How to identify and avoid SEO vanity metrics

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Are you looking at the wrong SEO numbers on your site? If so, you’re doing yourself a disservice and actually slowing your growth.

It's very common for businesses across all industries to rely too heavily on vanity metrics that look impressive but don't actually help them reach their goals. One of the big problems with vanity metrics in isolation is they don’t give you actionable next steps, which makes it hard to improve your business over time.

If you want to make the most of your SEO strategy, you should take some time to understand vanity metrics and how they can impact your progress.

In this article we’ll show you what vanity metrics are, why they're tempting, and, most importantly, what steps you can take to avoid falling into their trap.

Plus, we'll share practical tips for focusing on metrics that are key to long-term growth.

Understanding SEO vanity metrics

Let’s start with a basic definition: SEO vanity metrics are numbers pulled from your analytics that might look impressive but don't actually demonstrate how well your business is doing.

Metrics in themselves are not inherently good or bad, but when not used correctly they can be misleading. They are valuable when used in the right context, and applied to specific goals. That’s the difference between a vanity metric and a meaningful metric.

For example, rankings are important for visibility but if they don’t deliver on defined business KPIs, such as sales or sign-ups, then they are less useful.

Understanding and learning how vanity metrics impact your strategy is crucial in setting yourself up for success. Focusing on the right metrics will help achieve your business goals and ultimately, your bottom line.

Common SEO vanity metrics

Let's look at some common examples of vanity metrics in SEO. These metrics might look great, but you need to be careful because they don't always translate to success.

• Page views:  While it's good to know how many times people look at pages on your site there are a many other factors to consider, like the visitor quality and whether or not they took action. A million views doesn't mean much if none of those visitors stick around or convert.
• Social media followers: Most people think large numbers of followers on social media are a good thing, and they can be. But the thing is, you don't know how many of these followers might be inactive, unengaged, or even bots. Engagement is what really matters here. It's far better to have 10,000 followers and a 50% engagement rate than a million with negligible engagement.
• Keyword rankings: It’s great to rank for relevant keywords and it’s key for visibility, but the metric alone doesn't guarantee success. You might rank #1 for a keyword that gets very little search volume or that doesn't align with your target audience's intent. Or it might not bring you organic traffic or conversions. In other words, you could be reaching people who simply aren't interested in your product. That's why tracking keywords along with intent (one of the metrics tracked in Wordtracker’s keyword tool) is so important.
• Time on site: A high time on site doesn't necessarily mean engagement. Visitors might be struggling to find what they're looking for, which could lead to a negative experience. Along with time spent on your site, it’s important to know what actions people took.
• Raw traffic numbers: Getting a lot of traffic to your site sounds great, but may not mean as much as you think. If this traffic isn't from your target audience and people aren't taking action, it's not helping your business grow. As with social media followers, it’s quality over quantity every time.
• Impressions: This metric shows how many times your site appeared in search results. But appearances don't equal clicks or conversions. A high number of impressions with a low click-through rate might indicate that some of your on-page SEO such as meta descriptions or titles need to be improved to draw people into clicking through to your site.
• Backlinks: Having a good backlink profile is important and it’s seen as a valuable SEO metric. But, not all backlinks are created equal and a high backlink count doesn't necessarily mean quality or relevance. Large numbers of links from low-quality or spammy sites, will actually harm your SEO as you’re likely to be penalised by Google.
• Email subscribers: Growing a large email list might seem impressive, but it's not always an indicator of success. What really matters is how engaged these subscribers are. A small group of highly engaged subscribers who open your emails and click through to your site is far more valuable than a large list of uninterested people who never interact with your content.

Why are vanity metrics tempting?

The simple answer is these numbers are available and measurable. You can open up your analytics tool and see at a glance how many pages people visited in the last 30 days. It’s easy to see why it’s an attractive option for quick reporting.

Easily understandable top-level data showing positive trends such as high page views or a large social media following may impress stakeholders or clients at first glance.

The problem is, without context and deeper analysis these number can be misleading and ultimately harmful to your business. They don’t tell the full story of your SEO efforts, and you may struggle to improve over time.

The key point is that while vanity metrics are tempting, they’re not necessarily meaningful in their own right. Instead of getting caught up in impressive-looking numbers, focus on metrics that give you insights and build reports that put your metrics in context and give you pathways to future actions.

Image: Clever Tap

The risks of vanity metrics

It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Here are some of the ways putting all your energy into vanity metrics can hurt your business.

Neglecting more valuable metrics

Perhaps the biggest risk of focusing on vanity metrics is that it comes at the expense of more valuable data. When you’re distracted by impressive-looking numbers, you might overlook the metrics that actually mean business growth and success.

For example, you might be so focused on keyword rankings that you miss the changes in user behavior or search intent. By ignoring these meaningful metrics, you’re missing out on valuable insights that could drive real improvements in your SEO strategy and business performance.

Bad decision-making

One of the biggest side effects of relying on vanity metrics is that they can result in bad marketing decisions. Superficial numbers convince people to keep doing what’s not working or abandon what could be working, and that’s a surefire way to slow down progress.

