Online shopping has become the new normal during the last years and it will stay so for the foreseeable future. Consumers have discovered that distance shopping is not only safer, but also more convenient. While some will return to your brick and mortar store, many will continue browsing the internet and buying your products online. For this reason, we believe that you should know the most important SEO KPIs for ecommerce and start monitoring them.
Without setting goals and measuring performance, you won’t know if your SEO efforts are successful. High traffic is great, but traffic without any action taken means that you are not bringing the right kind of visitors to your online store. Or, you enjoy good sales, but where are they coming from? Did these people already know your business and looked specifically for it? Or did they search for products and your site was among the top organic Google results?
SEO KPIs for Ecommerce Are Not the Vanity Metrics
As explained above, an ecommerce store needs qualified traffic, not just high volume of traffic. Likewise, newsletter click-through rate may be or may not be relevant. It all depends how it is reflected in other SEO KPIs for ecommerce.
At the end of the day, you don’t want website traffic, but sales. You want returning customers and a constant flow of new ones. In order to reach this goal, you should measure the adequate key performance indicators.
In our opinion, these are these KPIs you need to track:
1. Organic Revenue and Transactions
This is obviously the first KPI for any ecommerce site. You want to know how much sales you earned from organic (unpaid) traffic to your website). In Google Analytics, select Traffic -> Source/Medium.
You will see a table with where you will identify your organic traffic source (Google) and detailed data on it:
- Acquisition
- Behaviour
- Conversions
Organic revenues and transactions are listed under the Conversions category. Google Analytics will also automatically calculate your organic conversions rate in this table.
2. Brand vs. Non-Brand Keyword Traffic
This metric will show you how strong your brand name is. If you are ranking higher for brand keywords, then a lot of website visitors searched for your brand name. This is great – it means that you have a lot of loyal customers.
However, you should also check the level of non-brand keyword traffic. You should not rely solely on your brand name, but also on relevant product related keywords to attract more customers.
In order to find your brand vs. non-brand keyword traffic, you will use the Google Search Console. Select the Performance section, click on New and add a query (search) filter containing your brand name. Repeat the query, but this time for keywords not containing the brand name and compare the results.
3. Keyword Ranking Increases and Decreases
How well do your keywords perform? This is clearly one of the SEO KPIs for ecommerce you must monitor constantly. Your competitors are working on their SEO just as you are. Sometimes, they manage to get a higher page rank than you. Other times, you get the upper hand in this competition for organic traffic.
Monitoring your keyword rankings is essential for any kind of website, not just for ecommerce. If you do not use the right keywords, you may not attract the right kind of visitors. Also, top keywords from 1-2 years ago may have lost their relevance in the meantime.
4. Bounce Rates
Speaking of the wrong kind of visitors, you will find them listed in the bounce rate metric. This KPI, presented as a percentage, indicates how many users leave a website just a few moments after landing on it.
This means that they did not find what they were looking for. Thus, you must ensure that your keyword and content strategy are representative and meaningful for your business. This is why keyword research and constant monitoring are such a big part of your SEO efforts.
5. Organic New Users
Now, this is one of the SEO KPIs for ecommerce that you must never lose sight of. It shows you how many people reached your site and interacted with it from a simple Google search. The detailed information in Google Analytics will show you how many pages they visited and how much time they spent on your website.
These are useful data that you can use to create a strong lead generation strategy and make these visitors convert to customers.