SEO Benchmarking: What It Is & How To Track 3 Key Benchmarks

Amidst your digital marketing efforts, setting SEO benchmarks energizes your website’s optimization quest.

It urges you to set a minimum standard to overpass and continuously work on excelling yourself, your competitors, and your industry’s average SEO and traffic metrics.

This way, you are not merely striving to reach different SEO KPIs but strategically working on doing better than others and/or better than you did last month.

All in all, SEO benchmarking is a high-yielding approach to shaping your strategies.

But what is it all about?

What Is SEO Benchmarking?

SEO benchmarking is the practice of setting a baseline for your website's SEO performance and comparing it to various SEO KPIs you set as a point of reference. These can come from your industry’s average, your competitors’, or your own performance. SEO benchmarks help you improve your website’s progress faster.

What’s The Difference Between SEO Benchmarks & SEO KPIs?

Many people confuse the terms SEO benchmarks and KPIs. And for a good reason. The benchmarks you set for your website’s SEO performance are actually existing KPIs.

So, let’s say that your current backlink score KPI is 50. In other words, you currently have 50 high-quality backlinks pointing to your pages.

This number, then, is your current backlink benchmark. It’ll serve as the metric of reference around which you’ll formulate your off-page SEO strategy for -let’s say- the next 3 months. Your goal can be to reach 70 quality backlinks by your next assessment in 90 days.

Considering SEO Benchmarks By Industry

You can also consider setting SEO benchmarks based on your industry KPI averages. Here are some examples:

Organic Search Traffic Benchmarks By Industry

So, currently, if you’re into education, your industry’s average website traffic coming from organic searches is 35%, while for retail, it’s 27%. Travel and hospitality businesses’ organic search brings 31% of their overall website visits, increasing professional services to 39%.

Organic Search Impressions Benchmarks By Industry

An SEO Industry Benchmark Report, analyzing 1 month’s worth of SEO KPIs, could give you a good idea of monthly impression benchmarks to overrun:

• Education websites received an average of 154.42K impressions during the month of August last year.
• Apparel & footwear industry had 161.79K monthly impressions.
• Travel & leisure were up to 4169.57K impressions.
• Professional services & consulting had a mere 89.22K impressions over 30 days.

However, note that the professional services industry has higher traffic coming from organic searches (39%) than other industries despite their lower-than-others impressions.

So, which SEO benchmark would you prioritize?

Leveraging Industry Benchmark Data - Example

Such observations can guide you toward setting meaningful SEO benchmarks that pave your SEO roadmap.

In the professional services industry example above, you could decide to target a wider range of niche keywords to surpass the industry’s average or work on broader search terms to enhance your topical authority and grow your impressions/month KPI.

So, after this brief overview of benchmarks and SEO performance, let’s see it in action.

3 Key SEO Benchmarks & How To Track Them

Depending on your website, your digital marketing goals, and your industry, there are many different SEO benchmarks to consider.

Here, we’ll talk about the 3 most core SEO benchmarks:

1. Organic search traffic
2. Keywords
3. User experience (UX)

Other benchmarks for measuring SEO performance can be branded versus non-branded organic search referrals, the number of quality backlinks, landing pages receiving traffic, SEO share of voice, revenue from organic search engine traffic, and more.

But, each SEO campaign is unique. You can always take it a step further and benchmark metrics and features that are meaningful for your website at this moment.

Get Creative

A more creative approach would be, for instance, to benchmark your appearance in rich snippet results (featured snippets, local results, people also ask, video results) and eventually occupy slots your competitors currently have. Or even get your brand on Google’s knowledge panel - like your biggest competitor does.

A Piece Of Advice

No matter what, a good piece of advice is to use data from the last full month to ensure relevance and accuracy.

The goal should always be to surpass your closest benchmark.

When setting SEO benchmarks, your goal should always be to surpass your closest benchmark.

If your business experiences seasonal fluctuations, consider using data from your best month during peak season as your benchmark.

This approach helps set a realistic but, at the same time, challenging target that reflects your highest performance levels.

By tracking and adjusting benchmarks regularly, you can stay ahead and continuously improve your SEO strategy.

So, let’s now get into the details.

1. Organic Search Traffic Benchmarking (+ How To Do It)

Well, this is half of the job an SEO agency does. (The other half is actually helping your business monetize that traffic).

So yes, organic search is a core SEO benchmarking metric. In essence, it shows how many users visit your site from unpaid listings in Google or other search engines.

Here’s the best way to measure your website’s visits.

How To Measure Your Website’s Organic Search Traffic

First of all, to measure your traffic from Google searches, it's best to use Google Search Console (GSC) instead of Google Analytics.

The reason is that there are discrepancies between the two platforms due to their different data collection methods. However, GSC is generally more precise.

Step 1: Select The ‘Performance’ Report In Google Search Console

This report offers a comprehensive overview of your website's search performance.

Step 2: Set The Date Range

Choose the past month as the date range for your analysis.

Step 3: View Key Metrics

The Performance report will display important organic search metrics for the specified period that you may choose to set as separate SEO benchmarks:

Total Impressions

This metric shows the number of times your website has appeared in search results.

Total Clicks

This metric indicates how many times users clicked on your website's link in search results.

Average CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

A metric that represents the percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks.

Average Position

It shows the average ranking position of your website in search results for the selected period.

Step 4: Explore Further Insights

Google Search Console allows you to filter and segment data to gain a deeper understanding of your website's performance and set your benchmarks accordingly. For example, you can:

Filter By Query

See the performance of specific search queries.

Filter By Page

Analyze the performance of individual pages on your website.

