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Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a dynamic way for businesses to boost their online presence and thrive in a competitive digital landscape. However, to truly understand the impact of your SEM efforts, tracking the right metrics is crucial.
In this article, we’ll learn what SEM is, explore the importance of SEM tracking, uncover KPIs to track, and how to set KPI goals.
What is SEM?
SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is a digital marketing process that helps improve your website’s visibility on search engines. While some people may confuse SEM with only paid marketing (PPC), you need to understand that it helps boost your website’s ranking on different search engine pages through both organic (SEO) and paid marketing efforts (PPC).
But why should you care about SEM? It can help your business by:
- Improving your website traffic and attracting more traffic
- Increasing revenue
- Generating more leads and growing your business
You can clearly see how SEM can drive your business toward success. Hence, SEM tracking is crucial for tracking all success-driven activities. But what are the benefits of tracking important SEM metrics?
Benefits of SEM Tracking
SEM metrics are crucial data sets that can help evaluate your SEM campaigns (both paid and organic). These metrics help you identify how your SEM campaigns are performing and how much revenue they are generating. The process of tracking these metrics is known as SEM tracking. But what is the importance of SEM tracking?
Below are some of the main benefits of SEM tracking:
1. Identifying Sales Opportunities
Utilizing SEM tracking to collect valuable data and insights empowers businesses to make savvy marketing decisions. This approach not only helps them refine their strategies but also uncovers fresh avenues for growth and increased sales.
2. Achieving Business Goals
Monitoring SEM results allows you to demonstrate how effectively you’ve met your business objectives.
3. Evaluating Campaign Performance
Keeping an eye on your SEM campaigns lets you gauge their effectiveness. By analyzing metrics such as clicks, conversions, and cost per acquisition, you can accurately assess your return on investment.
4. Tracking Campaign Effectiveness
Monitoring your campaigns enables you to connect conversions to particular marketing channels, offering important insights into your overall marketing strategy. By evaluating SEM results, you gain a clearer picture of how well your campaigns are performing compared to other channels, allowing you to allocate your budget and resources more effectively.
5. Optimizing Your SEM Strategy
Analyzing SEM results reveals opportunities for enhancement, like pinpointing underperforming keywords or ad copy. This data-driven approach empowers you to make informed decisions that optimize your campaigns.
6. Understanding User Behavior
Monitoring SEM results provides insights into how users engage with your ads and campaigns. By implementing A/B testing, you can refine your ads to make them more relevant and effective.
7. Gaining a Competitive Advantage
Keeping track of your SEM results can provide you with a competitive advantage. It allows you to gain insights into your competitors’ strategies, enabling you to adapt your own approach effectively.
Key SEM Metrics to Track
While it’s important to track your SEM metrics, here are some of the key ones to track:
1. Paid/PPC Metrics
The PPC SEM metrics that you should track to check the effectiveness of your paid campaigns are below:
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Core Metrics
- Clicks: This refers to how many times users engage with your ads by clicking on them.
- Impressions: This is all about visibility—it’s the number of times your ads show up on the search engine results page.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Think of this as a measure of success; it’s the percentage of impressions that lead to actual clicks on your ads.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): This tells you the average amount you spend for each click on your ad. It’s a key metric to keep an eye on!
- Conversion Rate: This percentage shows how effective your ads are in prompting users to take a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Here, you’ll find out how much it costs you to gain a new customer through your search engine marketing efforts.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This metric reveals the revenue generated from your SEM campaigns relative to the money you spent on ads. It’s a great way to gauge the effectiveness of your advertising strategy!
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Advanced Metrics
- Quality Score: This is your ad’s report card, reflecting the overall quality of your ad, the keywords you choose, and the effectiveness of your landing page.
- Ad Rank: Ever wondered where your ad stands in the search results? Ad rank tells you exactly that—it’s your ad’s position on the search results page.
- Conversions/Conversion Value: These metrics help you understand how many users are taking the desired actions on your site and the value those actions bring to your business.
- Top and Absolute Top: This new set of metrics replaces the old “average position” metric. Now, you can track how often your ad appears in the absolute top spot and how frequently it shows up in the top positions overall.
- Engagement Rate: This metric gives you insight into how well users are interacting with your content. It’s essentially the opposite of the bounce rate. For instance, if your engagement rate is 60%, that means only 40% of visitors leave your site without engaging!
- Time on Site: This metric measures how long, on average, visitors stick around on your website. It’s a key indicator of how engaging your content is!
2. Organic/SEO Metrics
Below are some of the most essential organic metrics to track to check the effectiveness of your SEO campaign:
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Organic Traffic
It refers to the visitors who land on your website through unpaid search results across various search engines. The greater your organic traffic, the higher your site’s visibility in search results, which means you’ll attract a larger and more relevant audience.
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Keyword Rankings
Keyword ranking refers to where your website appears in organic search results for specific keywords. High-ranking target keywords mean more website clicks, leading to increased organic traffic and the potential for more sales. For smaller websites, tracking all the keywords they’re ranking for is a breeze!
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Organic Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Organic CTR (Click-Through Rate) measures the percentage of users who click on your web page after spotting it on the search engine results page (SERP). A higher ranking means more traffic for your site. Plus, organic CTR can influence your rankings indirectly, as Google takes note of user behavior online!
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Domain Authority
Domain authority reflects the strength of a domain, typically measured on a 100-point scale. When you’re tracking your SEO progress, analyzing your domain authority is essential. If your score increases, it often indicates improved overall organic performance for your website. However, if you see a significant drop in your domain rating, it’s time to dig deeper. This could mean that high-quality backlinks were lost or that an algorithm update negatively impacted your site, among other possibilities.
