SEO Metrics to Track and Why Traffic Isn't #1. SEO for entrepreneurs. Ep. 152

You may be surprised to find out that traffic isn't the #1 metric I look at when trying to determine how a client's SEO program is working. 

Yes, traffic is important to SEO growth, as are SEO keyword rankings, but there are other metrics that I believe are more important when you're an entrepreneur who's looking to grow and scale your business. 

Find out what else you should be checking and tracking in this week's podcast episode. 

Save the date for the week of October 13th. I'll be teaching two free live SEO classes that week, all about where things are going in 2025 and 2026, and how to generate traffic and leads from ChatGPT and other AI tools. 

Transcript

0:32

Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to touch on SEO metrics that you should be tracking. Which ones are really the most important for you and why traffic is not number one, why It's honestly not even one of the most important SEO metrics from my standpoint. Now, I know you're probably thinking. What in the world, Rachel, because traffic is what you get from SEO, but it's not the most important thing you get, and I want you to really understand that. What I want you to look at is how is the traffic that's coming to your website? Engaging with what you have on your site or the content. So I've worked with several students on this where they've come to me and they've said, Rachel, my traffic is down. I'm not sure what to do. I'm really concerned about it. And so we've looked at it and it's like, your traffic's down, but your revenue is up. Do you care that your traffic is down? If your revenue is up? I don't. You should not either. So what we wanna look at is how are those people interacting with the content on our website, because that helps us understand are we bringing the right people to our site or are we just getting traffic? Sometimes when we're doing SEO, especially when we're trying to do it on our own, we're trying to learn and figure it out, and we're targeting keywords. Will choose keywords that we think are really good for us. However, we don't understand how to choose them based on content, strategy and consumer behavior, and even making sure that there's an alignment between the keyword search and the consumer intent to make sure that you're really bringing the right person to your site. Sometimes you'll end up ranking for something that's not really super relevant. So I had a situation like this, you know, I've been doing this for many, many years now. I had a website page, it was actually a blog post that I wrote back in 2017, and it was a fantastic blog post and it ranked in position number one, and it drove a ton of traffic. My problem was. I didn't have anything that I sold or offered that the person who came in from that blog post was going to be interested in. So it brought me a lot of traffic, but they didn't engage because my business had changed enough that I ended up, in all honesty, removing that blog post and it was my number one traffic driver. So at first. I was kind of feeling a little uncomfortable about it, even though I knew it was better off to remove that blog post versus have the wrong traffic coming to my website. It still felt hard even to me to take away that much traffic from my site. Each month it got hundreds and hundreds of visits. It was a blog post on how to nail your first Facebook Live. Well, Facebook Live was really popular back in 2017. It's not as popular today. And back in 2017, I actually taught a bit about Facebook, social media marketing, because I talked more cross channel. Today I focus more on search engine optimization, content marketing, blogging, ai, SEO. Email marketing, et cetera. Social media marketing has really taken a backseat for me because what I've seen over the years is that the majority of people who find the site on social don't engage well. So for me, social is not a priority. Now, if the people that you find on social engage, well then social may be a prior. But for me it was not. So I had hundreds of people coming each month, but they were coming because they wanted help learning how to market their business on Facebook. I tried different opt-ins, I tried different freebies, things like that on that page, and it never really made a difference. They still were not engaging and they were not going on to look at other content because they really wanted tips on Facebook marketing. So I got rid of the page because yes, it had a lot of traffic. No, it was not driving business for me. The other thing we wanna think about, especially when we're working on SEO, is that Google is looking at a few different things. So Google is looking at how people interact with your site to really understand, are you good? Are you trustworthy? Do you understand what you're teaching about? Are you someone that people like and they want to consume more content? So because of that, when people were coming to the site, they were reading that blog post, but they weren't doing anything else. It kind of told Google, this isn't the best experience, this isn't the best site for this type query. While it did not directly impact my rankings for that, because I still was in position one when I removed that page. It still was not good from an overall perspective. The other thing is as the Google algorithm has updated and changed and really grown up a bit in the last couple years, it's very focused on going kind of a deep dive and really making sure that the sites that it is, um, showing are ones that are very relevant and have a lot of expertise and experience, and. Depth in specific subject areas. So because I didn't have a lot of other content on my site about Facebook Live, I didn't feel that it was a great experience and it didn't really tie closely to what I was doing with my business. So that's why I removed it. So what I want you to think about when you are looking at your metrics, and I want you to look at your metrics next week, where at the end of the month, I always recommend looking at your. Your total traffic, your SEO traffic, just to see kind of what percentage are you at. Ideally, we wanna be at least 30% of our traffic coming from SEO, so I want you to take a look at those once a month. You