Passed on 7 April, 2025

5. Measuring success in organic search

Are you getting more or less of that traffic from search engines over time? What do all of those searchers actually do after they get to your website? This lesson can help you begin to answer those questions and more.

✅ Learning objectivesBy the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:Create SEO goals and strategies.Explore how data can support SEO strategies.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:

Create SEO goals and strategies.

Explore how data can support SEO strategies.

Be strategic with SEO

It’s time to learn about using data to gain valuable insights about how your site is evaluated by search engines, and how you can troubleshoot SEO issues uncovered by analytics.

Setting SEO goals

To get started with SEO, it’s important to set clear goals. When you set SEO goals, you can measure, track, and report on the results. You’ll know which efforts are succeeding—and which aren’t. You can then adjust things to make it work better.If you need a refresher on web analytics and data analysis, revisit theAnalyticsmodule.

If you need a refresher on web analytics and data analysis, revisit theAnalyticsmodule.

If you need a refresher on web analytics and data analysis, revisit theAnalyticsmodule.

Identify your SEO goals

Setting SEO goals gives you something to measure to help you better understand how your site is—or isn’t—performing.

What do you want to achieve?

Imagine you own a small farm. You probably want to sell fruits and vegetables to as many new customers as possible. You’d also like to build relationships with existing customers through good content—and hope they eventually return to buy more fruits and vegetables.

✅ ActivityIt’s time to set your own SEO goals. Remember to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.Check the items off as you go.Note down 2-3 things you’d like to achieve using SEO.Turn the 2-3 things you’d like to achieve into SMART goals.

Activity

It’s time to set your own SEO goals. Remember to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Note down 2-3 things you’d like to achieve using SEO.

Turn the 2-3 things you’d like to achieve into SMART goals.

Do your goals equal success?

Some measurements matter more than others. For example, it’s exciting to be number one in search engine rankings, but it’s not a guarantee of success. Let’s explore how you define success.

Measuring success

Let’s come up with a few other ways you might measure success. Remember those goals you set above?

Conversions

You can measure conversions by tracking the number of visitors who come to your website by organic search and buy fruits and vegetables, or by tracking a smaller action that can lead to a sale, like signing up for your email newsletter.

Acquisitions

You can measure acquisition and reach by tracking the number of times your website appears in search results—your ‘impressions’—and how often people click through to visit your site.

Engagement

You can measure engagement by tracking what content your visitors read and interact with, such as leaving comments, or how many visitors become your fans on social media sites.

What tools can help?

Analytics tools and webmaster tools provided by search engines can give you this information—often free of charge.

What are analytics and webmaster tools?

They’re a collection of reports and services that help you track and monitor your website’s visibility in search, and they are often AI-powered.

What do they tell you?

Tools like analytics and webmaster tell you which keywords bring up your website in the search results, which web pages they link to, and how many visitors click the links to visit your site. This is valuable information if your goal is to attract customers searching for certain terms.

What do they tell you about your customers?

Analytics tools can also be used to better understand visitor behaviour. They can answer questions like:How many organic visitors become customers?Which web pages or content on your site turn visitors into paying customers?Which content isn’t performing well?

How many organic visitors become customers?Which web pages or content on your site turn visitors into paying customers?Which content isn’t performing well?

How many organic visitors become customers?

Which web pages or content on your site turn visitors into paying customers?

Which content isn’t performing well?

Activity

Based on the goals you wrote down earlier, make a note of the metrics you can track to identify if you’ve been successful.

Download PDF

Download PDF

Check your knowledge

It’s time to find out what you’ve learned so far.You must complete the knowledge check to move to the next lesson.

You must complete the knowledge check to move to the next lesson.

You must complete the knowledge check to move to the next lesson.

Question 1 of 1

Eric has been selling fruit and vegetables online for a while. He’s chosen the keywords that he feels will drive the right people to his website; now he needs to track the progress of these keywords with analytics tools.What information will analytics give him?

What information will analytics give him?

What information will analytics give him?

Where website visitors are located

Which website visitors turn into paying customers

What content visitors interact with

Whether customers enjoy the fruit and vegetables they buy

Submit

Submit

Yes.Analytics tools are a great way to get information about how content is performing, who visits the site and turns into a customer, and what content they interact with. It will give Eric most of this information, but won’t tell him whether customers enjoy the fruit and vegetables they buy from his store.

Lesson complete

Great job!Congratulations on completing theOrganic searchmodule. You’ve learned more about how search engines choose which content to display in response to search terms, and learned skills that can help boost your content’s ranking in search engine results.Now that you can apply the essentials, it’s time to decide which digital marketing topic you’d like to explore next.

Congratulations on completing theOrganic searchmodule. You’ve learned more about how search engines choose which content to display in response to search terms, and learned skills that can help boost your content’s ranking in search engine results.Now that you can apply the essentials, it’s time to decide which digital marketing topic you’d like to explore next.

Now that you can apply the essentials, it’s time to decide which digital marketing topic you’d like to explore next.

Now that you can apply the essentials, it’s time to decide which digital marketing topic you’d like to explore next.

Next Path

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