Many SEOs still rely on metrics that don’t really provide actionable insights, including rankings, traffic and engagement.
They are not completely useless, but by themselves and problemas estructurales without context, these metrics won’t make sense.
Rankings differ depending on who searches from where based on search history and location and may be pointless with the wrong user intent.
Traffic can be completely irrelevant or downright harmful. Thousands of people looking for the wrong thing you don’t even offer only cause server load!
Engagement can be the wrong kind of engagement. When people are angry and write comments, it might look good as a number.
Satisfied visitors typically write fewer comments. Complaining happens much more often than expressing gratitude.
I believe CTR is a useful SEO metric. It lets you see how many people are clicking through and also how many are not. Then you need to find out why.
Does Google use CTR as a ranking factor?
Some SEO experts argue that Google can’t rely on links anymore as they are “gamed” easily. What else would be a useful metric they thought?
Well, given all the websites using Google Analytics and Search Console, Google has a wealth of user experience data. Some even point out that Google Chrome also collects such information.
For example, they can see whether visitors came, puked and ran away after clicking your website (thanks to bounce rate as measured by Google Analytics). They could also see who clicked through in the first place.
So these SEO experts concluded that such metrics might be a perfect ranking signal to use for Google along backlinks. Yet, there’s no reliable way to find out.
Then, some resorted to “correlation studies.”
They tried to look at the top-ranking content, analyze it and then, based on that analysis, reverse-engineer the algorithmic ranking signals.
A famous and somewhat shortsighted correlation has been widely spread ever since – content length.
The correlation studies showed that most top-ranking content was much longer that its lower-ranking counterparts.
Does it mean that just by writing 3000 words of fluff, you can outrank 1,000 words of expertly written, highly specific content? Most likely not.
It just means that the existing articles are probably e