Your business website is an invaluable marketing asset. To ensure your website is doing its job, generating traffic and sending qualified leads through your sales funnel, it’s important to monitor its metrics and stats. By doing so, you can get a good sense of where your website is succeeding, where it’s falling short, and where there’s room to make practical, strategic improvements.

One of the many facets of data to understand is your SEO data. For many business owners, monitoring their SEO analytics can be daunting. Certainly, there are a lot of data points to consider, and if you try to keep an eye on every single metric, you’re bound to get overwhelmed.

The good news is, not all SEO data points are created equal. Simply put, it’s possible to glean the actionable insights you need by focusing on a handful of core metrics. Here are some of the SEO data points that we prioritize here at enCOMPASS.

Essential SEO Data Points

Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals denote a set of metrics that tell you what the page loading experience is like for your user. According to Google, Core Web Vitals represents a minor ranking factor. More importantly, these metrics can help you assess the experience your website offers its users, and to optimize for factors like loading time.

Server Speed

Speaking of loading times, server speed lets you know how fast pages are served, and how many can be served at one time. This metric can help you assess the quality of your website server, and potentially prompt you to seek a new server.

Publishing Frequency

We live in a content-hungry era. Search engine users want fresh, relevant content every day, and Google’s algorithms reward websites that deliver. That doesn’t mean you need to publish a new blog post every day for your website to succeed, but it does mean regular content development should be a priority.

Indexed Pages

You’ll also want to take a look at your total number of indexed pages. If Google isn’t indexing your pages, that means there’s potentially a big problem with your website or your content. If you regularly publish content that doesn’t get indexed, that’s an opportunity for some troubleshooting.

Search Console Metrics

The Google Search Console will show you how often your website appears in searches for a number of different keywords. If you’re just started out, we recommend seeking out lower-ranked keywords, which can point you toward some opportunities to boost your SEO performance.

Reading Behavior

Microsoft Clarity will allow you to monitor Reading Behavior. This metric lets you know how many people abandon your content after reading the headline, as opposed to the folks who actually read the entire page or article. It can be a useful metric for assessing whether your content is doing its job.

Excessive Scrolling

Microsoft Clarity will also allow you to measure Excessive Scrolling. Again, if your users are scrolling through your content too much, that might mean there’s a way to improve your page formatting and layout, making it easier for users to find the information they’re seeking.

Scroll Data

A final Microsoft Clarity data point worth considering is Scroll Data. This shows you how often users scroll halfway down a page, then navigate elsewhere. In some instances, this may help you reveal a technical issue with the page, or simply an area to rework your content.

Bad Meta Data

You should take notice of missing or duplicate meta data. It’s all too easy to neglect writing good, original meta titles and meta descriptions for your website… but that’s an often-missed SEO opportunity. There are several online tools you can find to help you scan your site for meta data issues.

Image Size

While we encourage the use of compelling imagery on your website, having a bunch of oversized images is going to cause your loading times to lag. This is a very easy thing to control, meaning it’s potentially a great opportunity to improve your site speed and user experience.

Backlinks

There is some debate over just how important backlinks are… yet everyone agrees that they are relevant to rankings, and that they can help bestow trust and credibility on your website. Having backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites is always a positive thing.

Keep Tabs on SEO Data Points

Taking a “set it and forget it” approach to your website is ultimately a bad idea. We recommend keeping an eye on relevant data points to ensure your continued website performance. The data points we’ve listed here are good ones to start with.

Do you have questions about how to monitor your metrics, or how to take action to correct issues that you identify? We’re always here to chat about SEO and website design best practices. Reach out to the enCOMPASS team any time you’d like to start a conversation.