In SEO, measurement is important to success.

Keyword rankings are one of the most common Key Performance Indicators (KPI) used among SEO agencies in Malaysia.

But to look at the full picture of your SEO campaign, you should also measure other meaningful KPIs.

What are Meaningful SEO KPIs?

Simply put, meaningful SEO KPIs have an obvious impact on your SEO campaign.

They provide actionable insights in making business decisions.

In this post, I’m going to talk about 3 SEO KPIs that we usually use to measure our clients’ SEO results.

Let’s dive in.

1) Organic Search Growth

Organic search growth is the increase or decrease of organic traffic over a specific time range.

It shows if your SEO campaign is improving over time.

Google Search Console (which is free) come in handy when tracking organic search growth.

To see your organic search growth, head over to your Google Search Console account > Performance.

Depending on the competition level, the date range we select can be 3-12 months. In this example, we selected 3 months.

The blue colour line is total clicks, showing the visits generated from Google search results.

The purple line is total impressions, showing how many times a user saw a link to your site in Google search results.

Ideally, you want to see both lines going up consistently.

If you see them stagnant or decrease, don’t panic yet.

Some industries are seasonal so it is common to see a decrease in demand after the season is over. For example, the durian industry.

If your industry is not seasonal, you should look into the root cause of the decline.

Ask yourself: Did you make any major changes to your website recently? Sometimes an SEO Audit would help you find out the root cause.

Another way to analyze your organic search growth is by comparing a time range with the previous one:

Let’s take the durian as an example again (sorry durian haters!).

You can compare your SEO performance between the same period of this year and last year, eg July 2021 VS July 2020.

This approach is great for seasonal products since you’re comparing month-to-month.

2) Revenue Attributed to Organic Traffic

Revenue is the main reason most businesses want to do SEO.

Thanks to analytical tools like Google Analytics, you can set up goals and track the revenue credited to organic traffic.

You can compare the revenue with other traffic sources. For example, social media might bring you more traffic than organic search but its revenue is much lesser due to the buying intention.

To use this, you’ll need to set up goals in your Google Analytics. If you’re running an online store, you’ll need to enable Ecommerce tracking.

3) Assisted Conversion

The assist in football is the player who passes the ball to the final teammate who then scores.

In SEO, we also have the assist. Although these sources didn’t directly lead to conversion, they play a role to assist the conversion.

Assisted conversion is one of the ways to measure the quality of your traffic source.

To measure the assisted conversion, you can use Google Analytics.

In your Google Analytics account, go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions. What I will do is set the date range to “Last month” and comparing it with the “Previous period”.

Now you can evaluate the improvement or decline of the organic traffic quality.

Keyword Rankings: Do They Still Matter?

Keyword rankings are the most common SEO KPI used by SEO agencies.

At JinMatic, we include the keyword rankings in the monthly clients’ SEO Performance reports.

In recent years, some SEO Specialists express their doubts on the effectiveness of keyword rankings.

We believe keyword rankings are still useful (I’ll explain shortly).

But first, we need to acknowledge that higher rankings don’t necessarily mean higher traffic.

Here are a number of reasons why:

Google Ads Lower Your Clicks

Throughout the years, Google is making its Google Ads design less obvious as an advertisement. And with sometimes 4 Google Ads on top, there is no surprise you receive fewer clicks even if your keyword ranked on position #1.

Google Maps Lower Your Clicks

Google Maps help users to find businesses in their community. Combining Google Ads and Google Maps, it may take 2-3 mouse scrolls until you see your organic listing.

The Keyword Has Low Search Volume

Obviously, you will not receive many clicks from keywords that have only 10-100 searches per month.

Poor Meta Tags

Meta title and meta description are the first things most searchers would scan and decide if they want to click on your search listing.

Poor meta tags can lower your Click-through-rate (CTR). I have written a blog on how to improve your CTR.

Should You Still Measure Keyword Rankings?

Yes, you should. Because keyword rankings are still a good indicator of your SEO progress.

Higher rankings are rewards from Google for providing good content and user experience.

Another benefit of keyword rankings is that they are easy to understand.

Keyword rankings are a good KPI for people who are busy or not familiar with other KPIs.

As compared to impressions, bounce rate, and assisted conversions, keyword rankings are self-explanatory: The higher = the better. It really saves time in measuring your SEO results.

Conclusion

Despite its convenience, you should see keyword rankings as a secondary KPI.

Organic search growth is a more accurate KPI to reflect your overall SEO performance.

You should also pay attention to user experience related metrics like bounce rate and average time on site. This helps you to focus on your visitors.

