SEO Success: The 10 KPIs You Need to Track to Succeed

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good morning or good afternoon if you're joining us from the east coast we'll be getting on the way here in just a couple moments allowing some of your our other attendees to join us thank you so much for your time today we'll be right back wonderful we'll be getting underway here with our webinar for today today we're going to be discussing seo success and the 10 kpis you need to track in order to achieve that succeed once again uh really excited about this content seo happens to be probably one of the most uh challenging topics to really grasp its full kind of grandeur there are so many moving parts and so by isolating 10 kpis will definitely make tracking these uh different strategies a lot simpler for you and so you can sit back and watch your sales grow so let's go ahead and get started in our agenda for today we're gonna be covering why seo is such a crucial part of your advertising strategy the platforms you need in place to measure your seo efforts and finally as promised 10 kpis that will clue you in to what's happening with your organic traffic and how to optimize them my name is eduardo silva i am really excited to be your host here today i bring with myself 18 years in digital marketing and sales experience and i'm really really happy to be sharing a lot of the information and trials and tribulations with you along with obviously a big team of successful digital marketers behind us here at foot traffic foot traffic is a digital advertising agency and before getting started it is really important to highlight the fact that we got our start as an seo agency for the cannabis industry over five years ago we have added several different offerings to our portfolio since then but seo is still the core function of our agency so we're really excited to be hosting this webinar and as a kind of a continuous if you will knowledge transfer around seo and why it is important for you our customer before getting started it's always important to just familiarize yourself momentarily find that zoom control interface on your screen you always say it's hidden somewhere reason being there is a q a function there if anything uh is a little bit challenging to understand at any point in time there is a q a function we do have panelists who will be addressing those questions live and then finally be sure to stick around until the end we do have a special offer for those attending our webinar here today we'll be sharing them in the end of our webinar so once again get yourself familiar with the interface there are panelists live to address your questions using that q a function on the zoom interface thank you once again let's jump right in so why do seo right when you do search engine optimization right you make it easier for your target audience to find you as you climb up the google rankings past your competitors over 7 billion searches are run on google daily and 46 of those are for local searches like dispensary near me those local searches lead to actions 28 of local searches lead to a purchase and about 76 percent of people who run a local search on their phones will visit the store they find within a day dispensaries are local businesses and if you want to drive traffic to your store or website seo is a must when your seo is working for you you're more likely to appear in search results for your desired keywords this is crucial because the top result gets just over 31 of all of the clicks according to backlinko the popular seo site if you aren't in the top spot you can increase your clicks by 30 simply moving up a rank imagine having as much traffic as your website can handle and guess what i wouldn't be just it wouldn't just be any type of traffic thanks to the search engine optimization portion you will be relevant traffic that means that the people who are visiting your site will be interested in buying cannabis from you and if your website is set up correctly you can convert those clicks into sales which will increase your overall revenue so let's take a look at a case study here to showcase just how much it matters this is a client of ours an mso of medical recreational dispensaries located throughout the northeast pennsylvania maryland and massachusetts in q4 of 2020 they invested six thousand dollars in seo their investment led to forty seven thousand orders and six million dollars in revenue this wasn't power this was powered by 125 000 new visitors that we were able to get to their website with a robust seo strategy they were able to make 938 for every dollar being spent on seo now these numbers are all tracked with third-party interfaces such as google analytics google tag manager so it's not a fabrication it is real dollars 938 dollars for every dollar being spent on seo and this is somewhat common right when executing on an seo strategy effectively so let's jump into how to track to measure whether your seo is really working for you or whether you need to tweak your strategy you need to have tracking and monitoring tools set up because if you can track it you can manage it in addition to having a robust website with multiple pages offering your visitors the information they may need to visit your store or order from your online menu you will need to install google analytics google analytics is a tool to help you understand the number of people who visit your website it's a standalone platform offered for free by google while it doesn't identify visitors name or other personal identifiers it tells you important pieces of data like where users are located what devices they are using what their traffic patterns are in terms of page views how long they spend on each one of the pages and what time of day your website receives