SE Optimization SE Tactics Website Traffic

3 SEO Metrics You Are Wasting Your Time With (and What to Focus on Instead)

“SEO is everything,” any marketer will tell you. It’s the official mantra for anyone who’s working in the business, and you’ve most likely already found yourself reading countless articles about the tips and tricks you can use to improve your SEO strategy.

At some point, all these articles will inevitably mention the importance of keeping a close eye on your metrics. But truth be told, not all metrics are created equal, and you don’t have to track everything under the sun to get an accurate idea of how your strategy is performing. In fact, some metrics are flat out useless and don’t bring any value into the mix.

Here’s a list of metrics that you are wasting your time on, from a small SEO agency and what they think you should focus on instead.

1. Social Media Followers

Here’s the truth: the number of people following your business on social media is not important. Sure, it can make you feel good to see that your content is reaching a wide audience, but don’t assume that just because you have a lot of followers on your page, then your organic ranking will increase automatically. More often than not, these high numbers don’t convey any real value to your SEO strategy.

There are numerous pages out there with over 10,000 followers, but when you start looking through their posts, you can see that most of them don’t generate any reaction from the audience: no likes, no comments, and no shares.

So instead of looking at how many people are following you, look at your social media engagement rates. If you want to turn those followers into qualified leads, then focus on building a meaningful relationship with them. Post captivating content, ask them thought provoking questions and catch their attention with gorgeous visuals.

2. Traffic

It’s every marketer’s morning ritual: pour a cup of coffee and log into their Analytics to check their website traffic. Of course, knowing how many users have visited your website is important, especially in the early stages when your website is new and just gaining traction. But, traffic rates don’t tell the entire story.

Let’s say you’ve managed to bring 1,000 people to your website in a day. You may feel like you’ve done an excellent job, but did you also check what those users did on your website?

Did they sign up for the newsletter? Did they spend any time on a particular page and read your articles? Did they buy anything?

Traffic rates tell you how many people you’ve made curious enough to click on your link, but what really matters is what happens after that. Getting 100,000 new users to your website is great, but if your conversion rate is low, then they’re essentially worthless.

Check for bounce rate, most visited pages, and the number of sales to see if what you’re doing is helping your business or not.

3. Keyword Density

It is mind-blowing that some people still believe that the more keywords they put in a text, the more chances they have at ranking their content high in search results.  

It’s just not true anymore. Search engines have become a lot better at identifying natural language and cramming your articles with keywords won’t do you any good. In fact, spammy content can get you a penalty and affect your SEO efforts instead of advancing them. So, focus on creating high-quality content rather than trying to figure out how many instances of your primary keyword you should use.

In Other Words

The metrics you follow should paint a more nuanced picture of your marketing strategy, and not just give you a bunch of numbers with no real value. So, stay away from vanity metrics that make you feel good and focus on those that can help you take actionable steps and improve your strategy.

 

About the author

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Chris Jansen

Chris Jansen is an SEO Specialist who has been working in the industry for close to 5 years. Writing quality content and publishing articles across multiple reputable websites. Helping to inform new and current business professionals is what Chris strives to do.