The Most Important Web Metrics to Create a Successful Website

Publish date: 2024-06-10

When it comes to the eventual success or failure of your website or online business, it will ultimately come down to your profit/loss numbers. However, at the core of your online business are many other factors that will come into play — many of which are happening behind the scenes.

Today we are going to take a look at some of the most important factors when trying to create a successful business online. Each of these factors are unique in their own way, and depending on the type of business and revenue methods you have in place, some may be more important than others. No matter which you are currently focusing on, they all play an important role in how, where, why and when people will end up on your site.

Are You Aware of the Following Key Metrics for Your Site

From SEO, domain authority, social media and more… I’ve listed some of the most important metrics for you to keep an eye on, while also providing you with some valuable resources, case studies, and tools in the process.

Social Media

We all know the power and size of social media, but not enough of us are effectively tracking our results and finding where there is room for improvement. Instead, what most brands and bloggers are doing, is sending out a tweet or social share right when their latest content goes live… then ultimately forgetting about it right afterward. Another key element of social media is engagement and the new relationships that are formed through it — however, once again, many brands are leaving their social media accounts to just sit there and blast out content, while missing out on the real engagement that can happen from followers, fans, and customers.

There are actually 5 key metrics found right within social media itself, and while most people are actively using some of them, it’s rare to find all of them being a real area of focus — as it social media management across multiple platforms is very time-consuming.

Followers and Fans

Content

Demographics

Brand Exposure

Hashtags and Keywords

To learn more about each of these areas of focus, I recommend you take a look at Cyfe’s social media metrics list, which goes into detail in each of these areas and why they are so important.

Domain Authority & Page Authority

Back in the day, Alexa and Google PageRank were two of the most common ways to measure the power and rank of a website. Now it’s all about Domain Authority and Page Authority. Moz describes each of these and their ranking process as follows:

Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. Use Domain Authority when comparing one site to another or tracking the “strength” of your website over time.
Page Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engines. It is based on data from the Mozscape web index and includes link counts, MozRank, MozTrust, and dozens of other factors.

In short, both of these ranking factors are determined by a mix of different factors. For the most part, the quality of content on your site and incoming backlinks are likely to influence these numbers the most. The better the sites linking back to your site, the more likely you are to see an increase in both Domain Authority and Page Authority over time.

In addition to the Moz Toolbar, a quick an easy tool for checking the DA and PA of your site (or multiple sites) at one time, can be found at SEOReviewTools.com.

Bounce Rates and Conversions

When it comes to improving your site and how to make money online, we often forget about some of the most important stats and factors of our sites, simply because they aren’t visible through SEO, traffic or revenue dollars. These type of site factors would income bounce rates, conversions, page views, time spent on a site and much more.

OptinMonster actually has a great article on this set of metrics, where they go into detail on eight specific ones, which includes;

Page Views

Mobile vs. Desktop Visitors

Page Timings

Traffic Acquisition

New vs. Returning Visitors

Time on Site (TOS)

Landing Pages

Exit Pages

As you can see, there are many different components sitting right on your site that need to be measured, tracked and improved upon. Even though most of these metrics won’t immediately increase the SEO or traffic on your site, they can make a world of a difference on your customer engagement and revenue numbers.

SEO Audit of Your Site

Last but not least… we have SEO Audits. In addition to everything else we mentioned above, running an audit on your site can drastically improve not only its performance but also keep it in good terms with Google as well. The good news about SEO audits is that they are easy to run and offered on a wide range of services like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Mondovo — each scanning the content on your site and letting you know what needs to be fixed and how much of a factor it can be.

As SEMRush points out on their site, the follow metrics can all be measured through a simple site audit.

Optimize your internal and external links;
Add tags where they are missing;
Make titles, meta descriptions, and other HTML tags unique and comprehensible for users and search engines;
Correct broken images and provide them all with an alt attribute;
Detect and erase error pages;
Find duplicate content pages;
And fix other problems blocking your SEO progress!

When running an audit on your site, be sure to fix as many problems as you can, then run the report again. This will allow you to continually see improvements in your site score and what tasks have been successfully completed.

To Be the Best, You Need to Beat the Best

As you can see, when it comes to running a successful website and online business, there is a lot more to it than just creating content and ranking in the search results. At the same time, if you put in the time and effort to work on all of these areas, you will be much better off and have everything you need to start making your way passed the competition.

Don’t just listen to these words. Take action and start working on the core metrics of your site today.