So, what exactly is SEO? There are countless tutorials and courses online that answer this question. But at its bare bones, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your ranking and presence online for search results through search engines.
A good ranking means more people see your website which means more traffic. More traffic, hopefully, means more conversions.
They say behind every successful website, there is an effective digital marketing plan. So, what determines a successful SEO plan? To understand this, there are several metrics which we’ll have to know.
Essential SEO Metrics
Organic Traffic
One of the most common phrases you’ll hear is organic traffic. Organic traffic is the number of visitors you get organically when someone searches for a specific term on search engines. A person searching for “hotels in Dubai” will get results for booking websites. So when someone clicks on bookings.com, they get one organic traffic.
SEO tools like SEMRush and SERanking can see the number of times a specific term is searched and the amount of organic traffic a website receives. This is particularly effective in tracking competitor performance as well.
Keyword Rankings
The position your website shows up when searched for a specific keyword is your keyword ranking.
Good keyword ranking is essentially the goal of SEO. The higher you are on the page, the more likely people are to go to your website.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority is a metric created by Moz, a leading SEO company. Domain authority measures the trustworthiness of your website on a scale of 1-100. With 1 being the lowest and 100 being the highest. A brand new website will have a domain authority of 1 while an established website like YouTube has a domain authority of 100.
Domain authority is calculated using many factors but primarily inbound links, the domain authority of the websites linking to you, the number of total links, and various other factors. It is a useful tool to know how your website might perform in search results compared to your competitors.
Backlinks
The last metric you need to know is backlinks. Also called inbound links, backlinks are links pointing to your website from another website. When a website links to yours, it signifies that your content is worth viewing.
Along with other metrics, Google uses this information to determine the trustworthiness of your site. A strong number of backlinks implies that your website is both reliable and has good content. This is crucial to rank high in search results.
There is a lot more to SEO than these metrics. It’s a dynamic and fluid industry that requires constant attention to keep up with the current trends. Search engines are always changing the way they rank results. But these key terms are useful to get you started.
Now that you know the basics of SEO, you can get started optimizing your website. If you’d like to learn more about SEO and how we can help, you can always contact us at +971 4 580 3378.
