What One SEO Metric Would You Choose?
-
If you had to choose one SEO metric to measure a site's SEO performance what would it be? I know you shouldn't use one metric, but lets say you had 10 seconds to assess how well a site was probably doing from an SEO perspective. What metric would it be?
*I also asked this question on the inbound forms.
-
Cool thanks, I didn't catch that one. Apparently my title wasn't that original
-
There was an article on Moz not that long ago that attempted to answer this same question:
http://moz.com/blog/one-metric
It's a good read - probably too complex to use in an agency/bulk setting but pretty useful overall.
-
I author articles for Adsense revenue and my metric is
income from the article / cost of article production
Cost of article production includes my time, webmaster, photography, graphics, etc.
This metric begins at zero and when it gets to 1 then you have broken even. The metric will improve as long as the article is on the web and being viewed.
If you want a slightly different metric that is probably more valuable then ....
cost of article production / average monthly income from the article over past 12 months
... because it gives you an estimate of how many months it will take at current income rate to recover your cost.
I think that it is more valuable to measure your performance article-by-article because then you know what types of content are performing the best - and that can inform future content development.
This type of metric is based upon the assumption that you are creating evergreen content that will be on the web for years rather than creating newsy content that will be consumed and outdated in a week - but similar shorter term metric could be used there.
I also have retail sites and write lots of product-related content. This content is written to drive traffic to sales pages and to display adsense. I keep an eye on how many sales each of these articles are producing and that also informs the development of future content.
-
Hard to say, my first reaction would be the amount of traffic generated organically. I am tempted to say the number of key terms on page one, however, you can have 100 words on page one and get no clicks if your SEO is bad. You need good snippets, HTML data and engaging data. If your site is generating organic traffic in high percentages, and generating traffic consistently organically, I would say that can be a very top level metric.
-
Quality UGC - comments, threads, reviews, etc.
This means that the site 1) gets REAL traffic (cause its hard to fake) 2) impresses visitors enough so that they take the time to engage with the content (which means the site is high quality).
Everything else can be faked and you wouldn't catch it in 10 seconds.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
2 Urls rank on page one, what should I do?
Hey Mozzers, I would like some input from you guys please. For keywords "car service dc" "dc car service" "car service washington dc" my site ranks in positions 7, 8 . My home page www.dcacar.com and also a landing page for washington dc: https://www.dcacar.com/washington-dc-car-service.html Is there something I can do to rank higher? Should I 301 redirect the landing page to the home page? If you have any suggestions and have experience in such cases your input will be greatly appreciated. Our home page also ranks for almost 20 other very important keywords that drive a lot of business to us. So I am a bit scared to touch the title tag on the home page. 2nd question. It's been almost 2 weeks that the local pack is showing 2 results for the same keywords. We are #3 lost our space from the result. Are you noticing any changes to your local packs? Why are there 2 results and not 3? When I search for similar keywords but in other cities I usually get 3packs even now. Any suggestions on making into the top two? We have 3 times more reviews than the other 2 companies the only thing I see that makes them rank above us is their company names are almost exact match with the keyword. Thanks in advance for your time and help.
Competitive Research | | Davit19850 -
Is my client's site penalized and if not, why are other lesser quality sites ranking with lower metrics than my client's?
Hello, I'm trying to explain to a client, as to why certain websites that appear in the top 50 listings for a keyword are there when they don't have very good backlink profiles, and for this keyword, seems you need a high PA above 20 or DA above 25, just to page for page 2 - 3. Running a full SERPs report, I have seen that backlinks to the page that's ranking seems to be as high of a factor as PA, followed by DA and overall backlink profile. Having a high score in one of these 4 areas seems to increase your ranking. However, going into page 3 and beyond, seems that things kinda take a weird turn. After comparing the client's site to those ranking on page 2 I could see that all of them had better PA and more links to the page ranking for that keyword, so page 2 I understand why we don't rank on yet. However, looking at page 3, I see that the client's site in question has better PA, DA, links to page and overall links to domain. Which leaves me to think we have a penalty that's keeping us ranking 50 or beyond. Since our metrics across the boards for what MOZ is showing as ranking factors. The more odd issue is that looking at the line graph, shows right at the time we implemented sitewide https our ranking for this one keyword dropped, while rankings for our other keywords increased. Am I to assume it's a keyword density penalty? What penalties are there with a outcome of ranking limits?
Competitive Research | | Deacyde0 -
Working through the slides on my first seo project, I'm trying to determine the most popular content on competition sites.
From the video, I understand I should be looking for unique opportunities. But is there a baseline for product qualification, ie., a min. PA,LRD, Inbound LInks, social shares, etc. I guess I'm asking what I should be looking for in the data provided on each competing site? What determines THE most popular and unique product?
Competitive Research | | AhmadS0 -
Open Site Explorer is not showing dmT. Where do I go to get this metric.
Just trying to understand the video I watched on Link Building w/ Open Site Explorer. I'm not seeing the dmT metric in the live version. Has it been replaced by something else. Or is there someplace else I need to look for it?
Competitive Research | | AhmadS0 -
Raise your hand if you're doing SEO for manufacturers please.
When you're working for a manufacturer it's not exactly the same as working for a company that is flat-out informing people with content and links and revealing a lot of information (relatively speaking). Please tell me what you do when you're working with a client that is not willing to reveal too much because competition = fear of the unknown (like if you take a chance and post something online that your competition may use against you). I would appreciate less speculative and more informed answers from people who have actually done this kind of work - as opposed to those who think theoretically they may know the best way to go because they work for other types of businesses that are not as proprietary as manufacturing is. Thank you.
Competitive Research | | karlseidel0 -
I am stumped on this one... SEOs Assemble! *blows seo horn*
Hi guys, I am having a little trouble with one of my sites. I am trying to rank for a particular keyword, which is the same as my domain name. I have the keyword.com and my competitor has the keyword.co.uk Please see the screenshot below to show our back link comparisions. I don't understand how the mozrank and moz trust are calculated as I am getting beat here. They rank first in Google UK and I rank 10th. Both of our sites are well seo'd by professional companies so I am baffled how, with this profile and a diverse set of anchor text links, I am getting beat. I would really appreciate any help and advice on this guys... Thank you backlinkcomparison.jpg
Competitive Research | | MirandaP2 -
What do the following metrics in the SEOMoz toolbar stand for: PA, mR, MT & DA?
I just downloaded the SEOmoz toolbar and found out several metrics that I need help to understand: PA mR mT DA Can anyone help with this?
Competitive Research | | amtnezschez0 -
When providing search results for SEO purposes to you use the exact results in Google Adwords
Hi Mozzers Just quick question When an SEO company are supplying their testimonials for example
Competitive Research | | mcliddy
Keyword Search Term has 33,000 visits a month
Keywords is in position 1 but the search volume they are showing is broad, i was always brought up to do research on exact results unless im using the reserch for a PPC campagin? Has anyone got any ideas?? should it be braod im looking at or exact?? Many Thanks Matt0