How to measure SEO results

SEO results can be measured by different metrics. Some metrics measure SEO efforts only, some reflect a mix of factors. Everyone wants to pay by SEO results only. Fair enough, but how are you going to measure the SEO results?

The Goal

How to measure SEO results and SEO pay for results only?

The ultimate goal of any website is money ..er, visitors. Money depends on:

Visitors (quantity and relevance)
Site (user-friendliness)
Product (quality and usefulness)
Reputation (trustworthiness and customer service)

The key to visitors is SEO. How to measure the SEO results then?

Basic SEO measures

ROI

Stakeholders would measure the effectiveness of SEO with ROI. We are able to measure money going out. But money in?

Traffic.

The most rough and expressive measure is growth in visits. Traffic then compared to traffic now. 3 month periods with yearly intervals. Visitors are countable.

There can be a ceiling, size of a particular niche. Traffic above that is waste of money, surplus visitors are irrelevant.

There is natural growth. Even an unoptimised site gains better rankings by time, some random backlinks, it can go viral without any SEM.

More SEO measures

Other SEO measures reflect the quality of traffic and site both, and indicate what should be improved.

Conversion ratio.

Reflects the relevance of traffic SEO has sent and the quality of site. What are the goals?
Well, men in SEO can tell you what are your goals.

Rankings

Higher ranking, more visitors. Relevance. Personalised search. Regional searches. Measuring is a laborious job. The goal is probably visitors, not just a position. Rankings impress stakeholders most.

Number of links.

Outsource cheap services from overseas. Links result in rankings and traffic. One link can be worth 1000 other links.

Number of keywords driving traffic.

Shows general exposure. Haze vs focus. Re-le-vance.

Pageviews, pages per visit, bounce rate, avgerage time on site

Shows the relevance of traffic and the quality of site, hinting how you should improve your site.

In conclusion

Visits count.
Conversions count even more. Define the goals and base line first.