Conversion tracking is one of the most important elements of any digital marketing strategy. Conversions are essentially the backbone of your business, and a dedicated approach to tracking them helps you to identify key attributes and behaviors of your target market. This probably isn’t new information for you, especially if you’ve invested even minimally in tactics like PPC or email campaigns.

Even with acknowledging the importance of conversion tracking, many businesses are missing out on growth opportunities because they’re not devoting efforts to measuring the conversion success of their SEO efforts. One could assume this is because search engine optimization has become so standard that we don’t really give it much thought. Plus, for many businesses the only real cost associated with SEO is time, so the incentive to measure results from a financial perspective isn’t always there.

However, we know that more than 70% of small businesses have websites, and the majority of those who don’t are planning on investing in creating one in the very near future. This means one thing for businesses like yours – there’s a ton of competition floating around the digital universe. You don’t just need a strategic approach to SEO, you also need to be dedicated to conversion optimization and that means paying closer attention to conversion analytics.

To illustrate our point, here are a few more reasons why SEO conversion tracking is essential today.

You Need a Quantifiable Process for Measuring Growth

Effective SEO does a lot of things for your business, but if we strip it down to the most basic level, the main goal is ultimately growth – growth in visibility, traffic, conversions and revenue. While making even a minimal attempt at search engine optimization is bound to produce some results, it’s difficult to assess how effective your strategy is – and where room for improvement exists – without measuring your rate of success in terms of conversions.

Using tools, such as Google Analytics, to measure traffic and conversions allows you to paint a truer picture of how your SEO strategy is impacting your overall results and bottom line. For example, a business might see a noticeable jump in conversions and be able to attribute it to a number of factors, with SEO being just one of them. Conversion tracking helps you pinpoint successful elements of your strategy and identify what factors are most important for continuing along a growth projectile.

Comparing SEO Against Other Growth Strategies

When it comes to marketing, so many businesses seem to be spread in a thousand different directions. Between SEO, pay per click campaigns, content creation and social media management, everyone’s hands are already so full that it’s easy to let SEO conversion tracking make its way to the sidelines.

The thing is that while each strategy has its own benefits, it might not be necessary for every business to devote resources to each and every one of them. Knowing which strategies provide optimal performance for your individual business is key in producing the greatest ROI. Most businesses will readily admit to measuring the success of their various strategies, yet many fall silent when asked about the performance of their SEO.

What if you could show that SEO on its own outperformed some of your other marketing tactics. This isn’t to say that you should toss everything out the window if conversion tracking shows that SEO is the pack leader, but it can definitely help you decide where to best direct your marketing resources.

Gain a Better Understanding of the Relationship Between Traffic and Conversions

It happens all the time – a business develops what looks like a winning keyword strategy and they’ve seen a measurable growth in traffic that validates their approach. The only problem is that traffic doesn’t always equal conversions, and the difference can often be found within the elements of their SEO strategy.

Conversion tracking helps you assess whether or not all those new visitors that are flocking to your site are converting into real customers, and at what rate this transformation is occurring. Take for example a small business that has decided to go all in on local SEO.

They’ve done their research, infused their content with longtail, geo-relevant keywords and done things like optimizing their presence on Google My Business and other online directories. Chances are their efforts have paid off, both in terms of website traffic and foot traffic at their physical location. However, once they start looking at actual conversion numbers, they realize that there hasn’t been that much of a change. Recognizing this opens the door to new insights that will allow them to adapt their SEO approach for greater conversion success.

Leveraging Key Performance Indicators

You already know that most organic visitors don’t land on your site and immediately convert. There’s a process that must take place to nurture the customer through your funnel. The challenge for some businesses is identifying where these moments of opportunities are and also where visitors are slipping through their fingers never to return again.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure various components of your SEO strategy – like impressions, site visits, bounce and exit rates, and conversions. Looking at KPIs, including conversion numbers, provides a big picture perspective that’s crucial for formulating a successful approach to SEO. For example, if you notice your bounce rate is excessively high or that load times pass the 2 second mark, you’ve just identified key exit points where customers are leaving and not converting.

Every metric associated with how your SEO is performing directly affects your conversion rate and therefore the overall success as a business in the digital world.

We’re ready to help you understand how important it is to track the conversion success of your search engine optimization strategy. We’re the SEO agency that’s equipped with the talent and experience to help you achieve noticeable results. If you’re ready to learn more, contact JLB Florida and let us tell you all about our professional SEO services and how we can tailor a strategy that will have you changing the way you define success.