How to Track SEO Performance Without Getting Lost in the Data

Tracking SEO can feel like you're going down a bit of a rabbit hole. Between Google Search Console, Analytics, keyword tools, heatmaps… it’s easy to lose sight of what actually matters.

Thankfully you don’t need 27 dashboards. You just need the right insights. The ones that tell you whether your SEO is actually helping your business, not just graphs telling you whether your traffic looks busy.

Google Search Console is your best mate for SEO data. Here you can view your impressions which is how often your site shows up, clicks, which is the number of people who actually entered your site, click-through rate, which is how many people actually clicked and took action from your content, and the average position which is where you sit in the rankings.

You’ve also got Google Analytics, which shows you what actions people take after landing on your site. Are they sticking around? Are they converting? Are your SEO efforts leading to actual results, or just vanity numbers?

Reading the Right Signals

If a page moves from position 15 to 8, then you’re doing something right - even if your traffic hasn’t exactly skyrocketed yet. Pages sitting on page 2 can suddenly spike once they creep into the top 10.

If your impressions are up but no one’s clicking? That’s a title or meta description issue. You’re showing up, but something’s not convincing people to click.

And if you’re getting loads of traffic but zero conversions? You might be attracting the wrong crowd, or ranking for keywords that sound good but don’t actually bring in business.

Tracking Frequency and Focus

A good basis for checking your top pages is around once a month. SEO isn’t like ads, it takes time. Looking every day won’t give you better insight. It’ll just make you paranoid and reactive.

Also, split your branded vs non-branded traffic. If people are Googling your business name more, that’s great - it means your brand is growing. But if your non-branded traffic is climbing, that’s the sign your SEO strategy is working.

And most importantly, focus on trends. A steady upward curve over a few months is way better than random spikes that disappear just as fast.