What is the most important SEO KPI

According to you, what is the most important SEO KPI to track?

For me, it is Non Brand SEO Clicks.
It helps to understand changes in website’s visibility for queries that doesn’t contain brand name.

Non Brand SEO Clicks is the outcome of all the Technical changes, Internal link optimization and the Content changes done to improve indexing and hence ranking. I think this is the most important KPI against which my services will be evaluated and I will be paid for.

I then segment these SEO clicks into 1) Page Type and 2) Categories — to understand if the changes implemented are working as expected, and to identify opportunities.

I do the category segmentation every two weeks, as it takes manual efforts to do the analysis. The Daily non brand click and the Page Type segmented clicks are automated reports in Google Data Studio.

Let me know your most important SEO KPI and why. And how easy it is for you to track on a daily basis.

My take on Impressions as a main SEO KPI

Tracking impressions was tricky for me, with the property and page groupings.

When Google started adding product page links for multiple queries, like the one in screenshot, my PD page impressions went crazy, with minimum effect on clicks.

In the screenshot there are 4 different PD pages with a listing page, for a single query. It took me a while to figure this out :) and adjust my reports.

If I get a 10x increase in impressions but if my clicks show no change / has hit a plateau, no one cared about the impressions.

Since the start of 2020, I de-emphasized impressions in my SEO reports. I didn’t completely remove it. In my daily and monthly dashboards it’s reported as a metric — Total, Brand, Non-Brand. No dedicated charts as such, or segmented details.

I could argue, impressions is valuable as it meant the website appeared in front of a potential customer. What I realized was no one cared about the increase in impressions, but only what happens to the clicks.

I sometimes, find myself looking at impressions trend when there is a Google update or a major website change.

Let me know what your thoughts on Impressions is.