the most traffic make sure you have google e-commerce tracking enable so you can get accurate data regarding the online transactions as well this is crucial for revenue attribution and understanding how much revenue is actually coming from organic traffic you will also want to use google tag manager to more easily track your web visitors and see where they're coming from and where they go on your website this can help you establish revenue attribution across your various digital advertising channels that way in addition to monitoring the effect of the effectiveness of your seo strategy you can also track how well your google ads or display ads are performing to monitor which keywords you're ranking for how well your keywords are doing how many backlinks you have and other seo metrics you will want to sign up for a seo tracking tool like sem rush or arafs if you're working with an agency like foot traffic that prides itself on the ability to provide a variety of analytics you don't need to install these programs or sign up for the various platforms we do it all for you and we ensure everything is set up properly and you can start getting as much data about the effectiveness of your campaign as possible once everything is set up and running and these platforms are tracking your traffic as well as conversions you should pay attention to the following 10 key performance indicators or kpis let's jump into that keyword rankings the first kpi i want to focus on today is keyword rankings the keywords you want to rank for are the search terms your ideal audience will be entering in the search box to find you these are terms like santa rosa dispensary and center rows of cannabis as well as branded terms that feature your dispensaries names these keywords are relevant for people who are ready to buy from you they know about cannabis and they want what they want right they know exactly what they're looking for how they just need to find a dispensary and where can they get to it right it's very important these keywords will help if you live in a crowded market it can be harder to rank for these generic keywords have you ever tried running a search for la dispensary you're going to get several result pages and most people aren't going to look past the first few if you if you are in that situation you can use google ads to get you to the top of search results while building out an seo strategy that is more robust and help improve your organic traffic ranking at the same time in addition to location specific terms you also want to rank from adjacent terms like rso terpenes thc versus cbd etc etc these keywords are generally for people who are interested in learning more about cannabis they aren't ready to buy but with the right amount of resources you can create brand awareness so that when they are ready to buy they will come to you as opposed to your competitor in addition this more robust keyword strategy can help you improve your domain authority by showcasing that you are an expert in your industry this helps build trust in your audience while helping you rank higher on google when you use a site like arafs you can track what keywords you're ranking for and where they are pointing to on your site you can see historical data and drops in rankings for particular keywords this is important to monitor because any drop in ranking can affect your sales your seo strategy must be agile and you must be ready to deal with any changes to google's algorithm when someone enters a relevant keyword into the search box on google pro google provides your website as a result this is called an organic impression this this number is important because it shows how many times people are doing searches that could lead them to your site if your organic impressions are high it means that you're showing up for a lot of searches this is good as long as you're also getting clicks if your organic impressions are low you may need to look at your keyword strategy to identify which keywords you're ranking for which keywords you aren't and which keywords you can reasonably rank for with additional effort your organic compressions help you determine our next important kpi click through rate our next crucial kpi is your click-through rate sometimes referred to as ctr this is important because there is a percentage of people who are clicking on your link in the search results so if you're showing up in searches for keywords such as seattle dispensary 1 000 times and you get 500 clicks your click through rate would be 50 you will want to track this for your most valuable keywords if you find that your click-through rate is low revamp your title tags and metadata descriptions these two items show up when someone runs a search make sure they clearly identify what your pages are and show why your pages are relevant to the search they're they're just running include a keyword in a description on the page for example if you are a seattle dispensary near the airport airport named fine green your title tag may be something like ctec airport dispensary hyphen fine green your metadata description would include the keyword ctec airport dispensary so it may be something like this visit fine green ctec comma just minutes from the runway save 10 off your first order shop our online menu now for easy pickup also remember that your characters are limited so be succinct and get to the point you should also check that you are getting and and trying to rank for keywords that aren't relevant for your to your dispensary this is wasted effort and won't lead to sales seo is all about driving people who are interested in cannabis to your website if you expand your focus too much and include too many keywords you may end up with higher impressions but you won't get any valuable clicks if your ctr is low