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Backlinks
Outreach, guest posting, and backlink exchanges are tried-and-true methods for building links. If you’re actively engaging in link building, it’s essential to keep an eye on your outreach efforts and track the number of new backlinks you’re creating.
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Branded Traffic
Organic branded traffic consists of users who arrive at your web pages by searching for your brand name or associated keywords in search engines. These visitors already know your brand and are actively seeking it out or related content online. This type of traffic is particularly valuable because it indicates a higher level of brand awareness and intent to engage.
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Non-Branded Traffic
Non-branded traffic refers to visitors who find your site using keywords that aren’t directly tied to your brand but may still be relevant to the content on your site. Analyzing this data can provide valuable insights into what’s driving the most traffic to your website.
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Conversions
Conversions refer to the key actions that users take on your website, like making a purchase, submitting a contact form, or placing an order. The conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete one of these target actions compared to the total number of visitors to a specific web page, such as your contact page.
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Google Business Profile Metrics
If you run a local business with a physical location, your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is an essential marketing tool. Your local rankings heavily rely on this profile, so it’s crucial for local business owners and marketing managers to keep tabs on its performance over time.
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User Engagement
User engagement metrics give you a peek into how users are interacting with your website. Some key examples include scroll depth, page views, average session duration, the number of pages viewed in a single session, click-through rate (CTR), and return visits. In essence, these metrics reveal just how actively users are engaging with your site.
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Page Speed
Page load speed is all about how quickly your website’s pages load for visitors. There are two types of load speeds to consider: mobile page load speed and desktop page load speed. While most websites typically perform well on desktops, many struggle with slower load times on mobile devices, which can negatively impact your SEO. This is why it is important to keep tracking your page load speed.
Common SEM Metrics to Track Based on Industries
Based on different industries, here are some common SEM metrics to track:
- eCommerce Client: Conversions, clicks, cost, conversion rate, revenue, CPA, and ROAS.
- SaaS Client: CPA, cost, PQLs, and clicks.
- Local Services Client: Leads, impressions, cost, conversion rate, cost per lead, and revenue.
- Brand-focused Client: Impression share, impressions, CTR, cost, and clicks.
- Profit-focused Client: Conversions, clicks, revenue, cost, CPA, and ROAS.
- Growth-focused Client: Clicks, impressions, revenue, conversions, CPA, and cost.
How to Set Up SEM KPIs?
1. Define KPIs
Before diving into SEM optimization and testing, it’s essential to have a solid understanding of your objectives and how you plan to assess your success. Think of your SEM goals in terms of the SMART framework—make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This approach will not only clarify your intentions but also help you track your progress effectively.
2. Start Tracking
- Integrate Google Analytics: Link your Google Ads account with Google Analytics to gain a deeper insight into your data and performance.
- Track Conversions: Establish conversion goals to monitor specific actions you want visitors to take on your website.
- Utilize UTM Parameters: Implement UTM parameters to track various marketing channels and campaigns effectively.
3. Use SEM Tools
One of the simplest ways to monitor SEM optimization and testing is by utilizing the very tools and platforms you use to manage your SEM campaigns.
- Use Built-in Reporting Features: Take advantage of the default reporting tools offered by Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising to assess your campaign performance.
- Explore Third-Party Tracking Tools: For more in-depth data analysis, think about using platforms like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Data Studio, or Tableau. These tools can provide advanced insights and enhance your overall strategy.
4. Analyze
Another effective way to stay on top of SEM optimization and testing is by conducting regular audits and in-depth analysis of your campaigns. These audits help pinpoint what’s working, uncover weaknesses, and reveal new opportunities for growth.
- Visualize Your Data: Use charts and graphs to identify key trends and patterns quickly.
- Generate Actionable Insights: Translate data into practical steps to enhance performance.
- Boost Campaign Efficiency: Optimize your strategy based on findings to maximize results.
5. Stay Updated
Trends keep changing for marketing analytics, and it’s important to keep up with them regularly.
Use ViewMetrics Dashboard to Track Your SEM Campaigns
ViewMetrics is a game-changer for your SEM tracking efforts, offering powerful tools that make managing campaigns smoother and smarter. It’s built to simplify how you collect, analyze, and act on data. Here’s why it stands out:
- Unified Data at Your Fingertips: Forget hopping between platforms—ViewMetrics pulls data from Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, social media, and website analytics, bringing everything together in one place.
- Effortless Reporting: Say goodbye to manual number-crunching. Automated reports keep you up to speed with key metrics, saving time while ensuring consistency across the board.
- Deep Insights with Advanced Analytics: From cohort analysis to attribution modeling, ViewMetrics helps you uncover patterns and understand what’s driving results, empowering you to fine-tune your campaigns.
- Tailored Dashboards for Your Needs: Build dashboards that showcase the metrics that matter most to you so you can track progress and spot trends easily over time.
- Real-Time Alerts for Quick Action: Set up alerts to get notified when performance shifts—whether it’s a sudden spike or a drop—so you can jump in and course-correct without delay.
Using ViewMetrics alongside your existing SEM practices gives you a clearer, more actionable view of your campaigns, helping you make decisions that drive better results.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How is SEM done?
Here’s a quick way to get started with SEM:
- Do your keyword research
- Plan your budget
- Get started with the campaign
- Track your data from time to time
SEO vs SEM vs PPC?
SEO focuses on improving organic rankings by optimizing your website and content for search engines. Results are long-term but take time. While SEM encompasses both paid and organic strategies to increase visibility on search engines. It includes SEO and PPC. And PPC is a form of SEM where you pay for ads that appear on search engine results. You get instant visibility, but it costs per click.
