SEO metrics that matter in 2024

As someone who has been involved in search engine optimization (SEO) for almost a decade now, I know how important it is to track metrics. While not all metrics are of equal value, it’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of your online performance.

From my observations and practical experience, there are a few SEO metrics that really matter in 2024. Specifically, these can be divided into on-page and off-page. Nevertheless, they will be essential to your concerted efforts to ensure that you skyrocket your SEO performance.

So without further ado, here are the metrics I measure and monitor and recommend for highly effective SEO efforts.

Related: Experts share the 5 things you need to understand about SEO in 2024

Keyword research and analysis

I would like to start by mentioning the importance of keyword research and analysis. This should be the foundation of any SEO strategy. However, choosing the right keywords can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.

This is where using the right tools comes into play. And once you have these tools at your fingertips, use them wisely. Whether you’re creating a sales page or a blog article, consider your users’ search intent when looking for the right keywords.

A sales page with informational keywords will flop. The same applies to a blog article with keywords that have a commercial search intent. Match the right keywords with your specific content type. For example, a commercial page should have keywords with commercial search intent, and a blog article should have keywords with informational search intent.

Once you’ve narrowed down your list of keywords, created your content, and published it, track performance. Analyzing keyword data is essential to inform your SEO strategies. Measure aspects like search engine rankings, keyword rankings, total organic traffic and other criteria to ensure you’re on the right track.

Page speed and mobile friendliness

The impact of page speed on SEO is huge. Many, if not most, online users feel a sense of frustration when they click on a page that takes more than three seconds to open. In our world of instant gratification, people want fast-loading websites that are easy to navigate. Confused about how to optimize your page speed performance? A few tips worth considering include:

• Compress your images

• Avoid hosting videos locally

• Use a quality hosting plan

• Avoid too many animations

• Minimize external resources

• Minimize HTTP requests

• Optimize performance with Redis Caching

• Enable GZIP compression

• Use accelerated mobile pages

• Reduce the number of redirects

A related page speed factor ensures that your site is mobile friendly. Yes, our world is becoming more and more mobile first, and if your website doesn’t flow and display smoothly on mobile, you’ve just frustrated your users and lost them to the competition. So basically, with these strategies, you can keep your website’s load speed low and watch user satisfaction increase when you track this metric.

Related: 8 Ways to Speed ​​Up Your Site (And Why It Matters to Your Business)

Content quality and relevance

Measuring content quality and relevance can be a tough nut to crack. Despite this, it is still important to do so. There are several measurements in this room that I always keep an eye on. These include:

• Traffic

• Rejection rate

• Length of stay

• Social shares

• Backlinks (for more on this, see my discussion below)

• Conversions

• Revenue and/or return on investment

Each of these metrics, when viewed as a whole, will tell you whether your content is resonating with your target audience. Another aspect I consider in this regard is not only publishing new content but also updating older articles to ensure that my website or my clients’ websites are working optimally at any given time. Remember that SEO is a long-term game. It is an ongoing process that requires continued and dedicated effort for overall success.

Link building and authority

And now I come to the crown jewel of SEO: link building. Getting backlinks to your site from other authoritative sites has been described by many in the industry as securing a vote of confidence in the quality of your online presence. But there are good backlinks and bad backlinks. This is why key metrics to monitor when it comes to your backlink profile should include:

When it comes to how to build high quality backlinks, there are many strategies that you can follow. However, I do recommend the skyscraper approach, resource link exchanges, and a few subcategories of outreach such as guest posting. Ultimately, you want your online presence to dominate. And to achieve this, you need to show that you are trustworthy, authoritative and most importantly – trustworthy.

Conversion rates and user experience

Measuring conversion rates involves a bit of an analytical approach. In a nutshell, it’s a numbers game. But measuring user experience goes beyond numbers and into the qualitative realm. Both of these metrics are important for SEO. And while conversion rates can easily be measured by the number of new customers your business has acquired, your users’ experience can be measured using the following approaches:

Ultimately, when it comes to boosting your SEO efforts to drive conversions through a great user experience, you’ll want to implement A/B testing and conduct various experiments to ensure your approach is as refined as possible.

Related: User experience is the most important metric you’re not measuring

And that’s it, folks: the most important SEO metrics that matter in 2024. I can’t stress enough the importance of tracking and optimizing your SEO metrics to your entrepreneurial success. After all, if you have an online presence, you need to build, nurture and grow it to reap the benefits.

With this in mind, if you haven’t yet started tracking some of these metrics, it’s important to do so while pairing the metrics with a combination of the right SEO strategies and approaches. The rewards for your business and online presence will be phenomenal.