Baseline Performance

Critical factors for website performance

In order to gauge the current performance of a customers website. We perform a baseline analysis that highlights key factors that are critical to a sites online performance. By consistently measuring a baseline we can establish the current state of affairs and measure the impact of our SEO services from the date of the baseline report. The baseline document establishes fundamental areas that we need to prioritise in order to compete with identified competitor websites.

Initially, a baseline performance involves generating a report to show the current status of your websites online presence. The onsite elements are often determined by critical ranking factors such as site speed, the security of the site, the structure and content strategy being adopted on internal pages. Some examples of measuring the performance of a site is by reviewing existing Google analytics data. This will indicate what pages are gaining the most traffic compared to those which are receiving none. By establishing fundamental errors on a site, by a process of cancellation, we can start to identify why certain pages are achieving traffic and others are not. Whether the site structure has been set out poorly or we have a case of keyword cannabilisation whereby internal pages are competing for the same search query. By using our strategic approach we can quickly identify and improve website performance.

Structure

A logical website menu and page structure make items, services, locations and contact details more easily found for the user. We make sure your website is easy for the user to engage with and Google to crawl important pages of your website. We assess the titles, Meta and tags to ensure a clear hierarchy exists between pages.

Keywords

If your website is gaining traffic and no calls it may be that your site content and headings are not how users are searching for you. We analyse your sites keyword strategy and make necessary changes to engage the right audience.

Rankings

There is no such thing as one ranking report. Users search on multiple devices and many ways across multiple search engines. The search result page includes Youtube, Google My Business and many other constantly changing ranking elements.

Security

A site that has an active SSL will ensure the safety of user details on the site. It is also important to maintain plugins, themes and anything that can jeopardise the security of the site from hackers

Site Speed

Load times and Page speed can greatly impact rankings and user experience. Nobody likes a website that loads slowly

Establishing an initial assessment of how your site is performing is what you need for a competitive edge. Without a baseline to work from, you are unable to establish what improvement your SEO company has achieved with your site since the starting point of working with them. It is also important to note that sometimes you need to go backward in order to go forward as often homepages drive all high rankings across multiple keywords when in fact internal pages should be addressing individual search queries.

Establishing an SEO Baseline

Prior to starting an SEO campaign, there are a few aspects worth tracking to understand the status of a website before an active SEO campaign is implemented. This will create a baseline you can work from, giving you the right data to support the outcomes of your work.

Keywords & Rankings

Growing the volume and positioning of the pages and keywords of a website for its users, is one of the more apparent indicators of successful SEO. Looking at the sites current ranking before any SEO activity will set the baseline, so any growth will be noticeable. Once visibility of the website has begun to increase, you will know what effort was taken to make this happen.

Competitor Analysis

When creating a baseline it’s important to recognise your client’s current competitors. Understanding how your competitors are performing, what they’re doing well, and what they’re not doing well will allow you to figure out where your website stands amongst them. Take note of where they are ranking and for what keyword. We review content strategy, search traffic, backlink success and site structure of competitor sites and adopt any successful tactics taken.

Links

A key aspect you want to be aware of is who has been linking to your site. That’s why it’s important to focus on creating a baseline of links so you know when and where your site growth appears in a backlink profile. Backlinking requires a consistent an effective content strategy.

Bounce Rate

A bounce rate is a percentage of visitors who click onto your website and leave without clicking on another page. This often indicates that visitors could not find what they were looking for on your site and that’s an issue that needs to be fixed. It’s important to look at your websites bounce rate prior to any active SEO strategy practices, this way you will develop an understanding of the usability and engagability of your site.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console are great metric tools that should be used when establishing a baseline. Google Analytics stores your websites on page data history while search console highlights which search terms you are appearing relevant for. It’s important to retrieve the data from Google analytics to create the foundation of your baseline, whereas search console data should be archived. Measuring organic traffic, conversions from organic traffic and a proportion of traffic compared to other channels are vital for the future. This way you will know what impact your SEO efforts had on boosting traffic.

Importance of Measuring a Baseline Performance

A baseline report is one of the most significant aspects to be completed before running an SEO strategy. It allows you to track and measure your progress from the initial stage all the way to its current stage. The more evident improvements on your website become, the more successful your SEO strategy is. Baseline performance is the ideal way to display the success of our strategy from the beginning.