To set goals and track and measure your performance in any campaign, you will need key performance indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks.

But with so many KPIs, knowing exactly which ones you should be benchmarking can be challenging. In this article, we will look at which SEO benchmarks matter and why. 

Many people usually talk about key performance indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks interchangeably, which can be confusing, especially if you’re new to SEO. Although they do work together, they are not the same.

KPIs are industry statistics you can use to measure performance over time and give insights as to how effective your SEO campaign is. 

Benchmarks, however, are KPIs you set as your reference point when building your SEO strategy. 

For example, organic traffic is a KPI. But you can use last month’s organic traffic as a benchmark.

SEO benchmarks allow us to have a before and after picture for any particular KPI. This helps us to see how our SEO campaign is progressing and can help us to adjust our strategy if needed. 

Benchmarks also allow us to communicate the value of our work to clients. 

There are many different KPIs you can measure. And like most things in SEO, which ones you should track will depend on the type of site you’re working on and their individual goals. 

However, there are several KPIs that are important for tracking the performance of all websites. 

Let’s take a look at which KPIs everyone should be benchmarking and why they are important. 

Traffic and user experience benchmarks

Driving users to your site is only part of the work. 

If a site user has a bad experience, they are likely to leave the site and never return. This is why we not only want to set traffic-related benchmarks but also user experience benchmarks too.

Organic search traffic

This metric shows how many users visit your site from unpaid listings on search engines like Google and Bing. You should be tracking traffic on a monthly basis. 

When setting benchmarks, generally speaking, it is advisable to use the last full month’s data and not set it any further back than this, as the goal should always be to outperform your closest benchmark. 

However, if seasonality is a factor in your business, it’s advisable to use your best month in the peak season as your ongoing benchmark. 

For accuracy, when it comes to organic traffic from Google, it is advisable to check Google Search Console (GSC). 

There are a number of discrepancies between GSC and Google Analytics due to how they collect data. But when focusing on organic traffic from Google itself, GSC is considered more accurate. 

Head over to Google Search Console and go to Performance > Search results.

In the “Performance” report, you will see four metrics. The first metric, “clicks,” is the number of people who clicked through from the Google search results to your website. This is the number we are interested in. 

Below this, you can also see the number of clicks at page level.

If you want to split organic traffic by search engine, you can do this with GA4. Go to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

Then you can go to “All Users” and choose “First user source / medium” from the “Audience name” drop-down menu. 

Then you can select the organic search channels you want to include from the “Dimension values” drop-down menu. This can be all organic traffic from multiple search engines, or you can set individual benchmarks for each search engine, like Bing or Yahoo. 

With these filters applied, you will see your website’s organic traffic for the past month. If you would like to see it broken down at the page level, you can simply go to Engagement > Pages and screens. 

Engaged sessions

In GA4, “Bounce rate” has essentially been replaced by “Engaged sessions.” In order for a session to be engaged, it must last longer than 10 seconds, have multiple screen or page views, or result in a conversion. 

You can see the number of engaged sessions per user in Engagement > Overview.

Average engagement time

Average engagement time in GA4 is important because, generally speaking, we want users to stay on the site for a longer period of time. 

Low engagement time isn’t always a bad thing. It can simply mean the visitor got what they needed fast. If you’re working with a site that monetizes content like an affiliate site, you will want your visitor to click that affiliate link as soon as possible. So take this one with a grain of salt.

However, it can sometimes be an indicator of:

• Low-quality content
• Poor user experience

Overall average engagement time is listed on the “Report snapshot” in GA4.

But you can get a detailed breakdown in Engagement > Pages and screens.

Backlink profile benchmarks

Backlinks are links from another website to a page on your website. They help Google and other search engines understand your content and how authoritative your website is. 

The backlinks’ quality, quantity, relevance, authority, and anchor text are among the many ranking factors for Google. 

Number of backlinks

You want the number of (quality) links to be growing at a consistent rate. You need backlinks both to rank and maintain your rankings. Benchmarking the number of backlinks your website has will help you to monitor growth as you go forward.

With the Backlinks report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you can see the total number of links to your website. 

You can also see the number of individual referring domains and how they are growing month over month (and compare that against competitors on the same graph). 

This is an important thing to benchmark, as there is a strong positive correlation between the number of referring domains and increased organic traffic. 

Domain Rating

Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) is a measure of the strength of a website’s backlink profile. It shows how your website’s backlink profile compares to the others in the Ahrefs database on a 100-point scale.

