7 Metrics to Include in Your DC Local SEO Tracking Plan

By Pete | November 6, 2017

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is an effective way to boost your website’s rankings in search results and help more people in your area find your business and become customers.

Local SEO can do great things for your website, but it takes time. It is something that your business will need to constantly monitor and improve. The best way to do this is to create a tracking plan.

There are many key components of local SEO that will help you determine the success of your campaign. It is vital to monitor these components so you can make improvements as you go.

On this page, we’ll take a look at seven local SEO metrics you can track, evaluate, and improve to get the greatest possible ROI.

Let’s get started!

1. Organic search traffic

When you use local SEO, you want to drive more organic traffic to your website from searchers in your area.

Organic traffic is a good measure of the success of your SEO plan. A boost in organic traffic means you are using effective keywords and more people can find and visit your site.

Using Google Analytics, you can keep tabs on your organic traffic, as well as your top landing pages. This allows you to see what pages people visit the most, and which keywords drive the most traffic to your site.

You can view your organic traffic by navigating to the Acquisition tab in Google Analytics. Once there, you can see an overview of all your traffic. This will include organic, direct, paid search, and other traffic.

To view your top landing pages, you’ll need to click the Behavior tab and then navigate to site content and click landing pages. This section shows you which pages are performing best and which pages you can improve to have a greater impact.

In addition, you can use Google Analytics to see visitors’ locations. This is great for businesses utilizing local SEO because you can see if a certain area is more interested in your services than another.

To see the location of your site visitors, just click the Audience tab in Google Analytics. Then, you will be able to see demographic details including their language and city.

2. Backlinks

Backlinks play a large role in boosting your search rankings. If credible, authority sites link back to your site, it is going to boost your ranking.

It is important to keep track of your backlinks. You want to know which domains are referring to your site.
If credible sites mention you, it’s important to make sure they add a link to your site. Some sites may mention your product or service, but don’t link back to your site. It’s important to know when people mention you so you can contact them about linking back to you.

To track your backlinks, you can use a number of services. Some popular options are Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Open Site Explorer. These tools will show you domains that refer to your website and their domain score.

You can also keep track of which pages receive the most links. This will help you to create content people like and want to link to in the future.

Backlinks can have a very positive effect on your ranking. You’ll want to keep track of these so you know how they are affecting your SEO ranking.

3. Keyword Rankings

Keywords play a vital role in your SEO plan’s success. The right keywords will boost your rankings and get your business more valuable traffic. You’ll want to actively monitor your keywords in order to see if they are effective.

How can you see if they are working? There are many tools available, including Google’s Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, Moz Keyword Explorer, and BuzzSumo.

Monitoring your keywords can help you figure out which ones you should keep in your SEO plan. If there are keywords that aren’t effective, there may be too much competition for that particular keyword. You can change your keywords to less competitive ones in order to see better results.

Keyword monitoring is an important part of your tracking plan. Keywords have such a big impact on your ranking and people’s ability to find your site. It’s crucial that you keep track of the effectiveness of your keywords in order to use SEO the best way you can for your business.

4. Engagement

It’s one thing to get people to your website. It’s another thing to get people to stay and engage on your website. It won’t matter that you are getting people to your website if they aren’t staying on it.

You’ll want to monitor how people interact with your website. There are a few aspects to monitor with engagement.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site without engaging. They don’t click on any links or go to any pages. They may even hit the backspace button and head back to the search results.

When Google ranks your site, they look at how quickly people go back to the search results after being on your page. If people are leaving your site immediately, Google will think that your site is not helpful or relevant.

You’ll want to keep track of your bounce rate to see how often people leave your site and if there is anything you can do to change that behavior. If many people are landing on the same page (like your homepage) and bouncing, there may be an issue on that page.

It is important to track your bounce rate so you can fix any issues on your site. In the long run, it will help improve your SEO ranking. You can find this information in Google Analytics, under the Audience Overview page.

Time on site

In conjunction with bounce rate, you’ll want to monitor time people spend on your site. The time can be an indication of problems or places when you lose people. You can also find this information in the Audience Overview page.

The duration is an indication of pages people are interested in and pages that they don’t like as much. When people spend a long time on a page, you’ll know that it is a good page that sparks interest.

If people get to a certain page and drop off, it can be an indication that something on the page is turning people away. It gives your business the opportunity to improve pages and make them better for visitors.

Pages per visit

When people are on your site for a long time, there’s a good chance they’re looking at multiple pages. You have the ability to monitor how many pages people look at before they leave your site. If you look below the Visitor’s overview, you can see an average number of pageviews.

This gives your business a good idea of how people interact with your website. You can see if visitors are clicking on links within your site or using your navigation to get to other pages.

To see the number of pages per visit, go to your Google Analytics dashboard and click Visitors on the left menu. Then, click Average Pageviews to see your pages per visitor.

Monitoring the number of pages per visit will give your business a better idea of the path users take on your site. When you know how people progress, you can make improvements to your marketing funnel to encourage more conversions.

5. Track reviews

People will be able to see reviews about your business when conducting searches. These reviews appear under your listing through Google My Business. People look for reviews of your business to help them make a decision.

You can use Google My Business to track reviews and respond to them.

This will help you build a better reputation with your customers. It also gives consumers the perception that they aren’t just another customer to you. And it shows that you care about building relationships and providing a great customer experience.

6. Site speed

Your site speed and number of crawling errors affect your ranking. If your website is slow, it will deliver a poor user experience. Google will rank your site lower because of this.

You can Google’s PageSpeed Tool to monitor and improve your site speed.

7. Crawling errors

You’ll also want to analyze any crawling errors. Crawling errors are things such as broken links or missing pages, and they can prevent search engines like Google from indexing your site.

You can use Google Search Console to diagnose any crawl errors. There is a section on the dashboard that links to an entire section about crawling errors.

Crawling errors can impact your search rankings, so it’s important that you include them in your tracking plan.

Find the right local SEO plan

If you type in your most important keywords and find that Google Maps listings are dominating the first page, local SEO might be the right method for you. Local SEO is great for you if you only do business in your area. There are so many opportunities present with local SEO.

At Old City Interactive, we have custom SEO plans to help boost the exposure of your DC business. We offer numerous plans to fit your budget. With our transparent pricing, you’ll always know where your money is going.

Our plans are customized to meet your goals. We know your business is unique, so we offer custom plans to fit your needs.

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