Keyword Metrics: Definition, Types, Importance, and Use

As the digital landscape grows day by day, search engines are becoming the primary way to find information online.

Businesses and Marketers have recognized the importance of the digital landscape, hence, optimizing their websites for search engines.

One of the most important parts of this optimization process is Keywords.

By strategically targeting the right keywords, businesses can improve their search engine ranking and get more leads.

However, not all keywords are equal. Some are more competitive and difficult to rank while others are easy. Some keywords are searched by more people whereas others have lower searches.

So there are different metrics associated with a keyword and hence, they are called Keyword Metrics.

Keyword metrics are basically different data that give us insights about how well a keyword can perform on the search engine. These metrics help us to make decisions about which keyword to choose that will eventually benefit our business.

In this article, I am going to explain to you different keyword metrics, how to analyze them using different tools, and how to use them to skyrocket your SEO and content strategy journey.

Types of Keyword Metrics

When conducting keyword research, Search engine marketers use different types of keyword metrics to optimize their content. I have mentioned them below:

Search Volume

This metric helps us to find out how many times a particular keyword has been searched in a month on the search engine.

A keyword having more search volume has more potential to bring traffic to the website.

However, keywords having more search volume are often highly competitive which means more difficult to rank on the search engine.

Impressions

This metric helps us to measure how many times users see a webpage on the search engine result pages.

This metric is part of both the organic and inorganic search (paid ads) results.

It is an important metric as it helps you to identify the visibility of your webpage or ads to your audience.

If the impressions on your webpage are low, then it means the webpage is not optimized for the right keywords. Or, you haven’t optimized the webpage correctly. Read from here how to do the ON-Page SEO of a webpage.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

When a user makes a search (through keywords) on a search engine.

Search engines give some search results on the search engine result pages (SERP).

Now, CTR is the percentage of users who clicked on a search result after seeing it.

A high CTR for a web page means the content of the webpage is highly relevant to the search intent.

The CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions multiplied by 100.

CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) * 100

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

This metric is primarily used in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaigns.

It calculates how much you need to pay to the advertising platform for each click on your webpage when you run an ad campaign.

The formula to calculate CPC is:

CPC = Total cost of clicks / Total number of clicks

For example, suppose the budget for your ad campaign is $100 and through the ad campaign your webpage gets 50 clicks, then, the cost per click on your webpage is $2. Which means you pay $2 for one click.

It is an important metric in digital advertising because it helps you understand the cost-effectiveness of your ad campaign. You can use it to adjust your targeting, bidding strategies, and ad content to improve the performance of your ad campaign.

It helps you to maximize your ROI.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty calculates the level of competition for a particular keyword on SERP.

This metric helps us to understand how difficult it is to rank a webpage for a particular keyword.

Keyword difficulty is a score that typically ranges between 0 to 100 with a high score meaning a higher level of competition and so on.

There are different factors that decide the score of this metric.

For example, how many search results are available for the keyword and the demand for the keyword, which means the keyword’s search volume.

The more competitors are targeting a particular keyword the more it is difficult to rank for it on the search engine.

While different keyword tools may use more factors to calculate the keyword difficulty score, the simplest formula is:

Keyword Difficulty = (No. of Search Results available for the keyword / Keyword’s Monthly Search Volume)

The above formula is also sometimes called Keyword Golden Ratio.

With the above formula, you can calculate how difficult or easy to rank a webpage for a particular keyword.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is a keyword metric type that measures the percentage of visitors who take the desired action on a website.

The action could be anything, from making a purchase to filling out a contact form or subscribing to a newsletter.

Here is how we can calculate the conversion rate of a keyword. Let’s say, our goal is to make more subscribers through a newsletter form.

To find out the conversion rate of a particular keyword, we need two data of the webpage that is ranked for the particular keyword:

• The number of conversions happens. That means, if we take our case here, then, how many users have taken the subscription?
• How many users have opened our webpage in which the subscription form is present?

Hence, we define the mathematical formula of conversion rate as:

Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions / Number of Visitors) x 100

Conversion rate determines which keyword or web page brings more valuable traffic to our website. Through this metric, we can determine which is our hero product online.

Return on Investment (ROI)

This metric helps you to measure the profitability of your keyword. It measures the amount of revenue generated in relation to the amount of money spent on the keyword.

