In Singapore, many enterprises are still using keyword ranking as the metrics to measure the success of an optimization campaign. Gauging the success of an optimization campaign on keyword positions in the search engine results pages is so last century. However, today there are still many enterprises who want us to provide guarantees on achieving page one ranking for keywords.

Keyword ranking should not be used as the main metric to measure the success of an optimization campaign. If we are just looking at keyword rankings, we are neglecting the big picture. What's the use of getting a keyword to #1 position on Google but it yields no sales or other forms of conversions at all?

In this article, I will share on 5 SEO metrics that really matter:

1. Organic traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing. One of the most important objectives of search engine optimization is to increase the volume of traffic to your website from search engines via organic search results. Overall organic traffic increased can be used as an effective metric to measure the performance of an optimization campaign.

2. Conversions. A conversion is any action taken by a user. A conversion can be a sale, a lead generation, a download, a video view, a form completion, etc. Before optimization begins, we need to select the right conversion to measure. Then, set up conversion funnels in Google Analytics to track the total number of conversions from search engine optimization.

3. Bounce Rate. Bounce rate is a term used in website traffic analysis that represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. For example, Alex, an imaginary web surfer, visits a page A on my site and exits my site form the same page A. This visit is counted as a single page visit. Ideally, this is a bounce rate of 100%. According to Google's analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik: "It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying." The idea of search engine optimization is to improve the quality of organic traffic to a website and reduce the bounce rate.

4. Average Time Spent on Site. This metric is particularly important to content-driven websites. For content-driven websites, sales conversion or lead generation may not necessarily be the best metrics to use. Average Time Spent on Site can be an ideal metric because the longer web surfers stay on a site to read the content, the more successful the website is.

5. Keyword Yield. This is the average number of keywords each page yields in a given month. In another words, it is the ratio of keywords to pages yielding search traffic. The higher your keyword yield, the more of the "long tail" of natural search your site will capture. So an average of eight search terms per page indicates pages with much broader appeal to the engines than, say, three search terms per page. Having more long tail keywords will also means having more exposure on the organic result listings.

As you are optimizing your website, watch the above-mentioned metrics to ensure you are heading in the right direction.

Article contributed by Ian Cheow Yu Yuan, Founder of Optimal Online Marketing (OOm). Visit OOm website for more articles on online marketing strategies and search engine optimisation tactics.