As for SEO service providers, aside from the ability to measure SEO results, it is equally important to be transparent when presenting your reports to clients.

The post How to Measure SEO Performance with Meaningful KPIs appeared first on JinMatic.

Writing guidelines vary depending on content types. That said, below is a list of general guidelines which are applicable for most content:

Perspective

2nd person, eg you, yours

Readability

Keep the sentences short. Any sentence should not be more than 15 words. Similarly, keep the paragraph short. Use simple English. Use bullet lists when necessary.

Backup The Facts

Any data or facts should be pulled from trusted sources only. Please list down (or directly link out) to the sources used.

Show Personality

Don’t be afraid to share personal experiences.

No Sales Language

Avoid using sale-like language as it breaks the trust. For example:

• Wrong: “You’ll find peace of mind when your dog finally stops barking!”

Instead, use conditional language (if, might, could, may, maybe) to make recommendations:

• Correct: “If it’s important to you to find a positive dog trainer, this may be a good place to start.” 

No Passive Language

Please use the active voice. For example:

• Wrong: “To give you the best choice a ton of products were reviewed.”
• Correct: “We reviewed a ton of products to give you the best choice.” 

Avoid Technical Jargon

If you need to use any technical language (or acronyms), explain in clear detail what it means.

• Wrong: “POH is one of the most commonly reported aesthetic complaints to dermatologists.”
• Correct: “Dark circles, or periorbital hyperpigmentation (POH) is one of the most commonly reported aesthetic complaints to dermatologists.”

Always Add Value and Avoid Filler Language

Every sentence should add value to your article; ask yourself if each sentence is necessary and if it enhances the quality of writing.

• Always add useful/valuable information. 
• No BS’ing.
• Wrong: “If your dog is acting up, you might need a dog trainer” (…duh). 
• Wrong: “This company teaches your dog to walk politely. They also offer leash training.” (…says the same thing twice).
• Wrong: Anything else that doesn’t add information to the article.

Examples of Good Articles

• https://www.farwestchina.com/tips/how-to-use-gmail-in-china/
• https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/tomato/growing-indoor-tomatoes.htm

The post Writing Guidelines for Copywriters appeared first on JinMatic.

• Keyword appear as the first word on title if it is possible. You can check the Google search result pages to see how your competitors are doing this.
• Keyword must appear in the first paragraph.
• Use headings (H1, H2, and H3) structure properly. Think of it as a book – H1 is the title so it should only be used once; H2 are internal subtitles; H3 are subtitles of H2. Here’s an example:

• All headers are bolded.
• Keyword Density: Keyword appear in the text at least 5 times, or around 1%.
• Primary keyword must appear in the meta title.
• Primary or secondary keyword must appear in the meta description.
• Include keyword in the URL.
• Keep the URL short (less than 5 words).
• Break lines: 8-12 words per paragraph.
• For every 1000 words, add 5 links (internal and external).
• Ensure that all links open in a new window.
• Use hemingwayapp.com combined with Grammarly Google Chrome extension. This improves content readability.

Images

• File name must contain the keyword. For example: outdoor-water-filter.jpg
• Use keyword as the image ALT text.
• Remove links from images when they are only media files.

The post SEO Best Practice appeared first on JinMatic.

The Client

Being the leader in commercial cleaning products, iMEC is one of our many successful clients since 2015.

In this case study, you are going to learn how we achieved Page 1 rankings for 100+ keywords in this B2B industry:

The Mission

iMEC engaged us in 2015 with the goal to increase brand awareness and revenue.

You might be wondering, is there any difference between B2B and B2C when it comes to SEO strategies?

The answer is yes.

One difference is the keyword search intent.

For example, the search intent of “dustbin” and “dustbin supplier” is totally different.

While “dustbin” has a high search volume, the search listings appear to be targeting the household consumer market.

On the other hand, “dustbin supplier” is more targeting towards businesses who need to order dustbin in bulk.

Our Approach

During the keyword research phase, we put a lot of attention while defining the keyword search intent.

We couldn’t go wrong on this. Otherwise, we would target the wrong market, result in low conversion.

After we created and qualified a list of keywords, we created content that fulfils the search intent.

For example, prospects who land on the “scrubbing machine” page will see only relevant information and products.

On top of that, we optimized landing pages with the right Call-to-action (CTA). For product and category pages, the CTA is to send business inquiries.

Other technical aspects were also optimized, like the mobile usability:

I have to admit, getting backlinks for B2B business is not an easy task.

