SEO Analytics

Organic search drives an average of 53% of all website traffic according to industry research, making SEO one of the most valuable digital marketing channels. However, SEO success requires continuous measurement and optimisation based on data-driven insights across technical, content, and authority dimensions.

SEO analytics provide visibility into how search engines crawl and index your site, which keywords drive traffic, how users engage with organic content, and where opportunities exist for improvement. This data enables marketers to prioritise efforts, demonstrate ROI, and adapt to algorithm changes.

Visibility and Rankings

Keyword Rankings

Position of your pages in search results for target keywords. Track rankings for primary keywords (high volume, high intent) and long-tail variations. Monitor ranking changes over time to identify trends and algorithm impact. Focus on top 10 rankings as 75% of clicks go to first page results.

Search Visibility Score

Composite metric measuring overall search presence across keyword portfolio. Calculated by weighing rankings against search volume. Provides single number to track SEO health over time. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs provide proprietary visibility scores.

Share of Voice

Your brand's visibility compared to competitors for target keyword set. Calculated as percentage of total impressions your site receives. Helps benchmark performance and identify competitive gaps. Track by keyword category to understand strengths and weaknesses.

Traffic Metrics

Organic Sessions

Number of visits from organic search. Primary measure of SEO traffic impact. Segment by landing page, device, location, and keyword to understand traffic composition. Compare to paid search and other channels to evaluate channel mix.

Organic Users

Unique visitors from organic search. Differs from sessions when users visit multiple times. Important for understanding audience reach versus engagement frequency. Track new versus returning organic users to measure brand building versus demand capture.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Formula: (Clicks / Impressions) × 100

Percentage of search impressions that result in clicks. Average CTR varies by position: position 1 averages 28%, position 2 drops to 15%, position 3 to 11%. Low CTR despite good rankings indicates title and meta description optimisation opportunities.

Engagement Metrics

Bounce Rate

Percentage of organic visitors who leave after viewing only one page. High bounce rates may indicate content mismatch with search intent, poor user experience, or slow page speed. Benchmark varies by page type: blog posts 70-90%, product pages 40-60%, landing pages 30-50%.

Pages Per Session

Average number of pages viewed per organic visit. Higher values suggest engaging content and effective internal linking. Segment by landing page to identify high-performing entry points. Compare to other channels to assess organic traffic quality.

Average Session Duration

Time users spend on site after arriving from organic search. Longer durations generally indicate relevant content and positive user experience. However, interpret carefully as quick exits may indicate users found answers quickly (positive for informational queries).

Conversion Metrics

Organic Conversion Rate

Formula: (Organic Conversions / Organic Sessions) × 100

Percentage of organic visitors who complete desired actions. Varies significantly by industry and conversion type. E-commerce sites average 2-3%, B2B lead generation 2-5%, SaaS trials 3-7%. Track by landing page and keyword to identify high-converting organic traffic sources.

Assisted Conversions

Conversions where organic search played a role but wasn't the final touchpoint. Critical for understanding SEO's full value as organic often serves as initial discovery channel. Use multi-touch attribution to credit organic appropriately in customer journey.

Revenue from Organic

Total revenue attributed to organic search traffic. Most important metric for demonstrating SEO business impact. Calculate ROI by comparing to SEO investment (tools, content, technical resources). Track trends to show growth over time.

Crawlability and Indexation

Crawl Budget: Number of pages search engines crawl on your site. Monitor crawl rate and errors in Google Search Console. Large sites should optimise crawl budget by blocking low-value pages and fixing crawl errors.

Index Coverage: Pages successfully indexed versus submitted. Track index status in Search Console to identify indexation issues. Common problems include blocked by robots.txt, noindex tags, duplicate content, and soft 404 errors.

Crawl Errors: Issues preventing search engines from accessing pages. Monitor 404 errors, server errors, and redirect chains. High error rates harm rankings and waste crawl budget. Prioritize fixing errors on high-value pages.

Site Speed and Core Web Vitals

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Time until main content loads. Target under 2.5 seconds. Poor LCP indicates slow server response, render-blocking resources, or large images. Direct ranking factor and impacts user experience.

First Input Delay (FID): Time until page becomes interactive. Target under 100ms. Measures responsiveness. High FID caused by heavy JavaScript execution. Critical for mobile experience.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Visual stability during page load. Target under 0.1. Measures unexpected layout shifts. Caused by images without dimensions, dynamic content insertion, or web fonts loading. Impacts user experience and rankings.

