You may be surprised to find out that traffic isn't the #1 metric I look at when trying to determine how a client's SEO program is working.
Yes, traffic is important to SEO growth, as are SEO keyword rankings, but there are other metrics that I believe are more important when you're an entrepreneur who's looking to grow and scale your business.
Find out what else you should be checking and tracking in this week's podcast episode.
Save the date for the week of October 13th. I'll be teaching two free live SEO classes that week, all about where things are going in 2025 and 2026, and how to generate traffic and leads from ChatGPT and other AI tools.
Register now for the free live SEO class and find out the secrets to being found, generating leads, and making money from Google and in AI Search like ChatGPT.
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/registration-seo-class
My free resources, including the Beginner's step-by-step SEO Guide and my free class, are available here.
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/freebies
Learn more about 1:1 Elite Marketing Coaching, where we work together for 3 months on your business. I'll help you make more money.
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/marketing-coaching
Join me in Simple SEO Content, my complete SEO and Content Marketing course that teaches you what to do step-by-step. It walks you through the entire process. (complete course)
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/yes
Join Simple Podcast SEO and learn how to grow your show quickly and easily in the self-study podcast SEO program.
https://www.etchedmarketing.com/enroll
My favorite marketing tools (affiliate links)
Podcast recording and editing - Descript
Episode Transcript
Hi, and welcome back to thepodcast.
Today I want to touch on SEOmetrics that you should be
tracking.
Which ones are really the mostimportant for you and why
traffic is not number one, whyIt's honestly not even one of
the most important SEO metricsfrom my standpoint.
(00:22):
Now, I know you're probablythinking.
What in the world, Rachel,because traffic is what you get
from SEO, but it's not the mostimportant thing you get, and I
want you to really understandthat.
What I want you to look at ishow is the traffic that's coming
to your website?
(00:43):
Engaging with what you have onyour site or the content.
So I've worked with severalstudents on this where they've
come to me and they've said,Rachel, my traffic is down.
I'm not sure what to do.
I'm really concerned about it.
And so we've looked at it andit's like, your traffic's down,
but your revenue is up.
Do you care that your traffic isdown?
If your revenue is up?
I don't.
(01:03):
You should not either.
So what we wanna look at is howare those people interacting
with the content on our website,because that helps us understand
are we bringing the right peopleto our site or are we just
getting traffic?
Sometimes when we're doing SEO,especially when we're trying to
do it on our own, we're tryingto learn and figure it out, and
(01:23):
we're targeting keywords.
Will choose keywords that wethink are really good for us.
However, we don't understand howto choose them based on content,
strategy and consumer behavior,and even making sure that
there's an alignment between thekeyword search and the consumer
intent to make sure that you'rereally bringing the right person
(01:46):
to your site.
Sometimes you'll end up rankingfor something that's not really
super relevant.
So I had a situation like this,you know, I've been doing this
for many, many years now.
I had a website page, it wasactually a blog post that I
wrote back in 2017, and it was afantastic blog post and it
ranked in position number one,and it drove a ton of traffic.
(02:07):
My problem was.
I didn't have anything that Isold or offered that the person
who came in from that blog postwas going to be interested in.
So it brought me a lot oftraffic, but they didn't engage
because my business had changedenough that I ended up, in all
honesty, removing that blog postand it was my number one traffic
(02:30):
driver.
So at first.
I was kind of feeling a littleuncomfortable about it, even
though I knew it was better offto remove that blog post versus
have the wrong traffic coming tomy website.
It still felt hard even to me totake away that much traffic from
my site.
Each month it got hundreds andhundreds of visits.
(02:53):
It was a blog post on how tonail your first Facebook Live.
Well, Facebook Live was reallypopular back in 2017.
It's not as popular today.
And back in 2017, I actuallytaught a bit about Facebook,
social media marketing, becauseI talked more cross channel.
