Historically search engine optimisation was measured on where a website would rank on a search engine on a given keyword. At to a lesser degree that is still true today. The problem with that historic measure is just how much websites below the top 2 results move. Looking at rankings as the only measure for a website on search engines is a very short-term way of viewing the discipline. It can create knee jerk decisions and has the possibility to make matters worse.

The best way to measure search engine optimisation is the volume of traffic coming through to the website alongside smaller measure like rankings, technical tests on the website and backlink achievements. If search engine optimisation isn’t working the level of traffic to a website will either be static or decreasing, we expect a well-oiled website to improve in traffic.
With local search engine optimisation rankings are less fragile in movement and so at Spirus we use that a little more in the mix, but nationally a website owner has to look long term and check traffic, plus a website owner needs to understand patterns.

Looking away from traffic and rankings for a second there are some other key measures to understand how your website is performing:

1. Bounce rate – bounce rate shows the number of visitors who see one page then go away from a website. If your bounce rate is high, your kerb appeal is low or visitors aren’t getting the content they expect
2. Backlink quantity but importantly quality, we want high authority domains linking back to your site
3. Time spent on site – does it match others in the industry, are people flying too soon?
4. Domain Authoirty – we want backlinks to have high authority as well as increase the authority of the websites we are servicing
5. Organic traffic – how much of your traffic comes from search engines, the simplest and easiest measure to miss
At Spirus, we generate a report every month with the above metrics on and a RAG listed to do list, for more information, drop us a line.