It is crucial for any advertiser to remain visible on the search engine results pages (SERP). The SERP is always changing, with new ads, features, and, most importantly, new competitors entering all the time. Therefore, it is essential to keep track of your rankings and adjust your campaigns accordingly.
You should be tracking three main competitive metrics in Google Ads: impression share, impression share lost to budget, and impression share lost to rank.
By understanding and optimizing for these important search metrics within Google Ads, you can outrank your competitors and reach more customers in paid search results:
1. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) metric measures how much revenue each customer brings in.
Within the realm of SEO, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a method used to determine which activities bring about the most significant financial benefits.
Jeff Coyle, co-founder of MarketMuse, a SaaS company that uses AI for content strategy, is passionate about CLV and feels that it is an important KPI for many businesses to be aware of.
Jeff Coyle said this about the CLV KPI:
“From a technical perspective it’s easy to support it because it’s just a matter of having the right data.” I believe that CLV is a key metric because it unifies all teams and departments. I love unifying metrics because they help everyone work together towards a common goal.
It encourages people who typically only focus on one stage of the funnel to think more broadly and consider the customer’s needs.
In terms of content, companies typically have to think about the entire marketing funnel, all personas, and all levels of expertise of the future and present customers.
An SEO strategy focused on a one keyword to one webpage SEO hack, or publishing low-quality content, may be able to rely on luck to get a ranking every once in a while.
But using that type of strategy will not result in growth of customer lifetime value.
A PPC marketer who only focuses on generating demand and isn’t willing to support content at the awareness stage and all the way down is missing out on an opportunity, especially for support and customer content.
They get paid on leads and conversions.
If a company wants their customers to have a high lifetime value, they need to care about all aspects of their customer’s experience, including content, success, renewals, and support. Additionally, they need to focus on growth strategies that will promote customer referrals.
2. Content efficiency
Jeff wanted to share one more KPI before wrapping up, and this one is Content Efficiency.
Content efficiency is all about optimizing your company’s content in order to achieve specific goals, rather than simply relying on search engines. This can be a fascinating metric to explore, as it can help you to understand what kind of content is most effective at achieving your company’s desired outcomes.
Jeff explains it like this:
” My other favorite Key Performance Indicator is content efficiency. It’s a measure of how many pieces of content you publish, how many you update and/or optimize, compared to how often those pages achieve their goals and predicted Return on Investment.
The average content team only reaches 10% of their goals. However, 10% of their content is successful.
I help content teams become more effective, so that 40% or more of their content achieves its intended goal.
A company that is only 10% content efficient is spending 10 times more on content than necessary to achieve their goals.
3. Average engagement time
Kayle is a consultant who specializes in analytics and SEM for B2B and ecommerce sites in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. She is also a content writer for Search Engine Journal.
In Google Analytics 4, there is a KPI available that tracks user engagement with a website. This can be difficult to accurately measure.
Kayle said that GA4 helped them understand whether users were engaging with the website.
The average engagement time is the average amount of time that the user spent focused on the site. This means that the user was most likely looking at it during this time.
4. Conversion goals by percent-based metrics
Kayle next advised reviewing KPIs as percent-based metrics:
”The most important thing to track for your company’s success is conversions or goals. These should be the only metrics that you use to determine if your company is making money. However, it is also important to look at goals based on percentage. This will give you a more accurate picture of your company’s success.
The number of goals will increase if traffic is increasing.
There are two main ways to measure if an organic strategy is working well over time.
5. Accurate search visibility KPI’s
Cindy Krum happily shares two KPIs that are unique to her company, MobileMoxie. The KPIs she shared are effective methods for determining search visibility.
Most search ranking reports show the 10 most relevant results for a given search. However, search results have evolved and are not limited to 10 blue links.
Cindy insists that there are more accurate KPIs to track in order to get a better idea of search visibility.
Cindy discussed metrics that give a more precise view of search engine results pages (SERPs): “At MobileMoxie, we are increasingly looking at metrics that describe the SERP – especially for important search terms.”
We are aware that achieving ‘Position 1’ is not as straightforward as it once was, so we also take into account additional metrics that provide us with insights into the ranking, such as the ‘Pixels from the Top’ metric.
We also compare the ‘Traditional Rank’ with ‘Actual Rank’.
This is a problem because these other assets are increasingly prominent and important. RankBrain is a new way of ranking that includes all Google assets in the SERPs. This is a much better way of ranking because it includes everything that is important to Google.
6. Brand visibility in search KPI’s
Cindy goes on to explain another way to measure brand visibility that takes into account everything a brand owns, especially things that are not on the company site.
”We are now paying more attention to how a brand appears in search results.”
How much of the SERP is taken up by a brand’s assets is important, including content on the main site, as well as other content such as social media profiles and posts, YouTube videos, images, Knowledge Graph results, and anything else that could be a good representation of the brand and help drive sales and awareness.
We want SEOs to be credited for the work they do on optimizing off-site content.
