Seek Social Talks SEO: Part 4 – Measuring Your SEO & Social Optimisation Success

Seek Social are back again with part four of our in-depth look at Search Engine Optimisation! In previous blogs we’ve already spoken about the basics of SEO, the art of link building, and social optimisation. This week the SEO expert team at the leading digital marketing company in Bury will move on to address a crucial final step in the process… How do you measure your success? Just how do you know if your SEO, social media marketing or social optimisation work is… well… working?

Analysis is such an important step in proper investigation, that it’s part of the scientific method. You wouldn’t expect a scientist to perform an experiment and then not observe what happens, would you? Yet, any good social media company, digital marketing company or SEO expert will tell you this… If you don’t make proper use of the analytics tools at your disposal after enacting a social media marketing campaign or performing any SEO or social optimisation work – that’s effectively what you’re doing.

The first steps in SEO & social optimisation analysis

Every SEO expert had to start somewhere – including us. We definitely understand that all those lines, charts and numbers can get confusing. As a result, Seek Social’s first move today is to de-mystify all those metrics and help you – or your marketing company – make sense of everything. Below, we’ve outlined a few key indicators of SEO, social optimisation, and social media marketing success. We have spilt these into two broader sections focused on metrics that are more useful for ‘traditional’ SEO, and those that are more geared towards social optimisation. However, we want to stress that each of the five metrics we mention are useful for both. Without further ado then… These are the things that you, your SEO expert, or your digital marketing company should be keeping regular tabs on:

For ‘Traditional’ SEO:

Organic Traffic:
Essentially this is how much traffic the web page (or site) receives over a given time period. If you’re doing your SEO, social optimisation and social media marketing right, this should be trending upwards.

Bounce Rate:
This indicates how many people, on average, click your website and leave after only a few seconds. Here, low numbers are what you want. A high bounce rate signifies to search engines that your website doesn’t deliver when it comes to useful, relevant content, and will hold you back in the rankings.

Keyword Rankings:
Here, what you’re really looking for is movement. If you’re moving up in the rankings for your chosen keyword, then it means your social media marketing content, social media company or SEO expert are getting the job done. However, you need to be on the lookout for any keywords that are trending downwards… This could mean that someone else has targeted that keyword too, and you need to put some work in to keep your spot.

For Social Optimisation:

Click-through Rate:
CTR is a ratio of how often users – when presented with a link – clicked on it to be taken to its destination. A high CTR is good. It signifies that your web copy or social media marketing content is relevant and helpful… In turn, this will help you move up the rankings.

Likes & Shares:
For measuring the overall success of social media marketing content – whether or not it contains a link – the number of likes and shares a post gets is what you want to be looking at. The more, the better!

How can I track these things?

There are a number of tools out there to help you, your social media company, or SEO expert UK monitor the metrics that are important to you. For instance, Seek Social have already mentioned Google Analytics in a previous blog. Google Analytics is great for keeping tabs on your standard website SEO… That is, ‘on-page’ work (content and keywords), and ‘off-page’ work (link building). However, as any top digital marketing company should – we know that Google is not the only way. For monitoring the success of your social media marketing and social optimisation, there’s nothing wrong with using the tools native to your platforms of choice… Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and Twitter Analytics will show you all of the information you need on their own.

However, there exist third party tools that will pull all of this data together into one convenient package. In fact, if you’re going to outsource your SEO work to a digital marketing company or social media company, use of one of these tools is something that we suggest you look for. Of course, we have always maintained that SEO is something that you can attempt yourself… But in this case doing it well is never guaranteed. Fear not though. No matter whether you want that guarantee of quality, or just some pointers that will help you take on social optimisation and SEO yourself, the SEO expert team at Bury’s best full-service social media company and digital marketing company can help. Get in touch today to find out more, by calling 0161 761 1800, or emailing hello@seeksocial.co.uk!