In the second part of our SEO metrics guide, we show you which indicators are useful for truly evaluating your organic positioning strategy.
The world of digital marketing is characterized by the ease of monitoring every action, tracking it, determining its effectiveness, and implementing tactics for continuous improvement.
The big question for many is: which of so many metrics should I use to measure and evaluate my SEO strategy?
This article is the second part of an analysis where Blas Giffuni and Camilo Ramírez continue to clarify which are some of the real metrics that truly contribute to the evaluation of an SEO strategy, as well as which are some of them that have gradually lost relevance or are not really so relevant.
The metrics that make up the core web vitals will evolve over time. But, the current set of indicators focuses on three main aspects of the user experience:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): refers to the time for the largest content to be displayed. This metric measures performance and loading speed. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.
First Input Delay (FID): is the metric that measures the speed of response to the user's first interaction with the page, such as a click or a JavaScript control. Therefore, this indicator measures interactivity and can be translated as 'delay of the first input'. To provide a good user experience, pages should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): refers to the cumulative change in layout and measures the frequency and severity of unexpected changes in a page's layout. Thus, visual stability is evaluated here. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1.
While these metrics are important for providing a good user experience on your website, many assume that just by having a good score on these indicators, the SEO task is done and that thus, the number one position in Google results is practically guaranteed. However, the reality is different.
Google has been emphatic in explaining that they analyze these indicators only when ties occur.
What does this mean? That if there are two or three websites covering the content in a spectacular way and providing the best possible information to users, that's when Google decides who gets the lead based on performance in the core web vitals.
Regarding this, it is important to emphasize that, although core web vitals clearly provide competitive advantages, it is not the only thing you should pay attention to, nor is it the most important.
It is much more relevant for SEO that you focus on generating and providing quality content for the user, and this will indeed help significantly to contribute to the ranking and positioning of your website.
2. Keyword Research vs. entities or SEO entities:
As SEO continues to evolve, changes occur in how search engine algorithms monitor and organize data.
With these changes, they seek to increasingly approach understanding human language and create a semantic network that makes connections based on the context of a search, in order to provide accurate results to users and improve their experience considering their search intent.
This is how since 2012, keywords have been left behind to make way for the new superstar of the SEO world: entities!
What are entities in SEO?
Google defines an entity as any element that is "singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable". Entities in SEO refer to the name of something, an element, a place, a person, an animal, an object, a thing, etc. And that name is automatically associated with other terms, words, or concepts, that is; they interconnect with other entities.
According to Google, the entities it recognizes and classifies at the moment are:
Person.
Place.
Organization or brand.
Event or happening.
Work of art.
Consumer product.
Phone number.
Address.
Dates.
Numbers.
Prices and currencies.
Among others.
In other words, SEO entities use context to formulate concepts that can be found through many different searches.
SEO entities or thematic axes are replacing keywords because keywords can be ambiguous, and it is also more difficult to establish contextual relationships and connections between them.
Our invitation is to go beyond keywords and start focusing your web content based on entities. There are tools available to everyone that can help you perform this analysis and definition of thematic axes to better understand the search intent of your users.
Conclusion:
Measuring your results is an essential part of the SEO process. With metrics, you can evaluate if your strategy is working, what kind of results it is achieving, and how you can improve it.
If you want to get a more accurate idea of how your SEO efforts are impacting your business, we recommend that you dedicate time to define which SEO metrics are the most relevant to identify if you are meeting the objectives.
In parts 1 and 2 of this article, we mentioned some metrics that are important for the evaluation and measurement of your SEO strategy and also debunked others that, although they are often considered fundamental, end up not being so relevant.
We invite you to keep reading our blog to learn more about search engine positioning.
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