For example, a high number of backlinks could make you think people are impressed with your site, but the truth is, if you’re getting links to low-quality or spammy sites that will hurt your reputation and impact your SEO efforts. It could lead to a series of bad decisions that steer your SEO strategy further off course over time.

Misallocation of resources

When you focus on vanity metrics, you risk investing your time, money, and effort in the wrong places.

For example, if you’re only focused on page views, you might pour resources into driving more traffic to your site. But what if that traffic isn’t converting? You could be spending a lot and not seeing any ROI.

Instead of improving your bottom line, you’re just inflating a number that doesn’t actually impact your business's success. This misallocation can hinder your growth and prevent you from achieving your business goals.

Harder to prove ROI

Vanity metrics make it harder to prove the true return on investment of your SEO efforts. While it’s easy to show an increase in page views or followers, it’s much harder to tie those metrics to actual business outcomes. This can make it hard to justify SEO budgets or get more resources, and potentially limit your ability to implement better strategies long term.

Ignoring user experience

An overemphasis on vanity metrics can lead to ignoring the actual user experience on your site. For example, in pursuit of higher page view numbers, you might implement strategies that frustrate users, like breaking articles into multiple pages. While this might increase your page view numbers, it could harm user satisfaction and drive away potential customers.

Meaningful SEO metrics to focus on

There are a number of SEO metrics you should keep in mind to drive your success. These are important for measuring engagement, revenue, and visibility, which, taken together, will help you form a long-term SEO strategy.

• Conversion rate: This shows the percentage of visitors who take a specific action on your site, like buying a product or filling out a form. It’s important because it ties your SEO efforts to business outcomes so you can see how your organic traffic is contributing to your goals.
• Revenue and ROI: These measure the financial impact of your SEO. By tracking revenue from organic traffic and calculating your return on investment, you can prove the value of SEO to stakeholders and make informed decisions on where to spend.
• User engagement metrics: This includes metrics such as time on page, pages per session and bounce rate. They allow you to understand how visitors are interacting with your site after they’ve clicked through from their search and give you insights into content quality, user experience and whether your pages and content are driving people through to take the desired action.
• Quality of organic traffic: Metrics such as new vs returning visitors, location, and device type for your organic traffic will give insights into whether you’re attracting the right audience, and inform your SEO and broader marketing strategy.
• Organic clickthrough rate (CTR): This is how often people click on your site as a ratio of impressions.  A high CTR means your on-page SEO elements such as meta titles and descriptions are effective in attracting people to progress through to your site. A high CTR can also be positive for your rankings, leading in turn to increased clicks and traffic. Research from Backlinko shows that the top three organic results in Google get over 50% of the clicks.

Image: Backlinko

• Page Load Speed: Having fast loading pages is important both for user experience and for SEO. Users will abandon a slow-loading site and turn to a competitor instead. Recent research showed that on average, ecommerce sites that loaded in one second achieved conversion rates of 3.05%, while for sites that took five seconds, the number dropped to 1.08%. We also know that Google’s ranking systems look at a number of signals that align with page experience, and page loading time is a factor in user experience.

Image: Blogging Wizard

• Backlink quality: Instead of simply counting backlinks, focus on the quality and relevance of sites linking to you. High-quality backlinks from authoritative sites in your industry are what’s valuable for SEO.
• Keyword relevance and intent match: It’s important to know whether the keywords you’re ranking for match the intent of your target audience. So, you’re not just ranking; you’re ranking for terms that will attract potential customers and the audience you’re after.

How to shift focus from vanity to meaningful metrics

It’s important to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your SEO metrics. While it’s fine to track vanity metrics, you need to put them into context so you can understand what they mean in terms of the big picture.

The addition of context in the form of a ratio or rate is often the key to turning a vanity metric into an actionable one.

For example, it’s good to know the number of email subscribers you have but, all things being equal, this is an absolute number which will increase over time. More valuable would be to track the number of new subscribers compared to your established email list, who go on to take a desired action such as clicking on a coupon or upgrade offer.

Looking beyond the surface level metric helps you uncover the data that will really show whether your SEO is effective for business growth.

If you’re measuring your backlink count, you want to be able to say: “Yes, we are getting a ton of backlinks — and based on my research, they're all from high-quality, reputable sites”.

Ultimately, your goal is to make sure your SEO strategy and the trackable metrics all line up with your business goals. Your SEO should tie back to what you want to achieve, whether that’s conversions, brand visibility, improved ROI etc. 

If you work within a team, it’s helpful to meet with everyone on your team, from salespeople to stakeholders, so they can understand the metrics you’ve chosen and how they’ll help the business grow and improve over time.

Final thoughts

Let’s do a quick recap:

1. Vanity metrics might look good but don’t actually contribute to real growth through actionable data.
2. Focusing on vanity metrics can lead to number of pitfalls such as misallocating resources, a false sense of success, or creating a poor user experience.
3. Tracking meaningful metrics with context ties your actions directly to business goals and provides measurable, actionable insights.
4. Switching to meaningful metrics means setting the right KPIs, aligning SEO with business goals.

There you have it! The only thing left to do is to get out there and start measuring what matters to your business.