7. New and returning users as KPI’s
Recently, Jim Hedger discussed the idea of using new and returning visitors as a key metric for determining how well a website is converting users. He believes that, for B2B websites, this figure is especially important.
Many KPIs vary depending on the type of site and who the visitors are. This KPI about new and returning users is no different.
Jim states that if you view site visitors as a key performance indicator and segment the traffic into new and returning visitors, you will get a better understanding of which users are most valuable and why.
8. Average time on site – A caveat
It would seem that measuring the average time spent on a site would be an obvious way to try and gauge how effective the site’s content is.
There are some limitations to this KPI that should be considered before using it to measure the success or lack of success of website content.
9. Impression share
This means that if you have an impression share of 50%, your ad will be shown half as often as the ads with the highest ad rank. The percentage of times your ad is shown in relation to other ads is your impression share.
You can use this information to improve your campaign performance and structuring. This metric, titled “Auction insights,” can be found in your Google Ads account. It shows how often your ads are being shown in comparison to how often they could be. If you have a low impression share, it means that your ads are not being shown as often as they could be.
Top impression share
Shorthand: Search Top IS, Top IS
This metric measures the number of times your ad was in the top location on the search results page, or anywhere above the organic search results, compared to the estimated number of times it could have been in that location.
Absolute top impression share
Shorthand: Search Abs. Top IS, Abs. Top IS
The “search abs. top IS” metric, which is a measure of the effectiveness of an ad campaign. The metric is calculated by taking the number of impressions an ad receives in the top location on a search engine results page, divided by the total number of impressions that could have been received in that location.
Exact match impression share
Shorthand: Search Exact Match IS, EM IS
To calculate your campaign’s percentage, divide the number of times your campaign appeared in searches for your keyword by the estimated number of times it could have appeared.
10. Impression share lost to budget
Shorthand: IS LTB, Search Lost IS (Budget)
Your ads may not appear in the SERP up to 95% of the time due to budget constraints.
The amount of time your ad wasn’t shown because you didn’t have enough money to keep it running.
If your budget is too low, you may miss opportunities for customer impressions.
11. Impression share lost to rank
Shorthand: IS LTR, Search Lost IS (Rank)
You can limit how often your ads don’t appear in the search results pages due to your rank. For example, you can make sure your ads appear 30%, 74%, or 95% of the time.
Your ad’s rank is determined by how much you bid in relation to your competitors as well as the quality of your ad. A low rank means that your ad will appear less often.
For example, in 20% of customer searches that used the keywords you provided, your ad did not appear on the results page because its ranking was too low.
Auction insights
“Auction insights” is a competitive tool found under the “Reports” tab in your Google Ads account. It shows you how your ad appears in relation to your competitors.
This information can help you improve your ad rank and return on ad spend.
Or even see why your cost shot up!
The auction insights tool allows you to see who is bidding against you, as opposed to the search metrics which only show you relative percentages.
The time series chart is an easy to use and effective way to share information with clients.
Quick formulas
IS = Impressions/ Total number of eligible impressions
Top IS = Impressions on top/eligible impressions on top
The equation above states that the number of impressions on the absolute top of a page (Abs Top IS) is equal to the number of eligible impressions on top of the page (Eligible Top IS).
12. Revenue per thousand (RPM) and average position
Revenue Per Thousand (RPM) is a way to calculate how much revenue your website generates for every 1,000 pageviews. Average Position is a keyword ranking metric provided by Google Search Console that shows you where your website ranks on Google for a given keyword.
Both of these KPIs can help identify keywords and webpages that need improvement. Having both metrics can provide better insights than just having one.
RPM KPI
This KPI shouldn’t be the only thing used to measure how effective a webpage is. However, it’s a good way to see how changes to a webpage over time affect earnings.
You can improve things like the speed of a webpage or the type of ad unit, and then gauge how effective the change is by looking at the RPM (revenue per 1,000 pageviews) key performance indicator.
Revenue Per Thousand (RPM) is not usually considered an SEO metric, but it can be used to track how SEO affects earnings from ads. This is because the keyword and traffic choices made on the SEO side will determine the performance on the revenue side.
For example, a common SEO approach is to focus on high-traffic keywords. However, some high traffic keywords don’t have a sales-related intent, which can be reflected in a lower RPM metric.
To get the most out of your advertising budget, bid on keywords with a strong sales intent. The RPM metric is a good way to evaluate which topics have a good blend of traffic and high earnings.
Average position KPI
The average position of a keyword phrase in the search results is a Google Search Console metric.
KPIs can help identify areas where a website needs improvement, not just areas where it is doing well. Low performance KPIs can be just as helpful as ones that show high performance in identifying areas that need work.
To increase traffic and expand search visibility, Google Search Console provides keywords at the bottom of the average position report.
Conclusion
Analysis of search engine results pages is essential for understanding how to be successful on the SERP. You can create a campaign that will surpass your competitors and have a consistent presence on the SERP by using competitive metrics and determining search intent.
This will ensure that potential customers see your product or service and generate revenue for you or your clients.