Today I focus more on searchengine optimization, content
(03:17):
marketing, blogging, ai, SEO.
Email marketing, et cetera.
Social media marketing hasreally taken a backseat for me
because what I've seen over theyears is that the majority of
people who find the site onsocial don't engage well.
So for me, social is not apriority.
Now, if the people that you findon social engage, well then
(03:38):
social may be a prior.
But for me it was not.
So I had hundreds of peoplecoming each month, but they were
coming because they wanted helplearning how to market their
business on Facebook.
I tried different opt-ins, Itried different freebies, things
like that on that page, and itnever really made a difference.
They still were not engaging andthey were not going on to look
(04:01):
at other content because theyreally wanted tips on Facebook
marketing.
So I got rid of the page becauseyes, it had a lot of traffic.
No, it was not driving businessfor me.
The other thing we wanna thinkabout, especially when we're
working on SEO, is that Googleis looking at a few different
things.
So Google is looking at howpeople interact with your site
(04:22):
to really understand, are yougood?
Are you trustworthy?
Do you understand what you'reteaching about?
Are you someone that people likeand they want to consume more
content?
So because of that, when peoplewere coming to the site, they
were reading that blog post, butthey weren't doing anything
else.
It kind of told Google, thisisn't the best experience, this
(04:43):
isn't the best site for thistype query.
While it did not directly impactmy rankings for that, because I
still was in position one when Iremoved that page.
It still was not good from anoverall perspective.
The other thing is as the Googlealgorithm has updated and
changed and really grown up abit in the last couple years,
(05:05):
it's very focused on going kindof a deep dive and really making
sure that the sites that it is,um, showing are ones that are
very relevant and have a lot ofexpertise and experience, and.
Depth in specific subject areas.
So because I didn't have a lotof other content on my site
about Facebook Live, I didn'tfeel that it was a great
(05:29):
experience and it didn't reallytie closely to what I was doing
with my business.
So that's why I removed it.
So what I want you to thinkabout when you are looking at
your metrics, and I want you tolook at your metrics next week,
where at the end of the month, Ialways recommend looking at
your.
Your total traffic, your SEOtraffic, just to see kind of
(05:49):
what percentage are you at.
Ideally, we wanna be at least30% of our traffic coming from
SEO, so I want you to take alook at those once a month.
You also wanna kind of take alook at your keyword rankings,
but more than that, the numbersthat I want you to look at would
be tied to your opt-ins.
How many people.
Downloaded your opt-ins orrequested your opt-ins from each
(06:10):
marketing channel or from SEO,social email, et cetera, email.
You're probably not gonna have alot of people requesting your
opt-ins from email becausethey're already on your email
list, but you know what I mean.
Then I want you to look at.
How many leads you got from SEOand how much money you made.
So I have students who aremaking a lot of money from what
(06:32):
they're doing, and they know itbecause they're tracking their
leads.
So if you're not tracking yourleads, you need to start doing
that.
Where are people finding you?
Because there's a good chancethey're finding you from chatt
PT.
They're finding you fromperplexity, they're finding you
from Google.
If you've done SEO and you'vedone it the right way, if you
haven't done it yet, then youmay not be getting those leads.
You may not be making thosesales, and I want you to get
(06:54):
started on that.
The other thing I wanted to letyou know.
And we're coming about two weeksout.
We are going to have, uh, freelive trainings the week of
October 13th, and there will beprobably two classes where you
can come in and really learnwhat's working in SEO today, how
all of this is happening, howit's working, how we're going to
(07:17):
start.
Being more visible online.
We're not worried as much abouttraffic anymore.
I'm gonna be completely honest.
What we're really starting tosee is that for most people
there is a decrease in trafficbecause of the AI search and the
AI visibility.
So we really wanna make surethat we're.
We're focusing on both.
So we're focusing on traditionalSEO and we're focusing on AI
(07:41):
optimization because we need tobe visible in all the places
that our customers aresearching.
