Many small businesses are concerned about how much website traffic they are getting almost from the first day their website goes live. In many ways, this is a distraction. It takes time before your website will increase its traffic significantly. You won’t see any real significant traffic increases until you have a few page 1 search engine listings for high value keywords.
So what metrics should you measure if you aren’t measuring traffic?
Here are six important website metrics you should pay attention to before you concern yourself with traffic.
- Number of keyword rankings – How many keywords you are ranking for, even if those rankings are very low, is important. If you improve this number over time, then you can say your SEO efforts are working.
- Search engine ranking increases – Take a look at your keyword list and take note of the rankings for each keyword at the beginning of your marketing campaign. Then, after a few weeks, take a look to see if you’ve seen any improvements in those rankings.
- Inbound links – The number and quality of your inbound links is another metric that is easy to measure from Day One.
- Page views and bounce rates – Onsite metrics are also important. How many pages does your average visitor view? What is your website’s bounce rate? If it is high, you’ll want to change that.
- Conversion rates – This is one of the most important metrics to look at no matter how much traffic you are getting.
- Social metrics – How many likes, shares, tweets and retweets, +1s, pins, etc. are you getting? These metrics often lead to great traffic. They also give you insight into the diversity of your traffic sources.
Traffic is an important metric over time, however, before you start worrying about traffic you should worry about some of these other metrics.