you need to troubleshoot it so you so that you don't drop down in search rankings if google sees that your site isn't getting clicks you will think it's not relevant for that particular keyword don't let this happen to you make sure that you have an appropriate title tags and metadata descriptions for all of your pages so that possible web visitors know what kind of information they will be getting when they click to your page all those people who click your links are your site visitors or traffic you will want to measure the amount of traffic you are getting to each of your pages whether they are from new or repeat visitors the percentage of sessions that are from new visitors and how long a session lasts with google analytics you can see the traffic for all of your pages including your home page location page and online menu page this can help you gauge which pages are the most popular sources for your traffic you can also see whether the people visiting your site are repeat visitors or whether they're first-time visitors this is important to measure whether you're increasing your market share and reaching new people you can use this metric to determine your new session percentage to get this number just divide your number of sessions by your total sessions and multiply by 100 this metric is useful if your goal is to expand your audience another site visitor metric to track and measure is average session length this is how long on average people stay on your website if you have a low session length you may need to look at your site architecture or landing pages to ensure they are easy to use and that they are helpful right to convert visitors our next kpi is your bounce rate if people click through to your website and then leave quickly that's a problem it signals to google that your page isn't relevant to the search because people aren't staying on it your bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your website after visiting one page only if certain pages are high in bounce rate you may need to reconsider the content and how your pages are organized you can also check whether the minute that the description is accurate if you have a high bounce rate your search ranking will never already drop to avoid this keep an eye on this kpi and troubleshoot as necessary all right our next kpi is pages per session whereas bounce rate focuses on people leaving your site pages per session focuses on people staying on your site specifically pages per session is the number of pages a visitor engages with during their session this lets you see how many people interact with your website are they going to just a couple of pages or browsing several if your pages per session is on the low side you may want to track time spent on your pages so you can identify the most popular content on your website and invest in creating similar enticing content that gets people to look around and stay on your website longer this can lead to more conversions which is what we're going to cover next our next kpi is one of the most important for dispensaries your conversion rate you can have multiple conversion rates based on your goals a conversion rate is simply the completion of a desired action for example you may want to monitor how many emails or sms signups you get how many people fill out a particular form and how many people click through to your menu of course dispensaries want to make a sale so you should definitely focus on your e-commerce conversion rate as well this conversion rate is concerned solely with the percentage of individuals who visit your website and make a purchase it's always worthwhile to troubleshoot your conversion rate in addition to ensuring that you have a copyright writer compelling and creating call to actions you can also boost your conversion rate through design your ctas should be in place that are extremely visible we always recommend having one above the foe on your website which means that it shows up without someone having to scroll down on the page a pop-up is an effective way to get people to sign up for your loyalty program as are banners at the top of your page if you're suffering from low conversion rates you should check how user friendly your website is does it look good on a mobile is it easy to navigate is your site architecture and hierarchy logical and clear fix any issues you come across that may make it harder for people to order from you now just a quick note sometimes the conversion rate is low because of pricing and product selection if you think this may be a problem for you scope out your competition to see what they're offering and how much they're charging even if you sell higher end products you may need to create a first time customer offer to entice people to try your products and get them acquainted with your brand transactions to uncover the roi of your seo you will need to be tracking how many transactions can be attributed to your organic search traffic depending on the menu platform you're using this may be harder than it sounds we know that certain menus like dutchy make it super simple to integrate with google analytics and get this information with other menus we found that it sometimes requires manual workarounds to be able to gather the data necessary to measure your roi to get the transactions that can be attributed to your seo you will want to look at your google analytics and tag manager data to identify which transactions resulted from organic traffic this won't be your total number of transactions though it may be pretty high percentage of them we found that seo can account to 50 plus of all of our clients transactions you should monitor transactions from organic traffic to spot any dips and troubleshoot your seo strategy when they arise you can also use it to identify when sales