The idea would be for your website’s DR to increase over time as an indication that the strength of your backlink profile is improving. 

Benchmarking DR is a pretty common practice, especially among those working with clients who may not fully comprehend SEO and, in particular, link building. It’s easier to relay that DR getting higher indicates improvement.

URL Rating

Although DR correlates with Google rankings pretty well, it doesn’t do this as well as Ahrefs’ URL Rating (UR). UR is a measure of an individual page’s backlink profile on a 100-point scale.

UR considers both internal and external links and “nofollow” attributes when calculating the UR score, following the same principles as Google’s PageRank. Therefore, benchmarking UR can help you understand how well an individual page can rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs).  

Keyword benchmarks

Keywords are the bread and butter of your SEO campaign. After all, you need to understand what relevant queries your potential audience is searching for in order to optimize your pages. 

Individual keyword positions

Your website could naturally rank for thousands of keywords on the SERPs. However, there should be some keywords you care about more than others—likely those that are most relevant to your products or services. 

Benchmarking individual keyword positions (where they rank in the search results) will allow you to track and set goals for important keywords. For example, if your website currently ranks in position #6 for “seo consultant,” you can use that as your benchmark to improve upon. 

While you can monitor keywords in Google Search Console, using a rank tracking tool like Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker will allow you to track the keywords you care about most and see how you stack up against competitors. You can even get email alerts about the progress of your tracked keywords.

Keyword profile value

Although benchmarking the keyword profile value may not be relevant for everyone, I find that for anyone working with clients, it can help them to relay the value of the work they’re doing. Keyword profile value can be seen in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer as “Traffic value.”

Organic traffic value is the equivalent monthly cost of traffic from all keywords that the target website/URL ranks for if paid via PPC instead of ranking organically. 

Keyword Difficulty

Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty (KD) is a metric that can help you determine how hard it would be to rank in the top 10 for a given keyword in a given country. 

It is calculated by taking a trimmed mean of the number of linking domains to the current top 10 ranking pages and then plotting the result on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100. 

KD only takes into account linking domains, but there are many other variables you will need to rank highly, like great content. However, it is a good indicator. 

KD can be used as a benchmark for choosing keywords. For example, you may find that, currently, you can only rank for keywords that are considered “easy” or “medium” in terms of KD. Whereas your most important keywords may be considered “hard.” 

However, the level of KD you can achieve should improve over time. That’s why KD can be an important metric to benchmark and improve upon. 

Share of voice

Share of voice (SOV) takes rank tracking to another level. You can see SOV in the Overview report in Rank Tracker.

The SOV metric shows you the percentage of all possible organic clicks (from the SERPs) for the tracked keywords landing on your website. It basically shows you how visible your brand is on the SERPs.

There is a strong positive correlation between SOV and market share. So it is an important KPI to benchmark. 

By heading to the “Competitors” tab in Rank Tracker and entering the websites you consider your competition, you can compare your SOV to those sites. 

Final thoughts  

Benchmarking important KPIs is one of the best ways to not only see where your website is currently at but also give you data you can improve upon. It allows you to set strategic goals and measure ongoing performance.

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.

In a significant policy shift, YouTube announced it wouldn’t remove content suggesting that fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 US Presidential and other US elections.

The company confirmed this reversal of its election integrity policy on Friday.

In this article, we’re diving deep into YouTube’s decision. What led to this point?

It’s not just YouTube, though. We’re seeing this delicate dance all around the tech world. Platforms are trying to figure out how to let people express themselves without letting misinformation run wild.

Look at this balancing act and how it’s playing out.

A Shift Towards Free Speech?

YouTube first implemented its policy against election misinformation in December 2020, once several states certified the 2020 election results.

The policy aimed to prevent the spread of misinformation that could incite violence or cause real-world harm.

However, the company is concerned that maintaining this policy may have the unintended effect of stifling political speech.

Reflecting on the impact of the policy over the past two years, which led to tens of thousands of video removals, YouTube states:

“Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape. With that in mind, and with 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.”

In the coming months, YouTube promises more details about its approach to the 2024 election.

Other Misinformation Policies Unchanged

While this change shifts YouTube’s approach to election-related content, it doesn’t impact other misinformation policies.

YouTube clarifies:

“The rest of our election misinformation policies remain in place, including those that disallow content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes.”