The mathematical formula to calculate ROI is:

ROI = (Revenue - Cost) / Cost

Understanding the ROI of a keyword helps you to determine which keywords are the ones worth investing in.

While ROI is an inorganic metric (from inorganic I mean paid search results i.e. ads), you can analyze it for organic results as well.

The only difference is, in organic results, you have defined what your revenue is and what cost you have bared for the particular keyword. For example, here your revenue could be a subscriber and the cost could be the time you spent on a keyword to rank it on a search engine.

There are different factors that can affect the ROI. They are:

• Quality of your website or landing page
• Content Relevance
• Keyword Difficulty, etc.

Ranking Position

This metric helps to identify the rank of a webpage (for a particular keyword) on the SERP.

Generally, web pages ranked at the top position get more clicks in comparison to web pages ranked at a lower position.

Understanding the ranking position helps us to find those web pages (for particular keywords) that are bringing traffic to our website and those that require optimization.

Again, the score of the ranking position can be influenced by the different factors mentioned below.

• Content Relevance
• Website or Landing Page Quality
• Number of Quality Backlinks
• Keyword Difficulty

Keyword Trend

This metric helps us to find out the popularity of a keyword.

It shows whether the popularity of a keyword is growing, declining, or stable.

It helps us to make better decisions. For example, if a keyword is rapidly growing in popularity, then you may want to capitalize on them before your competitors do.

You can create content and campaigns around such emerging keywords.

This data helps us to access the long-term viability of a keyword. Meaning, in a long period of time in the past, how does this keyword perform? Does its popularity grow or decline or remain consistent?

While a few paid keyword tools (for eg. keywordtool.io, semrush, etc) facilitates this data, you can get it for free using Google Trends.

Bounce Rate

A metric that refers to the percentage of visitors who leave the website after viewing only one page.

Although bounce rate is defined for a webpage, you can define it for a keyword too.

Since a web page is associated with a keyword, therefore, if the bounce for a webpage (or we can say a keyword) is high, then, that means the website is not providing a good user experience.

A high bounce rate leads to a drop in ranking which in turn decreases traffic and ultimately conversions.

You can track the bounce rate of your website’s keyword using different analytics tools, for eg. Google analytics.

You can improve the bounce rate by:

• Focusing on creating quality content
• Improving your website’s user experience
• Optimize the webpage speed
• Improving content’s readability
• Clear Call to Action
• Promote site exploration and more.

Dwell Time

Also known as time on site or session duration is a keyword metric that helps us to find out how much time visitors spent on a webpage (that is ranked for a keyword or keywords).

A high dwell time for a web page indicates that visitors are finding the content useful and informative which means the content is fulfilling the search intent.

A web page having low dwell time indicates the webpage needs improvement in any of the many factors. For eg. Maybe the content of the webpage needs improvement, or maybe the user experience, is like that.

There are different factors that affect the dwell time:

• Content Relevance
• Page Speed
• Lack of Interaction
• Unclear CTAs and so on.

Cost Per Acquisition

It is a metric that measures the cost of acquiring a customer through a campaign.

The campaign could be organic or inorganic.

The mathematical formula to calculate CPA is:

CPA = (Total cost of a campaign or keyword / Number of conversions generated)

A lower CPA means the campaign is going well or we can say, the cost of acquiring a customer is low.

Share of Voice

This metric measures the percentage of times a particular keyword appears in SERP in comparison to the competitor.

It evaluates the competitive position of a brand in search engines.

Its mathematical formula is:

SOV = (Impressions for Target Keyword / Total Impressions for All Keywords in Market or Category) x 100

For example, if a target keyword receives 1,000 impressions in a given time period, and the total number of impressions for all keywords in the same market or category is 10,000, the SOV would be:

SOV = (1,000 / 10,000) x 100 = 10%

This would indicate that the target keyword has a 10% share of visibility in search results for that market or category.

A high SOV indicates that a brand or product is being displayed prominently in search results compared to its competitors.

So, now we understand the importance and different types of keyword metrics. Let’s wrap it now.

Final Thoughts!

Keyword metrics are the critical components to look at while preparing a successful SEO strategy.

By using them, you can improve your website’s ranking and bring more traffic and conversions.