Real-World Results
The most effective way of determining SEO success is by measuring real-world results.
The true value of your SEO campaign should be measured in how your work has directly impacted the real-world metrics that matter most. These metrics can help you to better understand how your optimization efforts have been working to move the needle in the right direction.
A successful SEO campaign should result in increased revenues, increased sales, increased conversions, increased foot traffic, increased web traffic, increased calls, and improved customer satisfaction. Linking your optimization efforts to these metrics allows you to see the real-world effects of your work.
At the end of the day, it is these real-world metrics that matter most for businesses looking to capture more customers, build their brand, and increase their profits.
If you have revenue attribution set up, you should be able to track the amount of revenue that your SEO efforts have generated.
Rankings
For many people, this is what SEO is all about. What better way to measure the success of your campaign than by seeing the effects your work has had on your site’s search engine rankings?
Using historical tracking data, you can see just how much progress has been made, and how much is left to be made. Achieving better positions for keywords that are relevant to your dispensary is an indicator of SEO success. By tracking your site’s performance on a tool like Ahrefs, you can spot changes over time and test different SEO tactics to see which provide you the best results.
But while tracking rankings may give you an idea of how a site’s visibility and relevance have changed over time, rankings are nowhere near as important as the real-world metrics previously mentioned.
If the increased visibility and traffic coming from your new and improved ranking are not leading to more revenue and conversions, then your SEO campaign may not be as successful as your rankings indicate.
Traffic
Improved rankings typically lead to increased traffic. Getting more people to your dispensary website is one of the main goals of SEO, but is it the end goal?
Getting more organic traffic means getting more leads. Without more traffic and leads, it’s nearly impossible to see improvements in the real-world metrics discussed above. But are these leads actually converting? How valuable and qualified are these leads really?
Traffic is great in theory, but fairly worthless if it doesn’t convert. While it may be tempting to simply track your website’s ranking and traffic numbers, traffic doesn’t pay the bills, conversions do! Really, you want to see an increase in transactions or in the percentage of web visitors that are purchasing from you (conversions).
Improving the Customer Experience
Another way to measure SEO success is by taking a look at the customer experience.
Search engines like Google are constantly upgrading their algorithms in order to improve the search user experience. If your site is moving up the rankings, it’s quite likely that improvements to your on-site customer experience are at least partially responsible.
How can you know if your SEO efforts have improved the customer experience?
Consider a few key questions like: Is your site pulling more organic traffic? Are visitors spending more time on your site? Are potential customers being effectively pushed down the marketing funnel towards conversion?
If you can confidently answer “yes” to these questions then you can rest assured that your SEO efforts have improved the customer experience and your website along with it.
We know that SEO can be confusing and that sometimes measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns can be harder than implementing the campaigns themselves. At MediaJel, our team of cannabis marketing experts can help you to get your SEO campaigns off the ground and keep them thriving. Contact us to find out more!
