The success of a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is directly linked to systematic monitoring of the performance of your institution's website.
This means that each piece of content created and published according to the best SEO practices must be monitored so that you know exactly where you can improve your strategy and thus win the battle for the long-awaited first position on Google.
Here is what you can expect to find in this post:
Find out now which SEO indicators your university cannot lose sight of!
Organic positioning
Organic positioning is the ranking of each page of a website on Google, that is, the first, second, twentieth position in search results. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the most important SEO indicator to monitor.
Recent studies indicate that the click-through rate (CTR) for the first position in Google's organic results is approximately 39.8% of clicks, followed by 18.7% in the second position and 10.2% in the third. This means that more than 68% of clicks are concentrated in the first three results. The further away from the first position, the lower the chances of the user accessing your page.
Given this, you can imagine how difficult it is for a user to reach the second page of results on Google. Therefore, anyone who does not appear on the first page is practically doomed to oblivion.
What we want to say, then, is that the positioning of each page in the SERP (list of results) is of vital importance for any educational institution that wants to attract more students on the internet.
Website traffic
SEO strategies have the central objective of ensuring that a website is found both by search engines, such as Google, and by users of these tools. Therefore, the volume of visitors coming to your university's website is a strong indicator that you are doing well in the field of Search Engine Optimization.
The math is simple: the more visitors, the better. However, it is necessary to emphasize that we are talking about qualified traffic, that is, people who are genuinely interested in what your educational institution has to offer.
Number of pages indexed
When you create a new page for your university's website, the natural way is for Google to launch crawlers, or spiders, which are technologies that read the content of each page and record them in the Index, that is, in the database Google data.
Only after the insertion of your pages in the Index do they effectively exist for the search engine. However, not all pages on a website are read and registered by Google. Errors in the sitemap or improper use of robots.txt (codes that give a command to crawlers) can prevent all pages from being read and indexed.
For this reason, it is important to pay attention to the number of pages indexed by Google, comparing this data with the total number of pages on your university's website.
To find out if a page has been indexed by Google, do the following test: open a tab in the browser you use (Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.) and type site: followed by the page address, excluding https://. For example: website: mkt4edu.com.
If the page is indexed, it will appear as a search result. If not, Google will return a message.
Further Reading:
- What is a newsletter? The 8 best practices to use!
- Rank on Google: what is the ideal size of the blog post?
- CRO, SEO and UX: learn about these optimization techniques.
Traffic Sources
One SEO strategy It can be enhanced if you share your content on social networks or send newsletters to your leads, for example, always thinking about driving traffic to the website.
In this context, knowing where visitors to your university's website come from is also one of the SEO indicators to monitor. In some tools, like Google Analytics, traffic sources are called “acquisition channels”.
Website loading speed
As we have already said in other articles on 4RevOps, Google prioritizes user experience. One of the ways to deliver a great experience for an internet user is to suggest pages that load quickly.
While AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) was an important initiative to improve mobile page loading speeds, its relevance has waned in recent years. Google no longer prioritizes AMP pages in its search results and Top Stories carousel. Instead, it focuses on user experience metrics like Core Web Vitals to determine page rankings.
In March 2024, Google updated its Core Web Vitals metrics, replacing First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP). INP provides a more comprehensive view of a page’s responsiveness by measuring the time between a user’s interaction and the rendering of the next visual paint. It is essential that educational institutions monitor and optimize their pages based on these metrics to ensure a satisfactory user experience and improve their search engine rankings.
The faster a page loads, the sooner the user gets the answer they are looking for and the more satisfied they are. Given this, one of the SEO indicators to be monitored by your educational institution is precisely the speed with which each page of your website loads, both on the desktop and on the internet mobile.
Number of pages visited
A good SEO strategy makes your entire website relevant to the audience you want to reach. This is because all website content is optimized to make visitors navigate through it.
The more pages a user visits, the more they come into contact with your value offer and the faster they move through the purchasing journey. Therefore, knowing the number of pages that each visitor to your college's website views per visit is one of the SEO indicators that must be monitored.
Time spent on the website
Knowing how many minutes a visitor spends on your website is another important SEO indicator. Not only to achieve a good positioning on Google, but also to understand the student behavior that reaches you.
There is no ideal length of stay, as it differs from segment to segment and also from the complexity of the decision to be made by the visitor. Choosing an extension course is a less impactful decision than choosing a doctorate, therefore, it requires less time to stay.
Bounce rate
Also known as bounce rate, the bounce rate of a web page is calculated every time a person arrives at the educational institution's website through a page and does not continue browsing, closing the tab or returning to the previous page.
While bounce rate is not a penalizing factor for Google, it clearly indicates that users don't like what they see when they arrive. Consequently, this SEO indicator helps you evaluate which pages on your website or blog should be restructured, so that they become more attractive to visitors.
Caption: Man sitting in front of a computer with the word "SEO" on the screen, symbolizing the analysis and monitoring of performance indicators in search engine optimization strategies.
Total backlinks
If your educational institution invests in link building strategies, the total number of backlinks should also be observed as one of the SEO indicators. In other words, how many links from other authority sites are there to yours?
By knowing the number of backlinks and which ones are natural, coming from partnerships, guest posts or other link building strategies, it is possible to enhance your brand's visibility and achieve better positioning on Google.
To know and monitor all these SEO indicators, you can use free tools, such as Google Analytics, and paid ones, such as SemRush, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO or Moz, for example. It is up to your marketing team to define the technologies that will be used to monitor the performance of the university website.
Summary: Monitoring SEO indicators such as organic positioning, qualified traffic, dwell time, loading speed, backlinks and indexed pages is essential to improve the online visibility of your educational institution and attract more students efficiently.
What SEO indicators are essential for colleges that want to appear on Google?
What is organic positioning and why is it important for educational institutions?
It is the position that a page occupies in Google search results without paying for ads. Being among the first three results significantly increases clicks on the site, which can generate more visits and enrollments for your college.
How do I know if my university's website is well indexed on Google?
Just type site:yourdomain.com.br in the Google search bar. This shows all the pages that Google has already indexed on your site. If important pages do not appear, there may be errors in the sitemap or in the robots.txt configuration.
Why is monitoring website traffic important in educational SEO?
Because the number of visitors shows whether your SEO strategy is working. More than volume, it is important to attract qualified traffic — people who are truly interested in your institution's courses and services.
What are Core Web Vitals and how do they affect ranking?
Core Web Vitals are user experience metrics defined by Google. In 2024, the INP (Interaction to Next Paint) metric began measuring how quickly a website responds after an interaction. Slow websites perform worse in search results.
Does bounce rate influence my college's SEO?
Although Google does not use bounce rate as a direct ranking factor, it indicates that users are not finding what they are looking for. High bounce rates can signal poorly optimized pages or pages with unattractive content.
How important are backlinks for SEO for educational institutions?
Backlinks are links from other websites pointing to yours. They act as "votes of confidence" and increase your page's authority on Google. The more quality backlinks you have, the better your positioning will be.
What tools can I use to monitor SEO indicators?
Tools like Google Analytics (free), SemRush, Ahrefs, and Moz (paid) help you track traffic, dwell time, access sources, backlinks, and other essential metrics to fine-tune your SEO strategy.
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