How To Track SEO Conversions: 10 Metrics To Check

Conversions are the engine that transforms web traffic into revenue for your business. Of course, there are as many different conversion metrics to track as there are unique companies with their own objectives. Still, I’ve put together a list of the key conversion indicators of a successful SEO campaign.

Focus on these 10 metrics to measure your progress toward achieving the SEO goals and objectives that will move the needle for your business.

How To Measure SEO

Download this guide to the concepts and tools to help you track your SEO success. 

So how do you define SEO conversion metrics? How can you calculate them, and which ones should you track in Google Analytics? Let’s investigate these questions and see how you can adjust your SEO tactics to attract high-conversion traffic.

What Are SEO Conversion Metrics?

How each marketer defines a conversion is unique to their business objectives and SEO goals. Generally, an SEO conversion can be defined as any action a visitor takes that moves them to the next step in the customer journey.

For example, a visitor can convert into a lead by filling out a form to get more information about your offering, and a lead can convert into a buyer by making a purchase. The manner in which you track those conversions is with your conversion metrics.

Here are some common examples of actions site owners use to define conversions:

• Subscriptions: Visitors subscribe to a blog, newsletter, or email list.
• Registrations: Users sign up to attend an event or watch a webinar.
• Form completions: Visitors become leads after filling out a form to receive information or download a PDF.
• Landing page visits: Users click on a call-to-action button or link that leads to a landing page.
• Purchases: Users buy a product or service.

Once you’ve defined specific actions as conversions, tracking how SEO impacts your conversion rate corresponds directly to the ROI of your efforts.

How To Calculate Your SEO Conversion Rate

An SEO conversion rate is the percentage of a particular action taken by organic website visitors.

To calculate your conversion rate:

1. Define a specific action.
2. Divide the number of users who take that action by the total number of visitors to your website during a particular period.
3. Multiply the number by 100 to get a percentage.

Here’s a quick example:

In one month, a business receives 10,000 website visitors. 500 of the visitors take the desired action (convert). 500 actions / 10,000 visitors = 0.05. Multiply this number by 100, and you get a conversion rate of 5%.

How To Calculate the Value of Your Website Traffic

Understanding your conversion rate makes it easier to attach a value to your website traffic.

If you understand how much each visit to your website is worth, it becomes much easier to track the ROI for your marketing activities and project the revenue that can result from increased traffic to your site.

The value of each visit is a simple concept, but it can be tricky to calculate. The easiest way to calculate this value is to divide the total number of visits by the total revenue generated by those visits. For additional accuracy, consider doing this by channel (organic vs. paid vs. email, etc.).

For a straightforward example, let’s look at an ecommerce site. If an online store enjoys a 4% conversion rate from organic traffic and the average purchase is $100, that site generates approximately $400 for every 100 organic visitors. That means that each organic visit to that website is worth $4.

If you’re using lead generation as a conversion metric, you’d calculate the value of each lead, multiply that by your conversion rate, and divide that number by 100. So, for instance, if you have a 2% conversion rate and each lead is worth $1000, your site generates approximately $20 per visit.

Of course, the value of ecommerce transactions and generated leads are the simplest way to calculate the value of traffic. Still, it doesn’t account for the value of “softer” activities — such as referrals, social shares, and page views. These activities each contribute to the perceived authority of your site by search engines and potential customers and are part of a cycle of engagement that builds momentum over time.

Essential Conversion & Revenue Metrics To Start Tracking

Although purchases or form completions are the most commonly recognized form of website conversion, there are several actions a visitor can take that transition (convert) them from one stage of the customer journey to the next.

1. Organic Clicks

While tracking organic traffic provides insights into your SEO performance, tracking organic clicks provides more granular data into what your visitors are looking for when they land on your website.

Knowing which queries brought users to your pages and the click-through rate (CTR) for those specific queries can help you make better decisions about which SEO activities are working (and not working).

Tracking clicks and impressions can give you a more holistic view of what you need to improve to increase user engagement and generate more qualified leads.

You can use Google Search Console to see how users engage with your content. Follow these simple steps:

1. Go to ‘Performance > Search results’
2. Filter using ‘+New.’
3. Select ‘Page’ to filter by a specific URL.

4. Enter the URL and click ‘Apply’.

You’ll now see queries, the number of total clicks and impressions, and the average CTR for that page.

2. Organic Conversion Rate

 the end goal is to bring in new business and generate higher revenue. To accomplish this, you need to get in front of qualified traffic — people interested in what you offer. Attracting vast numbers of people to your website is an achievement, to be sure. But at the end of the day, site traffic is only as valuable as the revenue it generates.

Your website should be set up to usher visitors through each stage of the buyer’s journey — moving prospects from awareness to consideration and, finally, decision. 

