In this article we'll give you some key performance indicators to determine whether or not you're getting great results from SEO.

Step 1. Has your revenue increased?

Here's the caveat: if you are seeing an increase in traffic to your website, but not a corresponding increase in revenue that problem may not be your SEO company or team. The root issue may be that your landing pages need Conversion Rate Optimization services.

Your website content and services could be compelling and engaging, but if your calls to action could be missing or misplaced. Or vice veras. Or all of the above.

If you are seeing an increase in revenue, but it's not the volume you'd like you should notify your SEO team - but more importantly they should be anticipating your needs in this area. A quality SEO company will have an onboarding process where they define KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) to measure success with in multiple categories. Everything from "What are your Target Keywords, Landing Pages and Products?" to "How much revenue do you want to see to feel that you're getting your money's worth?"

Step 2. Are your Key Performance Indicators Clear

This is truly your first step, but most of us think about the basic question "Has my revenue increased?" first. But in order to get there your SEO service providers need to know what your goals and expectations truly are. You see, SEO is a vast field and without a clear mission you'll become "Jack of All Master of None".

For example, if you sold shoes how many keywords can you think of off the top of your head that you COULD be found for? Nike shoes, deisgner shoes, cheap shoes, custom shoes, etc... The possibilities are endless. So which one is your search engine optimization team going to focus on? If they are proactively in communication with you about this before work begins, and throughout the iterative process you're going to find nominal increases in rankings and overall low performance and revenue increase.

But what if you have many shoe products to sell, but you know your best performing shoes at Mens, Size 8, Nike, Model ABC? That is where your SEO team should begin. Now, you can expand this if your budget and SEO agency has the resources to do so, but the vast majority of SEO companies have just a few people (strategist, programmer, content editor, backlink builder) - so you want them to start small and focused. Get results there first and then move one. When working with larger search engine optimizations like The Portland Company (us) we'll allocate several SEO staff to accomodate for businesses that are able to be aggressive with their marketing and target multiple terms.

Step 3. Do you understand your reports?

This assumes that your SEO company is providing reports to you. The report you receive, ideally, is going to have real-time data (this is what we offer) so you have imminent insight into the effectiveness and results.

Take a moment to view the screenshot below of one of our real-clients reports.