Your SEO efforts are worth paying attention to on a regular basis because everyone looks at the organic side of search, and over 85% of searchers click on organic search results over paid results.

The following 10 SEO metrics are useful for tracking the progress of a web presence in organic search. Each metric provides signals as to what is working and what is not so your SEO efforts can be constantly tweaked and results improved.

1. SEO Rankings

Track your online organic search visibility for the keywords your organization wants to be found for in the search results. Following your SEO ranking metric every day, week or month will allow you to understand if your organization is expanding its web presence.

2. Unique Keywords (Discovery Index)

How many unique keywords are being used to find your organization on a monthly basis? If that number is trending upwards that means more and more unique keywords are being used in the search engines to discover your organization’s web presence. This is called the discovery index. Look at these terms and add a few to your content strategy each month to capture even more qualified traffic.

3. Backlinks

Are you growing the quantity and quality of the websites linking to your web presence over time? The number of backlinks should increase as you build out your optimized content strategy of blog posts, press releases and case studies. The associated anchor text as well as the domain authority of the websites linking to your content affect the quality of your backlinks.

4. Indexed Pages

Is the number of web pages from your web presence increasing or decreasing in the Google index? The more pages indexed in Google, the more opportunity you have to be found. For example, it would be difficult to rank for 100 keywords if you only have five web pages indexed in Google. As you build out your optimized content strategy adding new blog posts, web pages and press releases on a regular basis, your index count will grow.

5. Social Signals

Google and Bing factor social signals into their search algorithm to determine relevancy and rank. Social signals are metrics such as: Facebook comments, likes and shares, tweets and retweets, LinkedIn shares, and Google +1’s and shares – all of which include a backlink to a web page. gShift tracks the number of social signals during a specified time period to all your web content including web pages, blog posts, and press releases.

6. Website Traffic Breakdown

Tracking your topline website traffic on a regular basis is important. Are you growing your organic traffic? Or are you getting most of it from direct traffic? Is your referral traffic increasing? What traffic is converting better - organic, referral or social? Tracking these website traffic metrics can help you understand both your SEO and content marketing strategies.

7. Organic Conversions

It is also important to understand what percentage of your organic search traffic takes action on your website. Which keywords are driving the most conversions? Which keywords are leading to a high bounce rate (only visiting one web page)? Are your conversions increasing based on your optimized content marketing strategy?

8. Organic Market Share

Your organic market share is calculated based on the number of keyword phrases that your organization is following or wants to rank for organically. Calculate the volume of searches for those terms, how you rank, and then apply a “potential” click-through metric to determine the number of potential visitors you would get if you were ranking in the top three organic positions.

9. Organic Search Value

What is the dollar value of your organic search traffic as compared to what you would have paid for the same traffic via a paid marketing program such as Google AdWords? This metric can help set your budget for organic search and content marketing.

10. Branded versus Non-Branded Keywords

Out of the discovery index, how many keywords are branded? If 95% of your organic traffic comes from branded keywords, then your organization has an issue with your online visibility. A goal would be to increase your non-branded keyword phrases by building out your content marketing strategy.

SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tactics to measure and manage – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And once you’ve mastered SEO for your organization the increase in leads and conversions will be worth the effort. Our recommendation is to pick a few SEO metrics to get started, measure them on a consistent basis and take action from the data.

YouTube has grown over the past three years, now boasting that 48 hours of video is uploaded every minute and they recently surpassed three billion views a day. Out of those views, the majority are still music and personal videos. However, a shift has occurred over the past few years - people are now also searching on YouTube for business videos. That’s right - people are searching for videos about your organization, products and services. That’s why many businesses are uploading product how-to and support videos, along with promotional material.

What’s interesting about using YouTube is that your videos can also rank on Google for the exact same keyword phrases. And in some cases, your videos can rank on the first page of the Google search results, thereby increasing your web presence on Google. This is what we all want – more web presence.

How to Rank Higher in YouTube

First, you should be aware of how your current YouTube videos rank for the keyword phrases that matter to your business and who you are competing with. Once you know how your videos are ranking, then you can look at three critical factors that you can change immediately to improve your YouTube rankings:

1. Title - change the title of your video to something catchy that includes one of your keyword phrases
2. Description - write a compelling description and include your keyword phrase within the content.
3. Tags - use that keyword phrase as one of your video tags.

Other Factors Affecting YouTube Rankings

Engagement factors such as how many views your video has received versus your competition, video comments, and how many people have subscribed to your YouTube account also have an impact on your YouTube ranking. Sharing links to your videos via your website, email marketing, and social networks can have a positive impact on these engagement factors as well as encourage social sharing and backlinks.

YouTube also takes into consideration embedded videos on your website or blog posts. This is very interesting as it supports the theory that great ranking relates back to great content. At gShift, a best practice we encourage is to embed a YouTube video clip into your blog post. Both the video and the blog post can be written to engage your audience as well as optimized for an important keyword phrase. This combination of content will work together to increase your web presence and ranking.

Analyze YouTube Ranking Results Regularly

Finally, as a marketer, you should be checking how your videos rank each month, if not each week as you are adding videos or making changes. Your analysis should also include how many views your videos are getting individually and in total, along with how many referrals you are getting from YouTube to your website, and if any of that traffic is converting into business leads.

Remember, it’s still about providing quality, relevant content that is meaningful to your audience. It’s about connecting and building trust with people – always keep their interests in mind when creating videos, not just your business objectives. The more people interact with and respond to your videos around the web, the higher your YouTube rankings will be and the easier your videos will be found by others.

To learn more about how to gain a competitive advantage in organic search by improving your YouTube rankings, check out my video on YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.