To move people from the first stage to the second or third, you must encourage prospects to become qualified leads or customers. If your visitors aren’t converting to leads or customers, there might be inefficiencies in your conversion process that are getting in the way of realizing the maximum return on your SEO investment.

To make sure your website is generating value, start tracking your organic conversion rates using Google Analytics. 

Organic conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who find your website through a search engine and take a desired action — often by filling out a form to become a lead or customer. 

This metric will help you understand which pages on your site need refreshing and which ones are successfully moving visitors through your marketing funnel. If this metric is lower than you’d like, you can optimize it by examining user feedback and analytics to enhance the revenue-generating capacity of your site (boost leads and sales).

Depending on your goals, you can focus on tracking soft or hard conversions. Soft conversions are actions that indicate positive lift without an immediate impact on financial goals (like signing up for a newsletter or blog). Hard conversions demonstrate a clear intent to purchase and more directly impact financial goals. You can track all of these goals by setting up events in Google Analytics.

Once you’ve set up specific events, you can start analyzing conversion rates for different pages. First, go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions.

You should now see a list of your conversions. Click on an event to see a breakdown of the default channel group. “Organic Search” should be one of the listed options.

Alternatively, you can build a comparison on the Conversion report to see the organic impact of all of each of your events.

Click the ‘All Users’ icon at the top of the report. Select ‘Session default channel group’ under Dimension. Set the ‘Match Type’ as ‘exactly matches’ and then the ‘Value’ as ‘Organic Search.’ Click Apply.

You should now see each of your organic conversion events. (Note: You can do this comparison on all GA4 reports.)

Note the percentages at the top. Those show the percentage of organic conversions out of all your conversions and how much revenue your organic conversion accounts for. In this example, 16.79% of conversions are from organic traffic, and 23.57% of revenue is from organic. 

To see the conversion events for a specific page, keep the ‘Session default channel group’ comparison on and navigate to the Pages and paths report. Use the horizontal scroll bar to locate the ‘Events,’ ‘Conversions,’ and ‘Revenue’ columns for your pages. These are your organic events, conversions, and revenue by page.

3. New Visitor Conversion Rate

It can be helpful to understand how first-time visitors interact with your site compared to returning users. To examine your new user conversion rate, navigate to the User acquisition report in the Acquisition collection. Use the horizontal scroll bar to find ‘Events’ and ‘Conversions.’

In the above example, we would need to divide the organic search conversions by all conversions and multiply it by 100 to get our organic new user conversion rate.

Once you know how new visitors are converting, you can improve this rate. Identify what first-time visitors are most interested in, improve their user experience, and clarify how to nurture them to take the next step on the customer journey.

‘First user default channel group’ is the dimension you’ll want to use to dig further into this segment. For example, if you go to the Pages and screens report and click the ‘All user’ icon, you can set the highlighted dimension to First user default channel group > exactly matches > organic search.

Now you have an in-depth view into what pages new users are checking out and where they’re converting.

If you’re interested in which pages new users are initially drawn to, keep your new user filter on and navigate to the Landing page report.

4. Return Visitor Conversion Rate

You can examine this conversion rate by creating a segment for returning visitors. (Follow Google’s steps here.)

Analyzing why this group of visitors returned a second time and the reasons they did or did not convert into leads the first time they visited can help you improve the path to conversion. Your process for converting return visitors may be different — and simpler — than converting first-time visitors. 

For example, first-time visitors may need awareness-stage educational content to help them identify their problems. On the other hand, return visitors may already understand their problem and want more information about a solution, such as an in-depth product guide.

Understanding what actions both types of visitors take can help you better optimize your content to increase lead generation (and return visitors) across the board.

5. Sales Conversion Rate

You can track the conversion rate of each page on your website. Doing so will help you identify which offerings and pages most successfully drive sales (and which need some work). Also, look at how sales compare on mobile devices versus desktop. If one platform significantly outperforms the other, consider optimizing the customer journey on the weaker channel to boost performance.

To see the conversions for a particular page, go to the Pages and screens report. You may need to use the horizontal scroll to find the conversion metric. Click on ‘All events’ to select a specific conversion.

You should see all the events (including customs) that GA4 is tracking for your property.

Once you select the conversion you want to measure, click on the arrow next to ‘Conversions’ to sort them from highest to lowest.

You should now see the different pages that had your selected conversions. Use the ‘Add comparison’ feature to get data specifically for organic conversions.

Note: This report won’t give you a rate — just the total number of conversions by type. You’ll need to do the math yourself.

If you want to improve all your conversion rates, you might look more closely at how visitors are engaging with your pages. These five engagement KPIs are helpful indicators of your progress as you make adjustments to improve conversions throughout your sales funnel.

6. Engagement Rate

Google defines engaged sessions as “a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews. In GA4, the engagement rate is the number of engaged sessions divided by the total number of sessions. This helps you determine the percentage of users who spent time on your site, scrolled, clicked, or converted. An engagement rate can be a sign that you’re connecting with the right people at the right time.

