6 Crucial Key Performance Indicators for E-Commerce SEO

Managing an e-commerce website comes with a myriad of responsibilities. It makes sense for us to find performance tracking at the top of the priority list. But how do we go about tracking website success? Well, we rely on several crucial key performance indicators that tell the story of your website’s performance and the impact of your optimizations. Let’s take a closer look at the six KPIs that matter most to e-commerce managers.

1. Conversion Rate

Conversion actions are any specific goals you’ve deemed useful that you’re trying to accomplish with your website. It’s helpful to understand how much of our website’s organic traffic contributes towards these goals. We focus on e-commerce conversion metrics like the number of transactions, revenue, average order value, and conversion rate.

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), we have improved conversion tracking. While Universal Analytics (UA) can only count one conversion per session, GA4 counts every instance of the conversion happening in a session. For example, if there is a form submitted twice, GA4 will show two conversions as opposed to one in UA.

GA4 also tracks cross-platform and cross-device conversions. If a user clicks on an ad, looks around, leaves, then organically return a month later and converts, it counts as half of a PPC conversion and half of an organic conversion. This helps all channels get proper credit for their efforts.

Conversion rate helps us understand how much of the traffic on your website actually converts to a sale. This is a top-priority metric for e-commerce websites. A higher conversion rate means that the users are not only engaging with your content but also finding it useful enough to convert. 

2. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate in UA is only for single-page sessions. The session duration was not taken into consideration. Staying on a single page for 10 minutes would still be counted as a bounce. Whereas bounce rate in GA4 is the opposite of a new metric called ‘engagement rate’.

Engagement rate is how often engaged sessions occur in a particular period of time. An engaged session is any session lasting for at least 10 seconds, includes at least two page views, and has one conversion. So, if the engagement rate is 65 percent, the bounce rate would be 35 percent in GA4.

For an e-commerce website, a higher bounce rate suggests that users are not having a positive buying or checkout experience. It also tells us to look into optimizing content using more details and improving keyword targeting for a better user experience.

3. Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate (CTR) indicates how much traffic you’re attracting to your website after users see your page in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s wonderful when viewers see your page in a long list of links. But it’s necessary to stand out if you’re going to influence someone to click on your site.

A higher CTR can be achieved by using engaging and informational title tags. Next, including a compelling call to action in the meta description can stimulate positive results. Finally, making your site eligible for rich results or featured snippets, can increase the click-through rate.

4. Core Web Vitals

Page experience is paramount. It’s a critical ranking factor for an e-commerce website. A page on your website that is slow to load or interact could lead to a bad user experience. They’re likely to bounce while they might also be considering a competitor. Core Web Vitals measure the loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of a website. Monitoring and improving on these metrics will lead to a positive user experience.

5. Keyword Ranking Changes

Tracking keywords that are relevant to your business can help with monitoring performance for related queries in your industry. It helps us understand how trends and changes in keyword rankings affect traffic and informs us which pages need to be optimized. 

 

Establishing an initial benchmark for keyword rankings helps you understand the outcome of your efforts and decide if you’re focusing your resources on the right areas. You can ensure you’re driving the most valuable traffic to your website through diligent analysis of keyword rankings, and traffic.

6. Non-Branded Keywords 

For an e-commerce website, it is important to rank for keywords that are related to your industry and your products. Knowing what your target audience is searching for and incorporating it into your content, can help drive high-quality traffic and lead to conversions. The non-branded keywords that your competitors are ranking for can help find opportunities to win traffic and increase visibility.  A strong focus on keyword research combined with content optimization and creation will ultimately improve your opportunity to rank well in search.

Final Thoughts

The competition, market conditions, and search engine guidelines are constantly evolving. We suggest frequently tracking these metrics to have the best information to act on. Furthermore, reviewing these KPIs helps us to better understand if we’re attracting the right organic audience. SEO is an ongoing process, but the continuous monitoring and improvement of your website goes a long way for your business.

Since marketers can draw on learnings from other clients with similar circumstances, partnering with a digital marketing agency for SEO can streamline your efforts.

Contact us if you’re curious to learn how a partnership with Perfect Search will help you conquer your SEO goals.