Organic Leads and Rank Tracking: Finding Opportunities

How do you know if your website is working as intended? One way to measure website effectiveness is by the number of organic leads the website generates. Do visitors come from the search results page and complete conversion actions such as a call, purchase, form-fill, or chat?

To get more leads, your website must first generate more traffic. Google search is one of the main traffic sources websites can rely on.

In this article, we will explore how analyzing the position of a website by search queries will help increase traffic, and therefore the effectiveness of the site.

1. Track new keyword opportunities for organic leads

In digital marketing, keywords are words and phrases that match the search queries of potential customers. They are used for search engine optimization and contextual advertising so that the target audience can find your site.

So, how do you know which keywords to target to attract organic traffic?

a. Find relevant keywords.

You can start by finding out which search queries potential organic leads use. This can be done with the help of a service that provides statistics of requests to a search engine.

Narrow down your options by finding several seed-keys — words or phrases that are most likely to be used by your target audience during the search. For example, an online bicycle shop might use seed-keys like "bicycle" or "buy a bicycle." A gym could use "gym pass," "training with a coach," and so on. You will have many variations of thematically similar queries.

If you use Google’s keyword planner to search for queries, keyword variations are displayed in the Keywords (by relevance) and Keyword ideas columns.

If there are a lot of key variations and some irrelevant phrases, you can adjust the seed key. For example, searching for the phrase "mountain bike" or "road bike" instead of "bike" will minimize keys that are not relevant to the company's product range.

b.  Select the most promising keywords.

The next step is to search for profitable keywords among the variations of queries. The following criteria will help you select such phrases.

Relevance

Keywords should correspond to the subject of the site, its categories, and the range of products. You should also choose phrases with business-specific content. For example, the query "buy bike online" is ideal for an online shop, but "used bikes,” "bike-sharing,” and "bike repair services" are not.

Search Volume

How often the key phrase is used in searches per month. The higher the search volume of the phrase, the more traffic and leads you can get. However, you’ll only be able to take advantage of high search volume if you’re able to rank near the top.

Competition

The number of sites competing in advertising search results for a keyword.

Keyword difficulty

Indicates how strong competitors are and whether it would be difficult to reach the top 10 results for a keyword.

Traffic forecast

The expected number of visits the keyword may bring to the site. This value is influenced by the number of times a site appears in organic search and its position.

Google provides some of this data. For example, Keyword Planner shows Search Volume and Competition, while Google Search Console shows the number of times a site is shown by query and position. However, Search Console statistics are only available after you confirm your rights to the site.

c. Filter keywords.

The easiest way to select promising keywords is to apply filters to the parameters specifying minimum and maximum values. For example, a defined Search Volume range will exclude queries that are rarely used and queries that are too popular and competitive.

You can filter keywords according to various parameters in the Keyword Research and Suggestion Tool created by SE Ranking. For paid search, filter by Competition and Cost Per Click (CPC). For organic search, filter by Difficulty.

Once you apply the filters, you can download the resulting reports and remove keywords that are not relevant to your business.

Filters in SE Ranking's Search Engine Analysis tool

d. Analyze the keyword SERP competition.

Use data about your competitors' keywords to expand your list of promising phrases and improve your promotion strategy. You’ll need to identify successful sites and find their effective keywords.

Search engine services, such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics, only provide data on your own site. Competitor statistics are not available in this case. Other SEO platforms allow you to retrieve keyword information for other sites. They can also identify similar sites based on common semantics.

e. Track ranking progress

You can track your website's keyword positions to assess its visibility in organic search and the effectiveness of current SEO techniques.

Most customers only check the first page of the results. If your site’s keyword position is greater than 10, this indicates that you need to strengthen optimization for that keyword. You should also monitor the positions of your main competitors, compare them with your own, and do an audit of the SERP leaders.

You can analyze website positions with the help of special SEO services. For example, SE Ranking Rank Keyword Checker shows current positions, their changes over a selected period, data of the top five competitors, and important keyword metrics like traffic forecasts and search visibility.

f. Collect metrics about the effectiveness of these keywords

In its simplest form, the Keyword Rank Tracker report contains columns showing the position of the site by keywords and search volume. To get more information, you can add other metrics such as competition, traffic forecast, and suggested bid.

