How to measure your SEO progress?

The single most important success metric of any SEO campaign is what?

A. The number of keywords the site is ranking for
B. The number of relevant keywords the site is ranking for
C. The volume of organic traffic
D. The ranking increases of the target keywords
E. The number of leads and sales from organic traffic
F. Money

If you answered F, you’re correct! You money-grabbing capitalist, you! SEO is a marketing activity, and the point of marketing is to sell stuff and make money. So, really, the only thing that is worth a damn in the long term is how much time or money you put into SEO and what you get out.

Whilst your website’s ranking is increasing, there will be a period of time where the ‘money’ metric is not moving much or is going in the wrong direction. This is perfectly normal as there’s a period of investment required to ‘sow’ authority and content before you start to ‘reap’ the increased ranking and financial rewards. So, if your friend is three months into SEO for their brand new website and complaining that they’re not seeing a total return on their investment yet, have a quiet word. To add a second asterisk, the ‘money’ also depends on other non-SEO variables (website performance, sales process, product-market fit, etc.).

For this reason, all of the above metrics are useful in tracking the performance of an SEO campaign and we’ll look at how to track each one in turn.