Filter By Country Or Device

Understand how your website performs in different regions or on different devices.

By tracking your website's organic search metrics for the past month allows you to select this month’s (or quarter’s) benchmarks and try to outperform yourself.

2. Organic Keyword Footprint & Keyword Value Benchmarking

On top of benchmarking for individual SEO keywords, you can also consider your organic keyword footprint and keyword value.

Here’s a brief guide on how to go about it.

How Do You Calculate Keyword Value & Keyword Footprint To Set Your SEO Benchmarks?

Here are the basic steps to find out your website’s overall keyword value and keyword footprint and set realistic benchmark goals.

Step 1: Get A Clear View Of Your Keyword Footprint

Your organic keyword footprint represents all the keywords your website ranks for in organic search results.

Use SEO benchmarking tools like Aherfs, Semrush, SE Ranking, Google Search Console, or other rank-tracking software to identify all the keywords your website ranks for.

So, you can select your current keyword footprint as a benchmark and try to expand the number of keywords by a certain logical percentage in the next 3 months.

Step 2: Categorize Keywords

Group your keywords into categories relevant to your business. This could include product categories, service types, or informational topics.

Step 3: Assess Keyword Value

Determine the average number of monthly searches for each keyword and prioritize keywords based on their traffic potential.

Then, you can strengthen your selected keywords via keyword-focused articles, targeted internal linking, and semantically related keywords to overcome your current values.

Step 4: Run Competitor Analysis

Analyze your competitors' performance (and estimated traffic) for the keywords you have chosen. Assess whether you can realistically outperform them or rank nearby within your set period, and eventually remove some of your chosen keywords from your present list.

Always set benchmarks that you have a good chance of outperforming.

Step 5: Getting New Insights From Your Keyword Benchmarks

Following the data analysis and keyword selections from the previous steps, you can use the same reports to set additional keyword benchmarks or improve your keyword strategy. Consider for instance:

Keywords Where You Excel

This allows you to focus on maintaining your top positions.

Keywords Where You Need Improvement

This highlights areas where you can enhance your content, optimize your website, or build more backlinks to improve your rankings.

New Keyword Opportunities

Benchmarking can help you discover new keywords with high search volume and relevance to your business that you may not have previously considered.

Remember to measure your progress consistently and re-work your strategy where necessary.

3. Benchmarking User Experience (UX) Signals For SEO

Several important User Experience (UX) signals can impact SEO performance and make excellent benchmarks upon which to improve.

Bounce Rates

A high bounce rate can signal to search engines that the content isn't relevant or engaging.

To track it via Google Analytics, simply choose the page you want to analyze and look for the bounce rate metric.

Benchmarking against your current bounce rate is a multi-faceted approach.

• It helps you improve your overall keyword targeting. People coming to your pages and quickly leaving may mean that some keywords you rank for have an intent other than what your visitors are looking for.
• It signals possible technical drawbacks, like slow page load or poor responsiveness, that drive your visitors away in a flash.
• It may point out a poor design issue that does not resonate with your audience - like a dark background color on a psychologist's website or excessive text in an e-commerce store.

What Is Bounce Rate?

This metric represents the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page, leaving the site very quickly, or closing the tab without performing any action.

Time On Site

You can track your visitors’ time on site via your analytics platforms like Google Analytics.

This is a great SEO benchmark as it’s closely related to the overall website ROI.

The logic is simple: The more time visitors spend on your website, the more interested they seem to be in your products or services, and the closer they get to making a purchase.

Google also considers long dwell times to be a positive signal. It basically means you offer considerable value to users, and so it tends to rank you higher than other, less interesting pages.

Some common strategies to increase time on site include incorporating engaging multimedia elements, using internal links to encourage exploration of other pages, providing high-quality, relevant content, and more.

What Is Time On Site?

This metric measures the average duration visitors spend on a website. Longer time on site generally indicates greater engagement and interest in the content.

Returning Visitors

The concept of returning visitors aligns with a positive UX, suggesting that users find value in the content and are likely to revisit the site. This is a crucial benchmark as it’s directly linked to sales.

Indeed, returning visitors often indicate brand loyalty. Even if they haven’t (yet) performed a purchase, they are more likely to convert into customers or leads, as they've already demonstrated interest in the website's offerings.

Plus, some SEOs declare that search engines may interpret repeat visits as a positive indicator of website quality and user satisfaction, leading to increased visibility.

You can easily track returning visitors using Google Analytics (or any other website analytics platform).

To do that, access your Google Analytics account and navigate to the ‘Audience’ section. Select ‘Behavior’ and then ‘New vs Returning.’ Here, you’ll find data on the percentage of new visitors versus returning visitors to your website or the web page you selected.

So, if you decide to set a returning visitors benchmark, focus on some of your core pages to identify what aspects of your website resonate with users and enhance them.

This will also offer you insights into what content your visitors engage with so that you can further optimize your UX for repeat visits.

What Is The Meaning Of Return Visits?

In website analytics, return visits measure the instances when a user who has previously visited a website comes back to the site again - suggesting that the user found value in the website during their initial visit. Encouraging return visits can potentially lead to brand loyalty, increased conversions, and positive SEO signals.

Making The Most Of SEO Benchmarking

Well, learning about the most popular SEO benchmarks is one thing. Knowing which benchmarks will make a difference and speed up your targeted rankings is a more complicated task that needs a good deal of analysis and considerable SEO experience.

Indeed, if you need to make the best out of your SEO ROI and leverage your search engine optimization efforts, the best thing you can do is talk to the pros. Meet up with our team of experts at Atropos Digital SEO Agency. Schedule a strategy call today.