So I'm gonna be going into whatall of that is during those two
free classes the week of the13th.
So if you're not on my emaillist, make sure you get on
there.
You can get on there byrequesting the beginner's guide
to S-E-O-A-I-S-E-O, signing upfor the free class.
(08:04):
You can do all of that at etchedmarketing.com/freebies.
Um, if you're on my email list,then you'll be getting emails
about that in the next couple ofdays so that you can save your
seat first.
The other really exciting thingis that simple SEO content will
be available starting afterthose classes, and it is
completely updated.
It is a, the container.
(08:26):
Format is completely updated.
It is a six month cohort.
It is going to really give youthe guidance, the support, the
mentorship, the accountability,all the things that you really
need to learn how to do this.
So you're gonna have 12 weeks ofimplementation where you're
going to learn what to do, andI'm gonna walk you through step
(08:47):
by step.
This week we're gonna work onchoosing a keyword for your
homepage.
You're gonna watch'em.
Video lesson about keywordresearch.
You're gonna come to a call andask questions'cause everybody
has questions about keywordresearch.
You're gonna pick your keyword.
If you have any questions aboutit, you're gonna ask me and I'm
gonna look at it with you tomake sure you're on the right
(09:08):
page.
Then you're gonna optimize yourhomepage, and then another week
we're gonna talk about how wecreate the right type content
for our audience.
And then we're going to gothrough and you're gonna do your
keyword research to figure outwhat keyword to target for your
first blog post.
Then you're gonna write it, thenyou're gonna optimize it for ai.
Then you're gonna optimize itfor Google, SEO.
(09:30):
And we're gonna do this a weekat a time, over a course of 12
weeks.
And by the end of that 12 weekperiod, you will have optimized
the core pages on your website.
So they'll all be SEO friendly.
You also will have startedwriting your blog posts so that
you can expand your reach andyou will have learned how to.
(09:51):
And do them in a way that isboth traditional Google and ai,
SEO friendly, so that you getvisibility wherever your ideal
customer is searching.
After that, you're gonna have 12more weeks with my support to
answer questions as you continueworking.
So it's gonna be a fantasticway.
(10:11):
To learn, implement, and do SEOon your website.
By the end of the six months,you should be humming along.
You should have some goodtraffic starting to come in,
some AI visibility and reallyknow what you're doing.
And you will have had that fullsix month period with me
answering your questions andhelping and guiding you.
So it's a group program.
(10:31):
It's not an online course whereyou're on your own.
It is very much high touch,hands on group program.
There are lessons you watch, butthen you have q and a calls with
me.
You get your clarity, all ofthat, you get help.
So I am so excited to share alittle bit more about the
updates to the program.
(10:52):
I've been working really hard tofigure out exactly what to do to
make it so that it is the bestit possibly can be for you.
And I went back and I lookedthrough.
How my ideal best students,those who had had the best
results, were consuming thecourse and how they were
interacting and what was workingfor them.
And I formatted it based on whatI saw there.
(11:14):
So it is a small group program.
It's got mentorship, it's gotimplementation and
accountability.
It's got support everything thatyou're gonna need.
It also has reviews of yourcontent, so if you want me to
take a look at it and reviewwhat you're working on, I'm
going to do that.
So I'm really excited to watchyour email or get signed up.
(11:37):
I'll put the link.
In the description, get signedup for those free classes.
The week of the 13th, you'lllearn what is happening, what
the changes are, get you throughthere, and then start thinking
about that because you'll have12 weeks, you'll have your site
just about done by the end ofthe year.
Going into January, you'll have,you'll meet a really good point.
(11:59):
You'll probably have your corewebsite done and ready for
January and be working on.
Learning how to batch additionalcontent.
And then you'll still have methere with you through most of
Q1 as results.
Start coming in to ask questionsand refine and look and see.
Alright, that's it for today.
I will see you back here nextweek.
Bye for now.
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