5 Most Important SEO Keyword Metrics, Explained
Search engine optimization and keyword selection can be a tricky horse to tame especially for blogging beginners. There are metrics on top of metrics and layers upon layers of information you need to process. However, it doesn’t need to be that hard; you can simply remind yourself that it all boils down to adherence to search engines. How well you monitor these SEO keyword metrics plays a huge role in that.
Luckily, SEO keywords metrics are not as confusing as some of the broader subject matters in SEO. For the record, SEO keyword metrics are what you use to measure the quality of a keyword before you use it in your content. Each of them indicates different ways or factors that can affect your SEO or how well your content does.
You might have already seen some of these keyword metrics in the very keyword tracker tools you’re using. Here’s the explanation for those so you can better understand how to pick your keywords wisely.
Cost-Per-Click
If your keyword tracker tool is elaborate or sophisticated enough, then you’ll probably see this abbreviated as CPC. It’s short for Cost-Per-Click. The metric name is pretty straightforward; it’s an indication of what you’ll be paying for each click in your marketing campaign, assuming it’s a Pay-Per-Click campaign.
This is applicable to those who use banner ads or other advertisements or monetization methods in their blogs. If the keyword you chose is also an AdWord, then Cost-Per-Click is a metric you might want to prioritize compared to the others. Another name for Cost-Per-Click is Pay-Per-Click as the two are sometimes used interchangeably by many tools and websites.
Competition
This right here is one of the most (if not the most) important SEO keyword metrics. It shows you how popular a specific keyword is in its own way. Because you know you can’t just use whichever keyword comes up as the most popular. Chances are if it’s too popular, then someone else has used it already and had the same idea as you. That’s where the competition metric comes in.
It indicates how many people, websites, or businesses are already using a particular keyword. The reality is, only top sites can compete for this keyword and it’s a tough SEO world out there. Finding a good balance between popularity and keyword competition is key (no pun intended) to having a healthy growth that’s not hindered by the biggest players in town. If the competition metric works against you, then your content or site usually won’t be displayed on the first page of Google. This means it will be relegated to the succeeding pages and let’s be honest, almost nobody goes there if they’ve already found what they’re looking for in the first few pages.
Search results number/Volume
In addition to viewing the competition of a particular keyword, how many searches for it can also play a big role in determining how healthy a keyword it. The search results number shows this numerically, as implied by the name. You might, however, see millions of search results for a particularly well-hidden keyword, this is because the tool that includes this metric also shows pages or websites that are not actively optimizing for that keyword.
In any case, all of them can also represent competition for your content since they can also take space in Google’s search engine results page. Making sure that you find a healthy balance between this metric and the competition metric is an ideal way to pick your keywords. However, it’s also worth noting that your biggest competition for keywords is pages who optimize for the said keyword. That very well means this metric can sometimes be ignored in favor of competition.
Search trend
Volume is not enough as an indicator of popularity, of course. One of the best ways to analyze the popularity of a keyword is to look at how people are searching for it on a certain scale of time. This is a good way to gauge whether your content can take advantage of the sudden overnight boom of a keyword or not.
Because if you take too long to create the content or use the keyword to full effect, your site or page will end up underperforming. If you see that the search volume or number is still high but the trend is already going to a downward slope, then that keyword or topic might already be dying fast. This means that the keyword is spoiled already and it’s time to find a new one; preferably, you’ll want one with a rising trend or at least a plateau.
Ranking
This is probably the very first metric that you will notice right away. Some tools have a ranking system already in place for which keyword is the best or is the most popular; still, you might have to check what exactly the ranking means for some tools. In any case, the keyword at the top usually is the best. Certain nuances exist like how much competition it has or the CPC; these need to be taken into account and considered carefully in some cases.
For the most part, however, the closer the keyword is to the top spot, the better it is and the more popular it will make your content. This is also applicable and even more important when it comes to searching keywords in niches or industries instead of searching using the keywords themselves. The tools will usually sum up a keyword’s rankings based on how well it does in each of the other metrics; if you prioritize other SEO keyword metrics, then you can reconsider what the ranking tells you.
For better effectiveness, make sure to take all these SEO keyword metrics in mind and compare which one works best for you. You’ll get used to it in no time.