Mobile Optimisation

Mobile Usability: Issues preventing good mobile experience. Check in Search Console for problems like text too small, clickable elements too close, or viewport not set. Google uses mobile-first indexing, making mobile optimisation critical.

Mobile Page Speed: Load time on mobile devices. Often slower than desktop due to network constraints. Target under 3 seconds. Use mobile-specific optimisations like responsive images and reduced JavaScript.

Keyword Performance

Track which keywords drive traffic, their search volume, ranking position, and conversion rates. Identify quick wins (page 2 rankings that could reach page 1 with optimisation). Find content gaps where competitors rank but you don't. Monitor keyword cannibalisation where multiple pages compete for same term.

Content Decay

Measure traffic decline on older content. Content naturally loses rankings over time as competitors publish fresher material. Identify pages experiencing decay and prioritise for updates. Refreshing content with new data, examples, and optimisation can recover lost rankings.

Featured Snippet Opportunities

Track keywords where you rank on page 1 but don't own featured snippet. Featured snippets capture significant click share. Optimize content structure with clear answers, lists, and tables to win snippets. Monitor snippet ownership and losses.

Content ROI

Calculate return on content investment by comparing traffic, conversions, and revenue to content creation costs. Identify content types and topics with highest ROI. Use insights to inform content strategy and resource allocation. Track content performance over lifetime, not just initial publication.

Domain Authority / Domain Rating

Proprietary scores (Moz's DA, Ahrefs' DR) predicting ranking ability based on backlink profile. Higher scores correlate with better rankings. Track your score and compare to competitors. Focus on earning links from high-authority domains to improve score.

Total Backlinks

Number of external links pointing to your site. More backlinks generally improve rankings, but quality matters more than quantity. Monitor backlink growth rate. Sudden drops may indicate lost links or negative SEO. Track referring domains (unique sites linking to you) as more important metric than total links.

Link Quality

Assess backlinks by authority of linking domain, relevance to your niche, anchor text, and link placement. Links from authoritative, relevant sites in main content are most valuable. Monitor for toxic links (spam, PBNs) that could trigger penalties. Use disavow tool for harmful links you can't remove.

Link Velocity

Rate of new backlink acquisition. Sudden spikes may appear unnatural to search engines. Steady, organic growth is ideal. Track competitor link velocity to benchmark performance. Identify link building opportunities by analyzing competitor backlink sources.

Google Search Console

Free tool providing data directly from Google. Essential for monitoring search performance, index coverage, mobile usability, and Core Web Vitals. Shows actual queries driving traffic and average positions. Submit sitemaps and monitor crawl errors. Primary tool for technical SEO monitoring.

Google Analytics 4

Track organic traffic, user behavior, and conversions. Create segments for organic traffic analysis. Set up goals and e-commerce tracking to measure SEO ROI. Use landing page reports to identify high-performing content. Integrate with Search Console for combined keyword and behavior data.

SEO Platforms

Comprehensive tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz provide rank tracking, backlink analysis, keyword research, site audits, and competitor intelligence. Choose based on feature needs and budget. Most valuable for competitive analysis and opportunity identification that Google tools don't provide.

Technical SEO Tools

Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and DeepCrawl crawl your site to identify technical issues. Find broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and structural problems. Essential for large sites with complex architectures. Schedule regular crawls to catch issues before they impact rankings.

On-Page Optimisation

Optimize title tags (include primary keyword, keep under 60 characters), meta descriptions (compelling copy with call-to-action, under 160 characters), header tags (H1 for main topic, H2-H6 for structure), and content (comprehensive coverage of topic, natural keyword usage, answer user intent). Include internal links to related content.

Content Strategy

Create content targeting keywords with search volume and conversion potential. Focus on search intent: informational (how-to guides, tutorials), navigational (brand searches), transactional (product pages, comparisons), and commercial (reviews, best-of lists). Update existing content regularly to maintain freshness and relevance.

Technical Optimisation

Improve site speed through image optimisation, code minification, caching, and CDN usage. Implement structured data markup for rich snippets. Ensure mobile responsiveness. Fix crawl errors and broken links. Optimize site architecture with logical hierarchy and internal linking. Submit XML sitemaps.

Link Building

Earn backlinks through creating linkable assets (original research, tools, comprehensive guides), digital PR and outreach, guest posting on relevant sites, broken link building, and unlinked brand mentions. Focus on quality over quantity. Avoid black-hat tactics like link buying or PBNs.