The Greater Context: Balancing Free Speech and Misinformation

This decision occurs in a broader context where media companies and tech platforms are wrestling with the balance between curbing misinformation and upholding freedom of speech.

With that in mind, there are several implications for advertisers and content creators.

Implications For Advertisers

• Brand Safety Concerns: Advertisers may be concerned about their ads appearing alongside content that spreads election misinformation.
• Increased Scrutiny: With this change, advertisers may have to scrutinize more closely where their ads are being placed.
• Potential for Boycotts: If certain brands’ advertisements are repeatedly seen on videos spreading election misinformation, it could lead to consumer boycotts.

Implications For Content Creators

• Monetization Opportunities: This could open up new monetization opportunities for content creators who focus on political content, particularly those previously penalized under the old policy.
• Increased Viewership: If their content is no longer being removed, specific creators might see an increase in viewership, leading to higher ad revenue and more engagement.
• Potential Backlash: On the flip side, content creators could face backlash from viewers who disagree with the misinformation or those who feel the platform should be taking a stronger stand against such content.

It’s important to note these are potential implications and may not be realized universally across the platform.

The impact will likely vary based on specific content, audience demographics, advertiser preferences, and other factors.

In Summary

YouTube’s decision showcases the ongoing struggle to balance freedom of speech and prevent misinformation.

If you’re an advertiser on the platform, remember to be vigilant about where your ads are placed.

For content creators, this change could be a double-edged sword. While it may bring more ad revenue to YouTube, there’s a risk of viewers perceiving the ads as spreading misinformation.

As participants in the digital world, we should all strive for critical thinking and fact-checking when consuming content. The responsibility to curb misinformation doesn’t rest solely with tech platforms – it’s a collective task we all share.

Source: YouTube

Featured image generated by the author using Midjourney. 

A serious hacking attack has been exploiting ecommerce websites to steal credit card information from users and to spread the attack to other websites.

These hacking attacks are called Magecart style skimmer and it’s spreading worldwide across multiple ecommerce platforms.

Attackers are targeting a variety of ecommerce platforms:

• Magento
• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• WordPress

What Does the Attack Do?

The attackers have two goals when infecting a website:

1. Use the site to spread itself to other sites

2. Steal personal information like credit card data from customers of the infected website.

Identifying a vulnerability is difficult because the code dropped on a website is encoded and sometimes masked as a Google Tag or a Facebook Pixel code.

What the code does however is target input forms for credit card information.

It also serves as an intermediary to carry out attacks on behalf of the attacker, thus covering up the true source of the attacks.

Magecart Style Skimmer

A Magecart attack is an attack that enters through an existing vulnerability on the ecommerce platform itself.

On WordPress and WooCommerce it could be a vulnerability in a theme or plugin.

On Shopify it could an existing vulnerability in that platform.

In all cases, the attackers are taking advantage of vulnerabilities that are present in the platform the ecommerce sites are using.

This is not a case where there is one single vulnerability that can be conveniently fixed. It’s a wide range of them.

The report by Akamai states:

“Before the campaign can start in earnest, the attackers will seek vulnerable websites to act as “hosts” for the malicious code that is used later on to create the web skimming attack.

…Although it is unclear how these sites are being breached, based on our recent research from similar, previous campaigns, the attackers will usually look for vulnerabilities in the targeted websites’ digital commerce platform (such as Magento, WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, etc.) or in vulnerable third-party services used by the website.”

Recommended Action

Akamai recommends that all Ecommerce users secure their websites. That means making sure all third party apps and plugins are updated and that the platform is the very latest version.

They also recommend using a Web Application Firewall (WAF), which detects and prevents intrusions when hackers are probing a site in search of a vulenerable website.

Users of platforms like WordPress have multiple security solutions, with popular and trusted ones being Sucuri Security (website hardening) and WordFence (WAF).

Akamai recommends:

“…the complexity, deployment, agility, and distribution of current web application environments — and the various methods attackers can use to install web skimmers — require more dedicated security solutions, which can provide visibility into the behavior of scripts running within the browser and offer defense against client-side attacks.

An appropriate solution must move closer to where the actual attack on the clients occurs. It should be able to successfully identify the attempted reads from sensitive input fields and the exfiltration of data (in our testing we employed Akamai Page Integrity Manager).

We recommend that these events are properly collected in order to facilitate fast and effective mitigation.”

Read the original report for more details:

New Magecart-Style Campaign Abusing Legitimate Websites to Attack Others