How to Check Website SEO Performance Like a Pro

Every brand needs to develop a data-driven search engine optimization plan. However, before you begin, you must first learn how to track your website's SEO rankings before you can improve its SEO. Although achieving rankings for strategically crucial keywords indicates that your strategy is effective, the difference in organic traffic between a top-10 and a top-3 ranking might be substantial.

Several readily available, free tools can help you easily check website SEO performance. Let's review how to utilize some of the most valuable tools in this blog to analyze your SEO results.

Seven Metrics to Measure Your SEO Performance

Before we get to the tools, you need to get an idea of what metrics you need to look for when analyzing your performance; we’ve listed them below:

  1. Search engine results page (SERP) position: Monitor your average and keyword-specific search engine rankings. By observing branded and non-branded phrases, aim for first or second-page rankings.
  2. Impressions: Track how frequently your website appears in search results. Even when there are few clicks, measuring impressions aids in determining visibility and keyword relevancy.
  3. Organic search traffic: Monitor the number of visits from organic search results. Make an effort to differentiate between branded and non-branded traffic and perform keyword or source analysis.
  4. Click-through rate (CTR): This examines how users click on your page when it appears in the results. A higher CTR indicates appealing titles and descriptions.
  5. Engagement rate: This gauges how many visitors stay on your website. A healthy engagement rate, ideally between 60 and 70%, indicates influential, pertinent information.
  6. Domain authority: Use third-party tools such as Moz to monitor the authority your website has acquired from high-quality backlinks. They are reliable measures of rank potential.
  7. Technical site health: Check your website frequently for mistakes like broken links or missing metadata. Resolving these technological problems improves SEO performance overall.

Free Analysis Tools

Two of Google’s efficient analysis tools can come to your rescue when you need to check the SEO performance of your website. You can also explore advanced SEO automation tools that simplify keyword tracking and reporting.

Google developed the Search Console tool to monitor how well a website performs on its search engine. It is cost-free and straightforward to use; here’s how you can get started:

First, take these actions to confirm that you are the domain's owner:

  • Enter the URL of the particular site you want to examine in the "URL prefix" field, or your domain in the "domain" field.
  • Locate the Performance section on the menu sidebar to the left of your results. Click the "Search Results" tab under it.
  • Click " queries " to view a list of every search phrase your website or page currently ranks for.
  • To view your average position for each query, click the "average position" above the line chart.
  • You can also change the period you're viewing by selecting the "Date" option above the chart.

    After you’ve done the steps above, you’ll be able to see:
  • Every search term for which your website is now ranked.
  • Where you are ranked for that search term in Google SERPs.
  • Which SERP pages show up.
  • How many hits and impressions does this search generate for your URL.
  • The URL's click-through rate in various search engine results pages.

Next comes Google Analytics. This tool offers data on all traffic sources, including organic search, sponsored search, social media, direct visits, and more, whereas Search Console just concentrates on Google organic (or unpaid) traffic.

You can utilize GA to learn how well your pages are performing in terms of metrics like views, events, and conversions after using GSC to evaluate how they are performing in SERPS. You can determine which of your SEO efforts are yielding the best results by searching for correlations between SERP and performance.

Apart from these two free tools, there are some efficient paid tools that you can use to analyze your website's SEO performance; they include:

  1. Semrush: A popular SEO and content marketing tool, Semrush has an easy-to-use interface that allows users to quickly evaluate SERP ranks, search term data, technical SEO audits, backlink monitoring, and more.
  2. Ahrefs: With its extensive toolkit that includes competitor backlink research, keyword rank tracking, and keyword analysis via its in-house web crawler, AhrefsBot, Ahrefs is a trustworthy source for current and accurate SEO data.
  3. Moz Pro: Moz Pro is an all-in-one SEO toolkit with site crawling, keyword discovery, rank tracking, and configurable reporting tools. It provides thorough insights and analysis customized to your brand's requirements.

Conclusion

Assessing your website's SEO success involves more than monitoring rankings; it also entails figuring out how each component of your website affects visibility, traffic, and conversions, using the powerful tools mentioned in this blog. Maintaining data-driven, focused, and successful SEO initiatives requires regular monitoring.