From Google Analytics to Alexa to Domain Authority, and MozMetrics, online marketers now have a plethora of efficient tools at their disposal, each and every one of them articulated toward the goal of helping webmasters know where they stand and how to improve their status quo.
That being said, a plurality of options can also come to be confusing, especially when you’re swimming in an ocean of seemingly endless graphs, stats, and rankings. If you work with or within a search engine optimization agency, you most likely have asked yourself at least once over the course of your career which metrics matter more.
The quick answer to the question of arranging metrics in order of priorities is that there is no clear-cut answer. In other words, different metrics will serve different optimization purposes and scenarios. Bearing that in mind, here are some variables one needs to consider, when employing metrics for strategizing and optimization.
Money is the ultimate metric
You don’t need to be an economy guru to figure this one out. Without cold hard cash, a business endeavor is doomed to fail. However, although conversion is a viable, attainable goal with respect to metrics, it is not entirely up to the digital strategist or marketer to ensure its positive flux. In other words, it’s not the marketer’s job to make sure the business is lucrative and profitable.
KPIs are useful for the decision makers within a company
Key performance indicators are one set of extremely useful metrics for board members and company CEOs, as well as for their interface with the organizational structure, i.e., upper management members. A good KPI will tell them that a particular aspect of the company is no cause for concern, while poorer ones will indicate that immediate action needs to be taken, with focus on a particular area of business. This being said, marketers needn’t concern marketers directly, since they carry little to no weight in actually improving them. Take a KPI such as the allotted budget for a given project into account. Whether or not the budget is in the red does not mean that the marketing campaign cannot still go ahead as initially planned. And while it is useful for marketers to be aware of such metrics, for the purpose of efficient communication with the higher-ups, they should by no means be a goal in and of themselves for the digital marketing team.
AARRR is not pirate talk
Although it has been referred to as ‘pirate metrics’. The acronym, devised by Dave McClure, is tremendously useful for metrics that can be optimized for start-ups. It stands for acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. Gauging such metrics will largely amount to guesswork, at least in the initial stages of the start-up venture, since you will only have access to forecast indicators. However, by working together with your search engine optimization agency, you will find that all of the above can come to be accurately measured, for groups of users, within specific spans of time, such as one week, two weeks, or an entire month.