As someone who has been involved in search engine optimization (SEO) for nearly a decade now, I know how important tracking metrics is. While not every metric has the same value, it's essential to keep your finger on the pulse of your online performance.

From my observations and practical experience, there are some SEO metrics that really matter in 2024. Specifically, these can be divided into on page and off page those. However, they will be crucial to your concerted efforts to ensure you skyrocket your SEO performance.

So without further ado, here are the metrics that I measure and maintain and recommend for highly effective SEO efforts.

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Keyword research and analysis

I would like to start by mentioning the importance of keyword research and analysis. This should be the foundation of any SEO strategy. However, choosing the right keywords can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack.

This is where using the right tools comes into play. And once you have these tools at your fingertips, you need to use them wisely. Whether you're creating a sales page or a blog post, you need to consider your users' research objective when searching for the right keywords.

A sales page with informative search intent keywords will fall flat. The same is true for a blog article with keywords that have a commercial search intent. Match the right keywords to your specific type of content. For example, a commercial site should have keywords with commercial search intent and a blog article should have keywords with informational search intent.

Once you've narrowed down your keyword list, created your content, and published it, you need to track performance. Analyzing keyword data is essential to inform your SEO strategies. Measure aspects such as search engine rankings, keyword rankings, overall organic traffic, and other criteria to make sure you're on the right track.

Site speed and mobile-friendliness

The impact of page speed in SEO is huge. Many, if not most, online users feel a sense of frustration when they click on a page and it takes more than three seconds to open. In our world of instant gratification, people want fast-loading websites that are easy to navigate. Wondering how to optimize your site's speed performance? Some tips worth considering include:

• Compress your images

• Avoid hosting videos locally

• Use a quality hosting plan

• Avoid too many animations

• Minimize external resources

• Minimize HTTP requests

• Optimize performance with Redis Caching

• Enable GZIP compression

• Use accelerated mobile pages

• Reduce the number of redirects

A factor related to page speed is ensuring that your website is mobile friendly. Yes, our world is becoming more and more mobile-first, and if your website doesn't flow and display smoothly on mobile, you've just frustrated your users and lost them to the competition. So basically, with these strategies, you can keep your website loading speed down and watch user satisfaction increase as you track this metric.

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Content quality and relevance

Measuring content quality and relevance can be a tough nut to crack. Despite this, it is still important to do so. There are several metrics in this space that I always keep an eye on. This includes:

• Traffic

• Inflation rate

• Residence time

• Social actions

• Backlinks (for more on this, see my discussion below)

• Conversions

• Income and/or return on investment

Each of these metrics, when viewed as a whole, will tell you whether your content is resonating with your target audience. Another aspect I consider in this regard is not only publishing fresh content but also updating old articles to ensure that my website or my clients' websites are performing optimally at any given time. . Keep in mind that SEO is a long-term game. It is an ongoing process that requires continuous and dedicated efforts for overall success.

Link building and authority

And now I come to the crown jewel of SEO: link building. Getting backlinks on your website from other authoritative websites is described by many in the industry as providing a vote of confidence in the quality of your online presence. But there are good connections and bad connections. That's why key metrics to monitor when it comes to your link profile should include:

When it comes to the construction method high quality backlinks, there are many strategies you can follow. However, I recommend the skyscraper approach, resource link sharing, and some subcategories of outreach, such as guest posting. After all, you want your online presence to dominate. And to achieve this, you need to show that you are reliable, authoritative and most importantly – reliable.

Conversion rates and user experience

Measuring conversion rates involves a bit of an analytical approach. In short, it's a numbers game. However, measuring user experience goes beyond numbers and into the qualitative realm. Both of these metrics are important for SEO. And while conversion rates can be easily measured by the number of new customers your business has acquired, your user experience can be measured using the following approaches:

Ultimately, when it comes to boosting your SEO efforts in order to drive conversions through a great user experience, you'll want to implement A/B testing and run various experiments to ensure that your approach is as refined as possible.

Connected: User experience is the most important metric you're not measuring

And that's it, folks: the top SEO metrics that matter in 2024. I can't overstate the importance of tracking and optimizing your SEO metrics to your entrepreneurial success. After all, if you have an online presence, you need to build, nurture and grow it to reap the benefits.

With that in mind, if you haven't started tracking some of these metrics yet, it's important to do so while putting together metrics with a combination of the right SEO strategies and approaches. The rewards for your business and online presence will be phenomenal.