increase so you can have that verification that your seo strategy is working for you similar to transactions your revenue attributed to seo may not be easy to ascertain you will need to get the total sales amount for your transactions from your previous step if your analytics are set up correctly this can be done at the same time once you have the revenue number you can divide it by the number of transactions you get your average order price this can help you plan your budget and sales forecasts in the future as well you can also compare the average order size of transactions from organic traffic to dose of your paid ad traffic to spot any patterns you can also subtract the cost of your seo from your revenue and then divide it by the cost of your seo to get your roi this is a very basic formula but he helps you to show how much of your marketing dollars that you are spending in search engine optimization are actually attributing to your bottom line this is all part of revenue attribution and understanding the effectiveness of your digital advertising i'd be happy to discuss this with anybody offline as well we will be entering here a link in the chat window so you can schedule a call with us let's talk about backlinks next we did a whole webinar backlink so if you want to learn more about them and go into depth please do navigate to foot traffic dot me forward slash webinars yet another link in our chat window here for you to track how many backlinks you have you will want to use your arafs or sem rush account if you have one or your agency can fill in right on all of these numbers for you and that's exactly what we do here foot traffic for our clients your backlinks help to endorse your site and are an important google ranking factor essentially they tell google that you are a trustworthy site and that you know what you're talking about more links from quality science will help boost your rankings when you put your website into a platform like arafs you can see how many backlinks you have and where they're coming from you can also track your backlinks over time so you can see if there's any changes and how they're working to increase your overall link strategy over time all of these numbers help give you an overview of what pages are helping you bring more traffic and how much you're actually making from your organic search traffic they can also help you identify issues on your website so you can better optimize your user experience and score more sales you want to track these kpis over time and monitor them for changes they will clue you in to what's working and what's not and help you identify when it's time to switch things up ideally most of these numbers will increase if you stop spot dips or an increase in your bounce rate you will want to investigate why that may be happening google makes changes to their algorithms regularly and they don't always actually announce it if you want to protect your ranking and keep going up in search results you need to continuously invest in seo best practices and track the effectiveness of your efforts so how can we execute on all these recommendations that we provided here today you can get the data you need and score more organic traffic with an agency like foot traffic foot traffic started once again as an seo agency over five years ago focusing just on dispensaries while we've expanded our service offerings we still only work with dispensaries and delivery services to help them reach more customers and make cannabis more accessible we understand the challenges that dispensary face when they're trying to advertise and we aim to remove as many of these roadblocks and obstacles as possible while helping dispensaries grow and make more sales one of the ways we do this is through seo strategies designed to address each and every single one of our clients pain points and improve their search visibility there is no cookie-cutter approach to help you get started on the right foot we're offering a special deal to today's attendees we're going to be offering 20 off your first month of seo when you sign up for a three-month package with us and we'll be helping you maintain your top spot or climb your google rankings now seo is not a short-term fix it's a long-term strategy so you can't expect results in just a couple weeks but however we can actually ensure that you have a successful strategy that is continuously supercharging your seo as well as your search results and we do this through several tools including google ads if you are not at the top of the search results we can get you there while we're building up your trust and authority within google so i'm going to turn it over to at least one question here from our audience please do use the q a function happy to address any questions you may have great first question here and this question is what's the most important metric to measure for seo great question and while there is no one important metric if you only want to focus on a couple be sure to nail down how many people are going to your site and what your e-commerce conversion rate is so that you can actually track the amount of sales and how well your results form your seo strategies actually performing for you so once again i would say that how many people are actually arriving on your website meaning they're finding you organically as well as your e-commerce conversion rate these are two very very important metrics once again i want to thank everybody for taking their time to join us today really appreciate you spending these last 30 minutes with us we want to be respectful of your time we have entered here the link on our check window to schedule a call with us we're happy to address any other questions offline thank you once again for your time today have a wonderful rest of your day ]