, building a degree of flexibility into targets in these areas is essential. 

On the other hand, some aspects of SEO can be controlled. These include website optimization, indexation in search engines, and content creation. Goals relating to these activities can be more definite. 

Having clear goals is also beneficial from a strategic standpoint. Highlighting a single central metric—or a small handful of metrics—that adequately encompasses the bulk of your SEO efforts provides a tangible performance barometer for stakeholders.

Often, high-level individuals will not be interested in the minutiae of their organization’s SEO strategy, and you might find eyes glazing over if you start elaborating on the formulas underpinning custom KPIs. Simplifying your important metrics makes show-and-telling the SEO story easier.

Example: BrightEdge SEO Dashboards

BrightEdge’s Storybuilder is our data visualization tool for dashboarding, and is used for generating insights, presenting search-related activity, and making forecasts. 

It has the following core features:

• StoryBuilder enables SEOs to present search improvements in an understandable way, often by amalgamating various metrics. This provides flexibility in reporting and allows users to include the data that matters most to their organization, which is very important.
• Progress can be framed in terms of specific questions like “Are we getting more organic visits?” and “Are conversions increasing?”. This helps stakeholders visualize complex data sets, particularly in the context of traffic, conversions and sales.

3. Set a Viable Reporting Cadence 

There are two categories of SEO metrics: those tracked within an SEO department for managing daily tasks and those used to brief stakeholders. 

Be clear about how often in-depth reports will be published and distributed within your organization. This may also apply to briefs about what’s happening in the search landscape. 

Equally, it’s important to clarify which metrics you require to monitor day-to-day tasks. For example, SEOs often check Google Search Console daily for information about crawlability and indexability on their websites. Additionally, weekly technical crawls during off-peak hours is a good way to stay up to date with website health.

It’s also crucial to manage stakeholder expectations. Agree on goals and KPIs from the very beginning, so when you report on them in the future you’re all on the same journey. And recognize that SEO metrics should be differentiated from marketing metrics when they incorporate financial data. Typically, stakeholders are interested in the bottom line, as opposed to indicators like share of voice, keyword rankings, quality of backlinks, and so on. And SEOs may not be able to provide this information directly, because organic search often has a big footprint in most attribution models.

Example: BrightEdge Daily Pulse and Data Cube

Daily Pulse and Data Cube provide up-to-date SEO health metrics that can be organized into understandable visual presentations for stakeholders. 

The tools provide the following features: 

• Pulse provides a daily overview of SEO activity. Metrics include an average keyword ranking, organic traffic, and ranking fluctuations. This information is helpful for both SEO departments and stakeholders in an organization looking for a digestible up-to-date snapshot. 
• Data Cube provides a long-term overview of content performance in terms of aggregate scores like total pages ranked in the top ten results on Google. Identifying trends usually takes a long time, and clear visualizations are essential for forecasting potential changes. 

4. Tie Rankings to Conversions and Return on Investment (ROI)

Tying rankings to conversions, and reporting on these regularly, is the best way to determine your SEO strategy's overall success

Ultimately, SEO is undertaken with a view to generating leads and driving revenue. All SEO activities, and the role of corresponding performance metrics, are geared towards this end, even if indirectly (there are corner cases where the goal isn’t revenue, like visibility or brand awareness).

The overall success of an SEO program is dependent on being able to attribute results to individual strategies. To do this, you need to correlate search ranking changes with engagement, conversions, sales, and revenue.

This might be hard to do using different softwares and trying to stitch together a story. A fully integrated software suite will enable you to connect organic traffic with conversions and compare the effectiveness of different marketing channels. 

Example: BrightEdge Site Report

Site Report is one of BrightEdge’s central reporting dashboards and is used to link SEO to various bottom-line metrics.

Site Report provides the following features:

• Tracking of revenue and sales from organic channels. 
• Ranking overviews of indexed pages and keyword groups compared to competitors. 
• Reports of clicks and impressions from organic site visitors. 
• Comparisons of the performance of different digital channels, like social media and paid ads. 

5. Monitor Competitor Activity

Measuring the activity of competitors is one of the best ways to determine the relative effectiveness of your SEO strategy. It will also ensure that you remain aware of tactics and practices that have been overlooked, particularly when adjusting to account for missing keywords and newly introduced on-page techniques. 

It is easy for SEOs to fall into the trap of assuming that they have covered all the bases, especially if they own a large share of the market, and become apathetic as a consequence. Monitoring competitors helps maintain humility within SEO departments and protects against overconfidence. There are a lot of competitive SEO tools that help identify who is who, but we’ll use one of our products in our platform to show you how we do it.

Example: BrightEdge Share of Voice

Share of Voice is BrightEdge’s tool for monitoring overall market share and presence. Share of Voice is a valuable aggregate metric for tracking comparative performance.

Share of Voice provides the following functionality:

• Tracking of competitor performance for keyword groups and measurement of your site’s share of voice. 
• Insights about competitor SEO activity like backlink strategies and on-page optimization. 
• Tracking of goals related to market presence. For example, if you own 10% of all keywords relevant to a certain product, you may set a goal to increase your share to 15%. Your progress can be measured using Share of Voice features. 

Conclusion

SEO measurement is about more than picking a handful of metrics and publishing monthly reports. It should tie in with your overall marketing and business goals. SEO that exists in a silo cannot be sustained over the long term, and to have an effective strategy you need to collaborate with other functions of the business including content, UX, engineering and more.

Similarly, it is vital to measure both positive and negative changes. Doing so allows you to identify where to allocate resources. SEOs often have a tendency to report exclusively on the good things, but in reality it’s the shortcomings that help you outline “what’s next?”.

Moreover, tools are critical when putting together an infrastructure that enables you to track all your SEO processes. And as discussed throughout this article, there are pain points in point solutions that can be overcome by using an enterprise SEO platform to help manage and govern your strategy.

With all that in mind, it’s probably time to start thinking about those all-important KPIs. Perhaps a cup of coffee first, though? 

More Resources

• The SEO Metrics That Matter Most
• Backlink Strategies
• 11 SEO Myths That Will Damage Your Rankings in 2022