We get it – there’s a lot of jargon and terms flying around in your SEO report that you probably have never heard and don’t really understand. We got you! Here is a breakdown of the terms you will most commonly find us using, and reporting on:
1. Sessions: This metric counts the total number of sessions during a specific timeframe on your site. A session starts when a user visits your site and ends after a period of inactivity.
2. New Sessions: This indicates the percentage of all sessions that were from first-time visitors, helping you understand how many new potential customers are reaching your site.
3. Pages per Session: An average showing how many pages a visitor views during a session. Higher numbers typically indicate more engaged users.
4. Engagement Rate: Often used interchangeably with bounce rate, it measures the percentage of sessions where the user interacted with your site versus those who left without interaction.
5. Average Session Duration: The average length of a session across all users, giving insight into how long people are staying on your site.
6. Conversions: This is the number of times visitors completed a desired action on your site, such as filling out a contact form or making a purchase.
7. Google Search Console (GSC) Metrics:
- Clicks: Total clicks from Google search results to your website.
- Impressions: How often your site appears in search results.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.
- Average Position: The average ranking of your site in search results.
8. Traffic Sources:
- Organic Search Traffic: Visits to your site from search engine results.
- Referral Traffic: Visits to your site from links on other websites.
- Organic Social Traffic: Visits from social media platforms that aren’t paid ads.
- Paid Search Traffic: Visits from paid ads in search engines.
- Cross-Network: A metric used to track and compare performance across different advertising networks.
- Paid Social: Visits from paid advertising on social media platforms.
9. Backlinks: This counts the total number of links from other websites that lead to yours. Backlinks are vital for SEO as they signal to search engines that other sites find your content valuable.
10. Referring Domains: Similar to backlinks but refers to the number of unique domains that link back to your site. This metric helps gauge the breadth of your site’s external recognition and influence.
11. Authority Score (from SEMRush): This is a composite score from SEMRush that measures the overall quality and SEO performance of a website based on its backlinks, referring domains, and other factors. A higher score indicates greater trust and a stronger ability to rank well in search engines.
See any terms on your report you don’t understand but they aren’t on this page? Let us know, and we will add them!
