1. Organic Traffic
All the SEO effort in the world is useless unless it actually brings you traffic.
Tracking your organic sessions over time is one of the strongest indicators of SEO performance. A month-over-month increase in visitors through organic search shows that your rankings are improving (even for keywords you weren't targeting).
While other metrics might show a trend, this metric gives you quantifiable proof that your efforts are actually bringing in more visitors.
The quality of the search traffic, of course, will depend on which keywords you're ranking for and how you define conversions, which we’ll discuss in the next section.
2. Organic Conversions
Now that you see organic traffic coming in, the next question to ask yourself is: what is the quality of that traffic? As you probably know, organic sessions alone aren't enough. You could be generating traffic from irrelevant terms that never turn into a sale or lead.
To measure the quality of your traffic, you need to be tracking organic conversions.
3. Keyword Rankings
With Google’s AI-based search algorithm RankBrain, a shift towards personalization, and continuously changing search results, should you even bother tracking keyword rankings?
Yes.
Even though search results are seldom the same at the user-level (thanks to personalization), and 20% of searches are entirely new, tracking keyword rankings tells you two things:
• The general direction of your SEO efforts: Better rankings for one keyword usually indicate improved rankings overall, especially for related long-tail keywords. Tracking keywords shows you the effectiveness of your current SEO plan.
• Keyword selection: If your other SEO metrics improve (such as domain rating or organic traffic) but you don't see an improvement in target keyword rankings, it usually indicates poor keyword selection. In such a case, you should choose a less competitive keyword and try to rank for it first.
4. New Backlinks and Referring Domains
While on-page factors matter, strong SEO performance is still by and large determined by backlinks.
Between two pages with similar on-page metrics (bounce rate, time on site, content quality etc.), the one with more backlinks from better domains will invariably win.
Keep track of your backlinks and referring domains to get a general idea of the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts. More backlinks might not immediately lead to better rankings (especially if the links are from low quality domains), but they do show you’re moving in a positive direction.
How to Track Backlinks
To track backlinks, you'll need an SEO analytics and backlink monitoring tool. There are three things you want in a backlink tracking tool:
• Update frequency: The tool should index new backlinks as they appear online. If the tool refreshes its index too slowly, new backlinks won't even show up for weeks.
• Accuracy: The tool should only show actual backlinks. It should also show follow/no-follow links separately. The ability to track anchor text and backlink source authority is a big plus as well.
• Trends: The tool should show you the general trend – whether you've lost or gained backlinks over time.
5. Authority Metrics (DA/TF)
Tracking the sheer number of backlinks to your website isn't enough. You also want to measure the quality of the backlinks you're building, as well as the increasing authority of your own site.
As an SEO, you're most likely already familiar with "Domain Authority".
This is the term coined by Moz to to gauge the "authority" of a domain name on a scale of 0-100 (based on links, brand mentions, etc.). The higher this number, the more trustworthy the domain.

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