Columns with metrics for keywords in SE Ranking

2. Test keywords via PPC campaign

When your list of prospective phrases is ready, you can proceed with setting up your PPC campaigns. Keywords are the main way to target contextual ads — the ad appears in search results when users make a certain query.

There are certain parameters to consider when selecting keywords for PPC ads. It's also important to monitor the effectiveness of keywords once campaigns are launched. See how to do this below.

a. Adjust a PPC campaign to the new keywords.

To select keywords for contextual advertising, you can stay at SE Ranking reports and check Competition and Suggested bid indicators. For example, for the "online flower delivery" query, the competition indicator is high and the average bid is 5.55 USD, which is the cost per click for this keyword. You can test another less competitive keyword, “delivery flowers online,” that has the same search volume and may bring you more traffic for less money.

b. See if the PPC cost lets you buy ads for these keywords.

As mentioned before, analyzing the Suggested bid for the selected ad keywords will tell you the approximate advertising costs to expect. Before setting up your PPC campaigns, it's worth comparing your projected costs with your advertising budget. It may not be worth targeting certain keywords because they’re competitive, and the cost per click is too high.

c. Use keyword labels to track progress on topics over time.

You can track the effectiveness of new keywords in your campaigns by adding keyword labels — special labels allowing you to distinguish keywords that share a common attribute with others.

For example, you can create a level "new," in the Manage section of your Google Ads account then go to the keywords section and assign it to the desired phrases.

d. See which keywords bring the most traffic.

Google Ads provides click-through statistics for each keyword. You can also get detailed click-through statistics in Google Analytics by linking your service account to Google Ads and waiting a few days until the system gets enough data.

Click-through and Behavior statistics for PPC advertising in Google Analytics

3. Research your paid and organic leads

In addition to evaluating keywords in terms of traffic, you can go further and find out the impact of keywords on user activity on your site.

Let’s say an advertising campaign started yielding results — the number of clicks has increased. But analyzing the activity of visitors who come to the site for certain keywords can show that most of them leave the site in a few seconds and do not take the target action.

You can establish the exact connection between keywords and their effectiveness for your company in a few steps. This will allow you to avoid ineffective spending.

a. Track engagement insights and measure them.

This is the analysis of visitor behavior after clicking on a website, taking into account the traffic channel. Notice it shows how much time users have spent on the website, how many pages they’ve viewed, which content interests them, and on which page they decided to leave the website.

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b. Understand what's causing changes in traffic and sales.

The next step is to establish the link between user behavior and leads. You’ll want to examine the content, structure, and usability of your site.

Statistics show that visitors are more likely to place orders on pages with high-quality images and videos. Maybe you have a landing page that isn’t delivering many completed forms. If you analyze it, you can identify problems such as slow loading speed, incorrect display on mobile devices, insufficient content, etc.

You can use WhatConverts to track conversions like calls, forms, and chats for each web page. This will give you accurate data on the effectiveness of pages in terms of organic leads. You’ll be able to identify which pages are high-converting winners and which need work.

Take this a step further with the WhatConverts Customer journey view. This feature reveals how your best leads navigated your site, so you can attempt to replicate that ideal conversion path with new organic leads.

c. Combine tracking data with user feedback.

It’s important to get feedback from users. When a user unsubscribes from emails, it is worth paying attention to the reasons indicated in comments.

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d. Overview of tracking organic leads.

To get complete and accurate statistics for a website, you need to track all leads online and offline. WhatConverts allows you to establish a correlation between the traffic channel and business goals for users such as calls, form-fills, and chats.

For example, if you integrate WhatConverts with Google Ads, you can find out which keywords, advertising campaigns, and content led to conversions. A single report will collect all leads — form filling, calls, chat requests, and others. WhatConverts can then generate reports that reveal which ads convert your best leads.

4. Begin attracting organic leads

Testing keywords in PPC campaigns will be useful for SEO. Applying your top-performing ad keywords to SEO strategies can help attract organic traffic.

