The Most Important SEO Metrics You Should Follow In 2023

To be truly successful as an SEO professional, you have to be aware of current SEO trends. Moreover, you need to be able to predict what practices will work for you and your brand in the future. 

Your goal is to rank as high as possible in search engines, so you need to develop SEO strategies that will help you achieve it. But how do you know these strategies are worthwhile?

It's simple! 

Keeping track of SEO metrics provides you with valuable insight into the performance of your products and/or services. It also helps you determine which strategies are working in your favor and which are not.

The question you might be asking yourself is, which ranking factors should you consider when there are so many of them?

This article will list the most important SEO metrics to follow in order to keep your client base and business growing in 2023.

1. Organic traffic and some (organic) food for thought

The one SEO metric that gives you even more insight than what's trending and what's not is organic traffic.

Organic traffic tells you the number of visits to your site that aren't paid for. For example, when someone finds your site in search results, then clicks on the link and lands on your page, such visits count as organic traffic. 

The higher the organic traffic, the better, because your leads and conversions are also likely to increase. 

You have the option to track organic traffic by country or by landing page. 

The location can help you determine where most of your clients are based, which, in turn, allows you to focus your SEO strategy on a target country or area.

As for landing pages, if you notice that some are performing better than others, analyze the top-ranking content. Evaluate what you did differently on those pages and apply the same rules across the entire site.

But how do you plan an SEO strategy to get more organic traffic? 

If you're not sure where and how to begin, a good SEO agency can be a great help. Check out this list of top SEO agencies created by a Denver SEO company. Use filters to rank companies by price, location, and more and find the agency that works best for you.

2. Keywords as keys to SEO

Despite the constant changes in search engine algorithms and page rankings, tracking keywords can still give you insight into whether your current SEO plan is fruitful or your keyword selection needs work.

For example, if your clients' organic traffic is increasing but target keyword rankings are not improving, that usually means that the keywords are not effective and need to be updated. 

When deciding on keywords, it's important to understand the target audience and the users' search intent. Only then can you create a list of the keywords that have the highest search volume and target them.

3. A little CTR never hurt nobody 

Even if you get to number one in the search results, your meta title might not be easy to spot because of your competitors' featured snippets, ads, and "people also ask" sections. So, instead of focusing only on your ranking in the SERPs, you should also focus on click-through rates, i.e., CTRs.

You can increase your CTRs by analyzing your competition and applying some of their tactics to your content. Pay attention to their meta titles and meta descriptions and take into account the keywords used in Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.

Then, improve your metadata accordingly and make your links hard to miss!

4. Long-form content for long-term top SERPs 

No other type of content generates as much constant traffic as long-form content.

The explanation for this is quite simple; a longer piece of content requires the user to read it for a longer period of time. Consequently, this ensures Google sends you more traffic through search rankings.

5. Local success calls for local visibility

If your business has physical locations, you might want to direct your attention towards local visibility in order to gain more clients, which will ultimately lead to making more sales.

How do you achieve this?

What you need to aim for is your business appearing in search results when people insert the name of your city and your industry in the search engine. 

6. Images are taking over the world (and SEO too)

User experience is tightly linked to correctly marked and optimized images. Apart from adding to the general aesthetics of a website, the pictures actually invite users to click on them in order to find out more information or even make a purchase.

High-quality images, relevant to the content and marked with alt tags and original file names, will inevitably attract more users and ensure more traffic.

7. Customer experience is king

Customer experience has the most serious effect on your search rankings. And it will continue to do so in 2023 as well.

If the content you are providing makes people spend more time on your website, Google's algorithm makes note of users finding your content relevant and informative. What happens next is that you rise in the rankings and more users are introduced to what you have to offer. 

If you want to achieve this optimal, win-win outcome, your focus should be on curating the customer experience so that both you and your clients' desires align. 

8. Stay back-to-back with backlinks

In up-and-coming trends, backlinks will remain a relevant factor in SEO. 

The importance of backlinks can be explained through a simple equation: more backlinks from high-quality domains equals an advantage over pages with similar on-page metrics, but fewer backlinks.

However, the backlinks mustn't come from low-quality domains as that will not help you reach better rankings. So, keep both quality and quantity in mind.

Keeping track of backlinks can provide you with significant insight into how efficient your existing SEO efforts are. But how do you track them?

You can rely on SEO analytics and a tool for backlink monitoring. But choose carefully. The tool you decide to use should refresh quickly enough to track new backlinks appearing online, compile follow and no-follow links separately, and track gained or lost backlinks over a period of time. 

9. The rise of the machine learning

If Google is doing it, so should you.

The advantage of machine learning is that, instead of doing things on your own, certain tasks can be performed by computers alone based on rules you create. From that perspective, outsourcing has never been easier.

You can assign analytical work to the machine and simply have the strategies on how to optimize your SEO delivered to you based on the computer-processed data.

BI tools (Business Intelligence tools) are growing in popularity as they successfully add to human-based efforts and insights, so keep an eye on them. 

10. Mobiles are the new PCs

There's a high probability you are reading this article on your mobile device. Am I correct?

And that isn't surprising at all. The majority of users visit search engines and other websites via phone. Therefore, remember to ensure your website is mobile-friendly in order to achieve high SEO rankings. 

11. Google other search engines 

Or Yahoo them, or DuckDuckGo them. Expand your knowledge of other search engines and websites (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) in order to improve your SEO. 

Having search engines other than Google referring to your website could increase your traffic, thus improving your chances for conversion, especially if you are regionally oriented.

Conclusion

Remember, everyone is trying their best to be number one in search results. However, the healthiest thing to do is to devise strategies suitable for your specific business and the goals you have set to achieve. 

Therefore, the best approach is definitely to focus on tracking SEO metrics that play the most important role in your particular business.