also wanna kind of take a look at your keyword rankings, but more than that, the numbers that I want you to look at would be tied to your opt-ins. How many people. Downloaded your opt-ins or requested your opt-ins from each marketing channel or from SEO, social email, et cetera, email. You're probably not gonna have a lot of people requesting your opt-ins from email because they're already on your email list, but you know what I mean. Then I want you to look at. How many leads you got from SEO and how much money you made. So I have students who are making a lot of money from what they're doing, and they know it because they're tracking their leads. So if you're not tracking your leads, you need to start doing that. Where are people finding you? Because there's a good chance they're finding you from chatt PT. They're finding you from perplexity, they're finding you from Google. If you've done SEO and you've done it the right way, if you haven't done it yet, then you may not be getting those leads. You may not be making those sales, and I want you to get started on that. The other thing I wanted to let you know. And we're coming about two weeks out. We are going to have, uh, free live trainings the week of October 13th, and there will be probably two classes where you can come in and really learn what's working in SEO today, how all of this is happening, how it's working, how we're going to start. Being more visible online. We're not worried as much about traffic anymore. I'm gonna be completely honest. What we're really starting to see is that for most people there is a decrease in traffic because of the AI search and the AI visibility. So we really wanna make sure that we're. We're focusing on both. So we're focusing on traditional SEO and we're focusing on AI optimization because we need to be visible in all the places that our customers are searching. So I'm gonna be going into what all of that is during those two free classes the week of the 13th. So if you're not on my email list, make sure you get on there. You can get on there by requesting the beginner's guide to S-E-O-A-I-S-E-O, signing up for the free class. You can do all of that at etched marketing.com/freebies. Um, if you're on my email list, then you'll be getting emails about that in the next couple of days so that you can save your seat first. The other really exciting thing is that simple SEO content will be available starting after those classes, and it is completely updated. It is a, the container. Format is completely updated. It is a six month cohort. It is going to really give you the guidance, the support, the mentorship, the accountability, all the things that you really need to learn how to do this. So you're gonna have 12 weeks of implementation where you're going to learn what to do, and I'm gonna walk you through step by step. This week we're gonna work on choosing a keyword for your homepage. You're gonna watch'em. Video lesson about keyword research. You're gonna come to a call and ask questions'cause everybody has questions about keyword research. You're gonna pick your keyword. If you have any questions about it, you're gonna ask me and I'm gonna look at it with you to make sure you're on the right page. Then you're gonna optimize your homepage, and then another week we're gonna talk about how we create the right type content for our audience. And then we're going to go through and you're gonna do your keyword research to figure out what keyword to target for your first blog post. Then you're gonna write it, then you're gonna optimize it for ai. Then you're gonna optimize it for Google, SEO. And we're gonna do this a week at a time, over a course of 12 weeks. And by the end of that 12 week period, you will have optimized the core pages on your website. So they'll all be SEO friendly. You also will have started writing your blog posts so that you can expand your reach and you will have learned how to. And do them in a way that is both traditional Google and ai, SEO friendly, so that you get visibility wherever your ideal customer is searching. After that, you're gonna have 12 more weeks with my support to answer questions as you continue working. So it's gonna be a fantastic way. To learn, implement, and do SEO on your website. By the end of the six months, you should be humming along. You should have some good traffic starting to come in, some AI visibility and really know what you're doing. And you will have had that full six month period with me answering your questions and helping and guiding you. So it's a group program. It's not an online course where you're on your own. It is very much high touch, hands on group program. There are lessons you watch, but then you have q and a calls with me. You get your clarity, all of that, you get help. So I am so excited to share a little bit more about the updates to the program. I've been working really hard to figure out exactly what to do to make it so that it is the best it possibly can be for you. And I went back and I looked through. How my ideal best students, those who had had the best results, were consuming the course and how they were interacting and what was working for them. And I formatted it based on what I saw there. So it is a small group program. It's got mentorship, it's got implementation and accountability. It's got support everything that you're gonna need. It also has reviews of your content, so if you want me to take a look at it and review what you're working on, I'm going to do that. So I'm really excited to watch your email or get signed up. I'll put the link. In the description, get signed up for those free classes. The week of the 13th, you'll learn what is happening, what the changes are, get you through there, and then start thinking about that because you'll have 12 weeks, you'll have your site just about done by the end of the year. Going into January, you'll have, you'll meet a really good point. You'll probably have your core website done and ready for January and be working on. Learning how to batch additional content. And then you'll still have me there with you through most of Q1 as results. Start coming in to ask questions and refine and look and see. Alright, that's it for today. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.