Now, let's find out how to analyze the effectiveness of organic search keywords taken from the PPC test campaign.

a. See what keywords bring the most organic traffic.

Analyzing organic traffic by keywords sets your SEO strategy on the right track — allowing you to maintain and increase the visibility of useful keywords. After a while, you can see how much traffic the particular keyword brought you and compare it to the results of your direct competitors.

b. Track ranking progress.

Tracking position progress in organic search provides you with an overview of your website’s visibility and helps you identify weaknesses. To analyze the positions, use a platform that keeps statistics after each monitoring, such as SE Ranking Keyword Rank Tracker or other services like Nozzle or Keyword.com.

c. Stay aware of your competitors' rankings.

Analyzing competitor rankings will give a better idea of the effectiveness of your site in comparison with others and allow you to monitor the optimization methods of similar websites that are ranked higher.

For example, here are the top 10 search results for the query “software for accounting.” The website Businessnewsdaily.com moved three positions higher in just a couple of days. Its competitor, Softwareworld.co, may want to look closer at what triggered such a change in rankings and review probable reasons to reclaim its position.

If you analyze competitor sites, you can find out how many backlinks they have and get data on speed, site usability, and other SEO parameters.

You can specify your competitors in the SE Ranking project settings, track their statistics for similar keywords, and do a full audit of their websites.

d. Reveal customer journey data to improve organic user experience.

Analyzing the actions of site visitors who came through organic search will help you evaluate how effectively SEO drives leads. WhatConverts provides detailed statistics on organic user paths. You can also add quotable value to your organic leads and see the following information in easy-to-read reports.

• How many users came to the site through a certain traffic channel;
• Whether those conversions resulted in sales;
• Whether filling out a form or placing a phone call resulted in a "good" lead.

Establishing a link between keywords that drive traffic, visitor actions, and "good" leads, you can identify your most profitable keywords and improve your SEO strategy by focusing on them.

5. Measure SEO and lead tracking KPI results

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing channel. Here are the main KPIs for measuring end-to-end SEO results: visibility in search engines, traffic, actions taken by visitors after they come through organic search, profits, and return on investment.

Organic traffic

All visitors that came to the website through organic search.

Keywords

The total number of keywords that drive website displays, traffic, and leads.

Search rankings

The position a website takes in search engine rankings. It is important to select the tracking region in which a company's target audience is located. If a resource ranks high in search engine rankings, its organic traffic increases.

Organic CTR

CTR (Click-Through-Rate) is the clickability of a website in a search engine, that is, the percentage of displays that resulted in clicks. Organic CTR indicates how informative and relevant a website's snippet is — what users see before navigating to the page.

Dwell time

Shows how much time a visitor spent on a website in general — from clicking through to leaving the site.

Customer Acquisition Cost (САС)

This is the average amount a company pays per customer. In other words, it is the ratio of all promotional costs to the number of leads. CAS makes it possible to estimate the profitability of a traffic channel.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Indicates the maximum profit a customer can bring in the long term. For example, when a user returns to a website and makes repeated purchases. You can extend the customer lifetime with the right marketing strategy and communication.

Conversion rate (CR)

Shows what percentage of visitors from the traffic channel completed the targeted action. CR statistics for keywords help you set priorities in search engine optimization and effectively allocate the advertising budget.

Revenue and ROI

Revenue is the total income generated by the traffic channel. To calculate the net profit, subtract the channel’s financial costs from its revenue.

ROI (Return on Investment) indicates whether the costs of promotion paid off or not. It is a final metric that reveals whether it is worth investing in a given promotion channel or using certain keywords.

Conclusion

Promoting your site in Google search starts with picking keywords that are promising for traffic and conversions. At this stage, it is important to analyze Search Volume, Competition, and Traffic Forecast. You can get more comprehensive keyword data by tracking how organic leads behave once they come to the site.

By combining an SEO service for keyword selection and position analysis with a tool like WhatConverts that collects data on all conversions on a website, you can accurately determine which keywords generate revenue for your company.