How To Add Engaged Sessions and Engagement Rate to the Pages and Screens Report in GA4

If you don’t see either engaged sessions or engagement rate when using your Pages and screens report, you can easily add both metrics. 

To do this, click on the pencil icon in the top right corner. Under ‘Report data,’ select ‘Metrics.’

Click on ‘Add metric.’

Start typing ‘engage.’

Select ‘Engaged sessions’, then repeat the process and select ‘Engagement rate.’ Click ‘Apply’ to see your updated report.

7. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking any action (e.g., visiting another page or filling out a form). In other words, someone lands on your site and may engage with the content on that page but leaves without engaging with any other content on your site.

High bounce rates can mean:

1. You’re attracting traffic that isn’t interested in your offering.
2. Your pages aren’t optimized for a great user experience (design, load speed, etc.).
3. You’re not offering a clear path to the next step with prominent CTAs or internal links.

High bounce rates can mean:

1. You’re attracting traffic that isn’t interested in your offering.
2. Your pages aren’t optimized for a great user experience (design, load speed, etc.).
3. You’re not offering a clear path to the next step with prominent CTAs or internal links.

However, a high bounce rate could also mean that your page has provided a visitor with the information they wanted. Keep this in mind when assessing your content.

How To Find Bounce Rate in GA4

To see your bounce rate by page, you’ll need to customize your Pages and screens report to add “Bounce rate” as a metric. To do this, click on the pencil icon in the top right corner. Under ‘Report data,’ select ‘Metrics’ like we did for engagement rate and engaged sessions.

Start typing ‘Bounce rate’ in the ‘Add metric’ box and then select it when it appears. Click ‘Apply’ to load your updated report.

If you want to see the difference between your organic bounce rate versus all traffic, use the comparison feature.

8. Exit Rate

Exit rate is the percentage of people who exit your website from a page versus the total number of visitors to that page. It’s easy to confuse this metric with bounce rate, but there’s a fundamental difference.

Exit rate considers the number of people exiting your website from a specific page — regardless of their previous activity on your site. Bounce rate only factors in visitors who landed on a single page and left before further engaging with a website.

For example, imagine you have a product page that has a high exit rate. You’ve been driving a lot of traffic there, hoping to convert leads into customers. In this case, a high exit rate could mean that visitors aren’t interested in your product, or the content on your page isn’t compelling them to take action.

You can reduce the exit rate on specific web pages by determining the reason people are leaving and fix it so users want to stay and engage. You may need to optimize your conversion funnel to better guide visitors from one stage of their journey to the next. You could also install tracking or heat-mapping software for better insight into how visitors are engaging with your pages.

Google shares how to create an exploration report to monitor your exit rate here.

You can also create a free-form exploration report that helps you see where visitors are entering your site versus where they’re exiting. Check out the instructions here. Use ‘Organic traffic’ as one of your metrics to gain more insight into those visitors specifically.

9. Average Session Duration

This metric tells you how long the average visitor spends on your website. Typically, a higher bounce rate indicates less time spent on site, although that’s not always the case. If people abandon your website quickly, you likely need to make some updates if you want to increase your conversion rates and revenue.

Optimizations might include:

• Upgrading your content.
• Improving your design.
• Proving your credibility.
• Enhancing user experience.
• Making your site more interactive.

Adding Average Session Duration to GA4

To add average session duration to your Pages and screens report in GA4, follow the steps outlined for adding bounce rate, but select ‘Average session duration’ from the ‘Add metric’ box instead.

10. Views Per Session

This engagement metric tells you how many pages the average visitor views before leaving your website. A high average isn’t always a good thing. It could indicate your website is challenging to navigate and people have difficulty finding what they’re seeking. You may need to clarify your sales funnel and make it easier for users to take each successive step on the buyer’s journey. 

If someone visits various pages on your site but never converts, that could also be a red flag. Again, it’s important to understand why this is happening. Is it because of your offering or content? The search intent of your keywords? Pinpointing the issue and taking action to address it is the key to improving the conversion process.

Adding Views per Session in GA4

If you’d like to see views per session in GA4, you’ll need to edit your Pages and screens report like we did for bounce rate. However, instead of selecting ‘Bounce rate,’ select ‘Views per session’ from the ‘Add metric’ drop-down menu and click ‘Apply.’

Ready To Start Tracking SEO Conversion Metrics for Powerful Results?

Now that you understand which conversion metrics track back to your SEO goals, you can start making site improvements and strategy adjustments to improve conversions and generate more revenue for your business.

If you don’t have the resources to run a conversion analysis and address improvements, Victorious can help. We focus solely on search, leveraging industry expertise and actionable data to build custom SEO strategies that will help your business thrive. Our goal is simple: To get your offering in front of the right people at the right time. Ready to get started? Contact our SEO agency for a free consultation today.