SEO KPIs Template
The most popular KPIs for measuring progress towards your SEO goals.
8 KPIs included
About this template
A carefully selected set of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focused KPIs for monitoring your online marketing activities and campaigns. This SEO template is designed to track and monitor KPIs such as KPIs such as, inbound links, OSOV, SMM Post activity, blog activity and Bounce Rate. Internet and digital marketeers, developers, marketing managers and even amateur web enthusiasts can benefit for using these metrics to monitor their SEO efforts.This template has been provided by SEO professionals to create a base set of the most important SEO KPIs to track and improve your website performance in search engine rankings.
What this template measures
SEO is a chain, and this template measures every link in it. Keyword position tells you where you rank. Unique website visitors tells you whether that ranking sends anyone. Bounce Rate and Average site time tell you whether the people who arrive find what they were promised. Goal Conversion Rate tells you whether any of it was worth doing. Break the chain anywhere and everything downstream goes quiet.
Plenty of SEO reporting stops at rankings and traffic. Both look like progress, which is the problem: a page can climb the results, pull in visitors, and lose most of them before they read a line. Reading Keyword position next to Bounce Rate catches that. It works the same way at the other end of the chain, where Goal Conversion Rate on its own is a percentage with nothing behind it.
Three of the KPIs cover the work that earns rankings rather than the rankings themselves. Inbound Links is the authority measure, the hardest signal to fake and the slowest to move. SMM Post Activity counts what you published and shared this period, which is the input side of the equation. OSOV - Online Share of Voice tracks the balance of positive, negative and neutral mentions, so you know whether the attention is the kind you want.
Who uses it
SEO specialists and agencies live in Keyword position and Inbound Links. Those two are the daily scoreboard, and the numbers a client asks about first. Marketing managers care more about Unique website visitors and Goal Conversion Rate, because those connect search work to pipeline in language a finance team accepts. Content and social teams watch SMM Post Activity and OSOV - Online Share of Voice to see whether publishing volume is turning into reach worth having, and there's more on that side of the job in this guide to social media KPIs.
Owners running their own site usually want one view with all eight on it. That's the honest version anyway, since no single number here means much on its own.
Setting targets
Take a baseline before you set anything. Pull two or three months of history for each KPI, write down where you actually are, and set the first target one step past it. Direction beats absolutes in SEO. A Keyword position climbing steadily is a real result even before it reaches page one, and a Bounce Rate that falls a little each quarter is worth more than a round number copied from somewhere else. Inbound Links and Keyword position both lag, so give them a quarter before you judge anything.
Kip, the AI built into SimpleKPI, can suggest starting targets and show indicative benchmarks. Those are AI estimates rather than real peer data, so use them as a sanity check on your baseline, not as a verdict on it.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Chasing one keyword. A single term at the top of the results makes a nice screenshot. Track Keyword position across a set of terms that describe what you actually sell, or you'll end up optimizing for a word nobody buys on.
- Reading Bounce Rate as a verdict. A high bounce on a page that answered the question in one paragraph is fine. Put it next to Average site time before you rewrite anything.
- Counting links instead of weighing them. Inbound Links climbing from low-quality directories is not progress. Check where the new links came from before you report the number.
- Measuring output and calling it results. SMM Post Activity is an input. If it rises for two quarters and Unique website visitors doesn't move, publishing more isn't the fix.
KPIs in this template
Inbound Links
The number of inbound links to your website
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate this week
Unique website visitors
The total number of uniquw visitors this period
Keyword position
The position of searched keyword
Average site time
The average visitor time on the website
SMM Post Activity
The number of posts, blogs or tweets this period
OSOV - Online Share of Voice
The ratio of positive, negative and neutral comment about your product, service or company
Goal Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors to a site that have completed a set action or goal
Frequently asked questions
How do I import this SEO KPI template into SimpleKPI?
Pick the SEO KPIs template when you set up your account and all eight KPIs are created for you, names and descriptions already in place. You then add targets, reporting frequency and an owner for each one. Nothing is locked, so anything that doesn't fit can be renamed or removed.
Can I add or remove KPIs from this template?
Yes. The eight KPIs are a starting point rather than a fixed list, and plenty of teams cut one or two and add a couple of their own. Every plan includes unlimited KPIs, dashboards and reports, so a longer list costs nothing extra.
Where does the data for these SEO KPIs come from?
Mostly from your analytics platform and your rank tracking tool. You can type values in by hand, import a spreadsheet, or push numbers through the API or an integration, on whatever schedule suits each KPI. Keyword position and SMM Post Activity are usually weekly, while Unique website visitors and Goal Conversion Rate tend to land monthly.
What targets should I set for these SEO KPIs?
Set them from your own baseline rather than copying figures from elsewhere. Take a couple of months of history for each KPI and aim one step past where you sit today. Inbound Links and Keyword position move slowly, so reviewing those targets quarterly works better than chasing them month to month.
Import the set straight into SimpleKPI's KPI dashboards: one flat price, unlimited users and KPIs.