How to measure the performance of your SEO campaign

Business Development | Digital Marketing

Have you ever been a busy fool?

I know I have. 

When you’re marketing your company, every activity counts because every activity costs, both in terms of time and money. So it’s important to assess whether your marketing campaign is actually having an impact on your bottom line or not. 

In this blog, we look at how you can measure the performance of your SEO campaign. We want your campaigns to get you the results that you want, not end up being an abyss of busyness.

1. Identify your goals

The first step to measuring the performance of your SEO campaign should begin before you even design and implement the campaign. 

What are your goals? What are you trying to achieve?

Are you…

1. Wanting to improve brand awareness?
2. Wanting to generate more leads?
3. Wanting to improve domain authority?
4. Wanting to improve your ranking in the search engine result pages (and if so, for which keywords)?
5. Wanting to improve engagement on your website?
6. Wanting to grow your social media audience?

It might be that you have one main aim (for most businesses, this will be “get more leads”), and several mini-goals that would support that one aim. So, getting more leads might mean you also need to improve your rank in the search engine results pages (as most of your leads come from organic search engine results). 

Whatever it is, define it. 

You should then build your campaign, adding activities that will help you achieve your goals. 

Interested in an SEO campaign? Learn more.

2. Identify what signals you should see

Now, when you’re heading towards that goal, there will be signs on the way that you’re getting close. Figure out what they might be… here are some ideas… it’s not comprehensive. 

Goal	Potential “signals” that you’re achieving them.
Improve brand awareness	You have more enquiries coming through from your website higher proportion of the users landing on your website are converting into leads.
Generate more leads	You have more enquiries coming through from your website. A higher proportion of the users landing on your website are converting into leads.
Improve domain authority	Your domain authority score improves on an SEO tool. The number of third-party websites that are linking to your website has increased.
Improve your rank in the search results	Individual pages start ranking higher. You start ranking for more search terms
Improve engagement on your website	The engagement rate improves (e.g. users are looking at more than one page of your website when they land on it or are completing a goal you have set up, such as downloading a file)
Grow your social media audience	The number of users following your company page increases. The number of users viewing your content increases

3. Identify your key questions

Using these “signals” each month or quarter, you should ask yourself a question:

Has [insert signal] in comparison to the previous period?

Here are some examples:

• Has our social media audience grown this month in comparison with last?
• Has the number of impressions of our site increased this quarter compared with last quarter?
• Has the amount of traffic coming into the site increased since last quarter?

These three questions will be the three questions you answer every month/quarter when you measure how well your campaign is doing. 

How often should you measure your campaign’s performance?

From experience, I know that “signals” can fluctuate throughout the year. Every industry is different, and some will experience natural “lulls”. It’s a bit like the Christmas effect – psychologically we know that everything’s going to shut down over Christmas, so we put off starting new projects “until the New Year”. 

So, it’s important not to over-analyse and spend every week collecting reams of data. Plus, SEO is a long-term process that builds up over the years, so we can’t expect to do a month’s activity to bring strong results (although great if it does!).

It’s better to get a series of “views” to assess whether the overall landscape is improving – a bit like looking at one object from several angles. 

Therefore, I tend to measure one month, compared with the previous, and then one quarter compared with the previous quarter. Then, the month with the same month last year. It helps me build a more comprehensive picture of what’s going on. 

4. Look for data 

Now you need to figure out, where would you find the data for your “signals”?

Let’s take one of these and use it as an example. 

Campaign Aim: You want to improve brand awareness
Signal	Data source
Your social media audience grows	Social media channel analytics (if you’re the admin, you’ll get access to this information for free)
The number of impressions your website has online improves	Google Search Console account
The amount of traffic coming into your website increases	Google Analytics account

Many of these signals will require you to use SEO tools to help you measure them. There are lots of tools out there that include free trials. They’re great for… 

• Comparing how your website is performing in comparison to your competitors, and also for 
• Tracking how well you’re ranking for individual keywords.
• Analysing your backlink profile (e.g. how many backlinks you’re gaining, from which sites and where they’re linking to on your website). 

A selection of SEO tools with free trials include:

• Ahrefs, 
• SEMrush, 
• Ubersuggest, 
• Moz, 

Google provides lots of tools that are free too. These tools are great for measuring the data that is private to your website, such as: 

• The amount of traffic coming into your website (and where it’s coming from)
• The number of enquiries you’re getting
• The way users are interacting with your website – e.g. downloading files or scrolling through pages. 

Some of Google’s tools include:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console

Most social media platforms also give you access to data on how many users are visiting and engaging with your website. 

5. Reflect, revise, analyse

Once you’ve run one campaign, you can then look at all the data to determine whether your campaign has been successful. To do this, ask yourself:

• Have you met the aims of your campaign?
• To what extent have you met them?
• Has the campaign revealed any new opportunities that you can capitalise on?
• Do you need to change your strategy? (e.g. try email marketing rather than blog writing)
• To what extent do you need to change your strategy? (e.g. increase the volume of blogs)

You can then change your strategy ready for your next campaign. 

Measure performance: work backwards from your goals

The real key to performance measurement is to work backwards from your marketing objectives and to make sure you define these aims before you even start the campaign itself. Once you’ve identified what signals to look for, you need to look for an overall pattern, rather than worry about the microdetail. 

This might be easier said than done, particularly if you’re working within an organisation that has a culture of worrying about the details. But, making sure you’re gathering accurate information that answers your key questions each month, quarter and year, can help you review and revise your digital marketing plans. 

By tuning in to the insights that numbers are throwing at you, you’re practically guaranteeing your SEO game is on fire, bringing in that online success that you’re working hard to achieve.