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Which SEO Metrics Matter Most to Marketing Leaders, According to Semrush’s VP of Brand Marketing

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Which SEO Metrics Matter Most to Marketing Leaders, According to Semrush's VP of Brand Marketing

Having a strong SEO strategy is critical for reaching new audiences and generating leads for your business.

In fact, 43% of marketing directors, VPs, and C-suite executives reported SEO as one of the most effective strategies their companies currently leverage.

Creating a powerful SEO strategy requires consistent testing and iteration. Over time, certain metrics can help you identify which areas of your strategy are working — and which aren’t.

It can be difficult, however, to determine which SEO metrics actually matter. To truly evaluate the success of your SEO, what should you pay attention to? Organic traffic? Leads? Keyword rankings? Conversions?

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Here, I sat down with Semrush’s VP of Brand Marketing, Olga Andrienko, to discuss the SEO metrics she’d advise leaders pay attention to in 2023. Let’s dive in.

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The SEO Metrics That Matter Most, According to Semrush’s VP of Brand Marketing

1. Focus on the metrics that tie directly back to revenue — like conversions and new MRR.

You might’ve expected Andrienko to start with organic traffic or rankings as a top SEO metric, but instead, she advises leaders to start with the bottom line — revenue — and work backwards.

Andrienko told me, “When we discuss quarterly goals, we always look at new user monthly recurring revenue (new MRR). And, in that case, conversion is the only thing that matters. I think the metrics that matter are the ones that can tie back directly to revenue.”

She adds, “For instance, using analytics, you can see where the user came from, and how long it took them to convert and become a customer. So if we know most users come from organic search, then organic would be the metric I’d be focused on measuring. Whatever your success element is is the most important outcome. Rankings don’t matter much. People need to land on your website, and they need to buy or show they’re interested.”

Hearing ‘rankings don’t matter much’ from the VP of Brand Marketing at Semrush, a platform often used for online ranking data, initially surprised me. But it makes sense.

Let’s say you rank #1 for the keyword query: “What is marketing?” If your company sells products or services related to marketing, that’s great. But if that same post isn’t driving the right kind of traffic, or isn’t converting that traffic into qualified leads and revenue for the business … Does it matter, really?

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Focusing on the metrics that tie back to revenue can greatly impact where you spend your time and resources. To effectively evaluate your content based on revenue, consider making a spreadsheet that tracks all your top-converting posts. Even if those posts aren’t the ones that bring in the most traffic for your site, those are the posts you’ll want to focus your historical optimization attention on — since those have proven most valuable to your business’ bottom line.

vp of semrush marketing on top seo metrics 2023

2. Don’t forget about branded keyword search volume.

Andrienko admits this next metric likely matters to her because of her role as a brand marketing leader, but it’s worth mentioning since it’s a metric that can demonstrate your brand value.

As she puts it, “For me, being a brand marketing leader, I specifically focus on branded keyword search volume — which means how many impressions and search volume the keyword ‘Semrush’ is getting over time. That gives me an understanding of how good we are at strengthening the brand and growing brand awareness.”

This is a particularly important metric if your goal is to grow brand awareness for your business. As you test strategies meant to increase brand awareness, such as co-marketing campaigns, sponsored events, or new types of content like podcasting, you’ll want to obsess over branded keyword search volume. Is it going up over time? If it is, this is a strong indicator that your brand awareness strategy is working.

While this can seem like a more superficial metric, it’s not. Consumers want to buy from companies they trust — and familiarity is a powerful factor when it comes to developing trust with your prospects.

3. Consider click-through rate and how it correlates to organic traffic.

“If you see a lot of people are searching for select keywords, but your CTR isn’t growing, then that means something is off,” Andrienko told me.

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She continues, “For instance, we noticed the organic CTR on one of our keywords was dropping, and we discovered it was because Google added an AdWords top search feature — so we bid on the keyword. Ultimately, we saw that even though organic CTR was dropping, we were able to get the clicks anyway in a different form.”

“It’s important you don’t just look at organic traffic … But also how it correlates with the click-through rate. That’s a very important connection to make.”

In a world where almost two-thirds of Google searches end without a click, it has become increasingly difficult to achieve high click-through rates. And Andrienko admits it’s not always feasible. Consider, for instance, a user who searches “How can I measure click-through rate?” They’ll be shown this featured snippet, which concisely answers their query:

1667277604 517 Which SEO Metrics Matter Most to Marketing Leaders According to

This is where the power of long-tail keywords comes into play.

Andrienko told me about one of Semrush’s customers, a dentist. After struggling for a while with attracting audiences to his website, the dentist decided to search for any dental-related queries. Then, he took those keywords, grabbed a recorder, and went to his doctors. After recording their answers to his questions, he put them up on his blog and started ranking for the long-tail keywords related to his industry.

While this strategy might not work for everyone, it’s worth noting that creating content that requires users’ to click on the link to get the full benefits is critical for optimizing your SEO strategy.

For instance, rather than writing a post that answers the query “how can I measure click-through rate?”, you might also create content that answers more long-form queries, like “What are the best strategies to increase CTR?”.

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Informative, helpful content that leverages long-tail keywords isn’t just for attracting audiences. It’s also vital for building trust and creating stronger relationships with your audience. In fact, Andrienko told me her favorite type of content is informational. “It’s where you can really help the user because the information is a direct answer to a problem they’re experiencing. It’s not about your company. It’s about helping them, which is where trust is built.”

Semrush VP of marketing on informational content

4. Don’t ignore rankings, backlinks, domain authority, and user behavior metrics.

Finally, Andrienko provided a list of a few other metrics that she believes still deserve a mention in this post.

For one: Rankings and positions.

She told me, “I wouldn’t focus on rankings and positions as the first metric, but you still need to see how you’re performing against competitors. So it’s an important day-to-day metric to watch.”

A few other metrics Andrienko encourages leaders to watch:

  • Backlinks
  • Domain authority
  • User behavior metrics, like page load speed

There are other metrics she uses for more qualitative purposes too, like bounce rate. She says, “Bounce rate is important to track because it indicates whether the content is actually interesting and compelling to your readers.”

She continues, “And pages per session is another metric you’ll want to pay attention to — because let’s say users land on ‘What is SEO?’. We know they won’t immediately convert on that page. We need to encourage them to go to another page, and another page after that, so we’re able to grab their attention and ultimately convert them. If they only visit one page per session, it means we didn’t do a good job of retaining them.”

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The SEO metrics you care about ultimately depends largely on your goals as a marketing leader. As you approach 2023, you’ll want to consider your goals, and then work backwards from there to identify which SEO metrics will help you evaluate how aligned your strategy is with those goals.

Not sure which goals to focus on? Take a look at The Top Goals of Marketing Leaders in 2023, or find other helpful content related to leadership in 2023 in the post, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader: Data from 300+ Marketing Directors on How to Take Your Team to the Next Level.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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