When it’s time to determine how effective an SEO, advertising or marketing campaign is, the need to establish KPIs (key performance indicators) as benchmarks to measure goal conversion, time lines and tactical objectives is necessary.
Performance benchmarks exist for a very specific purpose, to measure conversion and marketing objectives, but KPIs also allow us to extend beyond one-dimensional thinking and truly develop long-term strategic and pivotal advantages.
Sometimes your website has all the right ingredients, but lacks proper execution. Increasing landing page conversion by 15% for example is one KPI. Improving lead generation, product inquiries or phone calls by 43% within a specific time-line using four new marketing methods.
Such examples of performance are based on gap analysis (from existing performance levels of where you are and where you want to be) however they provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of a campaign.
For example, if it is implied that you will increase traffic, increasing traffic alone is not a (KPI) key performance indicator. If the traffic is not converting into sales, then you need to look beyond the surface level and delve deeper into the root cause (the content and the offer) that produce the effects. Often it resides in usability, how obvious navigation is, how obvious is the conversion objective is, or if the message diffused from too many competing elements.
When looking to fine-tune performance, determining metrics such as time spent on a page, the keywords used to deliver the traffic, which related keywords are relevant and overlapping. Determining the existing bounce rate or engagement metric for the page and what calls to action exists on the landing page in question.
Managing those factors allow you to create a base-level KPI analysis to improve performance individually or across all of these metrics simultaneously. However, without analytics or performance tracking, you are just grasping straws when it comes to delivering or reproducing consistent or future sales volume.
The necessity to specifics is all part of the SMART model:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Result-oriented or Relevant
- Time-bound
Combine this with the KISS model (keeping it simple) and the who, what, where, when and how factor and you can essentially craft a series of objectives for each landing page in your site by assigning unique, yet attainable benchmarks.
The real value of KPIs are the ability to reproduce the effect, or know which affect your adjustments are having on traffic, conversion and visitor engagement. Without knowing where to look, or how to measure the outcome, you are destined to repeat past performance over an over again.
The only horrible thing about that is, what if that performance (such as an exceptionally high bounce rate) could have been avoided from a simple SEO intervention from installing analytics or testing another offer.
In closing, without key performance indicators, such as a 110% increase in search engine traffic or other distinct objectives, your SEO will not reach its full potential.
How long should you run a test before you know the results will have some consistency? Before you decide to try something different or keep using the current strategy.
Danny:
To answer your question, sometimes you need to look beyond your initial objective. Measure results should always have some form of redundancy (use more than one tool for analysis).
If you do not see an increase in the objective, reassess it for relevance. Depending on the nature of the conclusion (such as to generate more sales) then you need to make sure that everything in your site is geared toward that conversion objective.
If it is not showing up on the radar in analytics or in your keywords used to find your site, then turn up the heat, if you can find it and the sales or inbound traffic is not occurring, then shift the focus.
No need to obsess over one facet when you could optimize multiple objectives with one site concurrently.
too good u have written.but can you make me xplain as im layman for this term.