Part of this is being able to calculate the growth rate – this refers to how much traffic you are getting from each source.
This can be done in many ways, and we will take a closer look at the options available, and why they should matter to you and your business.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and this refers to the process of making sure that when someone searches for something on Google or another search engine, your website comes up as one of the first results.
If it doesn’t, then you don’t get found by potential customers, which means that you miss out on sales.
This is because people who do not find what they are looking for tend to just move on to the next result, meaning that if your site isn’t there, chances are they won’t come back.
What Is Growth Rate?
The growth rate refers to how much traffic your site is receiving from different sources. The most common way to measure this is using data provided by Google Analytics, but there are other tools available too.
Google Analytics provides information about where your visitors came from, what keywords they used to reach your site, and how long they stayed before moving on.
It also tells you whether they were referred to your site through a link on another site, or whether they typed in the URL manually.
It’s important to note that while these numbers may seem like a lot, they only represent a small percentage of all visits to your site.
For example, let’s say that you have 100 unique visitors per day. That would mean that you receive 1,000 visits every month.
However, if only 10% of those visits are repeat visitors, then you actually receive only 100 new visitors per month.
So, even though you might think that you’re doing well, you could still be losing money because you aren’t seeing enough new clients coming into your business.
Why Does Your Growth Rate Matter?
There are a number of reasons that your growth rate is so important, and these include:
You want to know if you are attracting more or less traffic than you did last year.
You want to see if you are growing faster or slower than your competitors.
You want a baseline figure to compare against future figures.
You want a benchmark to help you understand how your marketing efforts are working.
What Factors Will Impact My Growth Rate?
One of the main problems with calculating growth rates is that it’s difficult to accurately measure them. There are two main reasons for this.
Firstly, the amount of traffic you receive varies depending on a range of factors, including:
How often you update your content
Whether you use social media to promote yourself
Whether you run paid ads
The type of adverts you choose to run
The time of year
What kind of competition you face
Secondly, it’s hard to tell how much traffic you lose to other sites because the same thing applies here. People who visit your site will usually go somewhere else if they can’t find what they are looking to buy.
How Can I Calculate My Growth Rate?
So, with this in mind, just how can you calculate your own growth rate? Let’s take a look at some of the key steps involved.
Step One – Identify Your Keywords
If you want to improve your growth rate, the first step you need to take is to identify exactly what words people are searching for when they enter your product/service category.
Step Two – Analyze Your Traffic Sources
Once you’ve identified your keywords, the next step is to analyze which websites send the most traffic to your website.
This is done by looking at the referring URLs (the links that lead people to your site) within Google Analytics.
Step Three – Measure Your Visitors’ Behavior
The final step in calculating your growth rate is to measure your visitors’ behavior. If you don’t do this, you won’t really know if you are making progress toward your goals.
To start measuring your visitors’ behavior, you’ll need to install an analytics tool such as Google Analytics.
Once installed, you’ll be able to track everything from where your visitors come from, to how long they spend on your site, and what pages they view.
You should also consider installing a conversion tracking tool. These tools allow you to record the actions taken by visitors once they reach your site.
They can be used to determine whether or not people are converting into customers.
Once you have got all of this information to hand, you can begin to work out your growth rate. For example, let’s say that you found that 70% of your visitors came from organic search results.
That means that 30% of your traffic comes from non-organic sources.
Now, let’s assume that these non-organic sources only account for 1% of your total visits. So, we would have a growth rate of 0.7%.
In order to get a more accurate idea of how well your business is doing, you could try to calculate your growth rate over longer periods of time, but it is important to remember that another factor that affects your growth rate is the seasonality of your business – this is particularly important if your products are focused on a particular event or season.
Final Thoughts
Calculating growth rate is one of the best ways to help you understand how successful your marketing campaigns are.
It allows you to see if you’re reaching your target audience effectively and if there’s anything you can do to improve things further.
It’s also useful to compare your growth rate against others in your industry so that you can benchmark yourself against them – this is a great way to receive the information you need to make your business flourish.
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