That’s why we started with business directories submission. When done right, directories submission is the best way to gain business exposure and backlinks fast.

Takeaways

When working on B2B SEO, search intent need to be taken into consideration.

You may find that keyword research volume in the B2B industry is low. To overcome, try to create more relevant content (and post on relevant landing pages).

Having more landing pages help to lower the risk of losing traffic if certain products are discontinued or keyword rankings drop.

The post SEO for B2B Industry: 100+ Keywords on Google Page 1 appeared first on JinMatic.

The Client

Being the largest outdoor products retailer in Malaysia, Evergreen started with a humble beginning since 1993 in a small showroom at Campbell Shopping Center. To date, they have expanded to 7 physical stores all over Malaysia.

In this case study, you are going to learn how we increased their SEO traffic by a whopping 575% – 580 to 3920 visitors:

You can have confident in this data because we have excluded the brand keywords “Evergreen” to make the analysis much more credible.

The Mission

With competition started to raise in the industry, Evergreen came to us to help them with Search Engine Optimization service.

Having worked with countless online retailers since year 2008, we knew that one of their biggest challenge is price war among the competitors.

And to increase the profit margin, you can either lower your product cost (difficult since it is usually controlled by your suppliers), or increase your marketing ROI.

Evergreen Adventure carries more than 90+ brands and 80+ categories in their online store. After an analysis, we decided to optimize ALL of them for maximum SEO traffic.

Our Approach

Unlike corporate or local SEO, Ecommerce SEO especially online retailers contain more webpages to optimize – product pages, category pages, and brand pages.

After a discussion with the client on which brands and category pages they wanted to focus on, we started optimizing each landing pages.

We transformed the boring landing pages with interesting articles, images and videos.

As a result, the bounce rate (an user experience signal) increased by 16%. This tells Google that the visitors like their website.

We didn’t stop there. Aside from optimizing each targeted landing pages, we optimized the global settings to maximize the SEO traffic.

One example is that we created dynamic meta tags so all the new products will have their meta tags optimized automatically:

For your information, optimized meta tags on big online retailers can significantly increase the click-through-rate (CTR) and organic traffic.

By taking care of both individual and global onsite optimization, we maximized the keyword rankings potential:

Takeaways

Online retailers need content, and by creating interesting content and optimizing onsite elements like meta tags, you can start ranking for your valuable brand and category keywords.

For lower competition keywords, sometimes you don’t even need backlinks to rank them on top of Google. This is because the content and onsite optimization alone are sufficient to outrank your competitors.

A holistic Ecommerce SEO should cover ALL brand, category and product pages instead of just the selected ones.

Our Ecommerce SEO improve the clients’ marketing ROI by taking care of their website as a whole and bringing them more sales.

The post E-Commerce SEO: 580 to 3920 Visitors for Online Retailer appeared first on JinMatic.

The Client

Based in Petaling Jaya, Beacon Hospital is one of the leading cancer treatment hospital with over 80 medical specialists. Their business goal is to offer innovative medical resources, doctors and nurses to their patients with kindness and care.

The Mission

In this case study, I explain how we were able to increase their organic traffic by 46%, in just 3 months time!

Beacon Hospital came to us as their traffic was dropping during Movement Control Order (MCO).

They threw us a straightforward mission – increase their organic traffic by 10% (taking the benchmark where their traffic were higher before MCO).

After we reviewed their website and found some opportunities – we happily accepted the challenge.

Our Approach

After an initial discussion with the client, we understood that they wanted to focus on:

1. Different cancer treatment landing pages. E.g. https://www.beaconhospital.com.my/breast-cancer/
2. Doctors’ profiles landing pages. E.g. https://www.beaconhospital.com.my/lee-foo-chiang/

We worked smarter for Beacon Hospital by discovering “quick opportunities” keywords. These are keywords which are already ranking for in positions 11-50. Because these keywords are already near the top of Google, we can leverage to see faster results! After we discovered these keywords we started SEO Audit on each targeted landing pages.

Since we were competing against other high authority websites like other private hospitals and Wikipedia, we took every opportunities we could in terms of onsite optimization.

Furthermore, we gave the website a boost with whitehat backlink acquisition such as top quality business directories and niche comments.

Onsite optimization and whitehat backlink acquisition are the key when you compete with other high authority websites. After 3 months of SEO campaign, we helped the client to recover the impact of MCO. We boosted their SEO traffic by a whopping 46% and help them acquire more leads.

The post Medical Center SEO Case Study: 46% Traffic Increase in 3 Months! appeared first on JinMatic.