In today’s world of ever-changing business tactics, AI Overviews, and 100 or more other changes to marketing, you may be wondering whether the effort, time, and money you spend on marketing is really making a difference for your business. We’re here to say: yes, it matters! However, the metrics you use to track the success of your marketing efforts may be misleading. One such metric many businesses use is their keyword rankings. But what are keyword rankings really? And how do they fit into the overall success of your digital marketing efforts?

Keyword rankings are the positions your business has when people use a search engine like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo to search for a specific query. For example, you may look for popular restaurants in Lexington by using the query “best restaurants in Lexington, Kentucky” and see that there are several results on the page. That’s because these locations are ranking for that keyword.

At any given time, your business may be ranking for many keywords and holding different positions as you and your competitors release regular content to maintain and grow your keywords reach. After all, being the first result on a search engine is known to improve leads. But keywords aren’t the only factor that shows your marketing is successful.

When you look at keyword rankings, you may feel discouraged seeing a keyword sitting at rank five, or you may be excited to finally get that number one spot on the search engine results page (SERP). Either way, it’s important to note that keywords aren’t just about ranking. Three other metrics you should use when you do keyword research are keyword volume, keyword difficulty, and keyword intent:

• Keyword Volume: This is the estimated number of searches for a specific keyword during a set period of time. It indicates how popular a keyword is, with high values meaning more searches and low values meaning fewer searches.
• Keyword Difficulty: This is how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword in the SERPs. Lower values mean it’s easier to rank for, while higher values indicate a keyword that will be hard to acquire.
• Keyword Intent: This is the purpose behind the search. In other words, keyword intent is what people mean to do when they use a specific keyword. For example, someone may be looking to buy right now or may just be gathering information before making a decision.

When you look at keywords, you may notice you’re ranking in the first spot for a keyword, but it only gets a monthly volume of 10 searches. While that keyword helps a little, ranking fifth (or even 10th) for a keyword with a high volume will likely bring you more leads, traffic, and overall business than the low-volume, high-ranking keyword. While keywords are important, they’re part of and feed into a larger set of metrics that can help you determine if your marketing efforts are successful.

While keyword rankings are a good way to take a quick peek at how your marketing efforts are going, particularly for PPC and SEO, there are several other metrics you should monitor to get the complete picture:

When you monitor your website, it’s essential to look at your traffic. Generally, your marketing is successful if your traffic is maintaining or increasing. Notably, with the advent of Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) in May 2024, traffic for many sites decreased along with keywords since AIOs often answer informational intent queries with a user even having to click. Even so, marketing efforts typically bring traffic to your site, so if you maintained or even increased your numbers throughout May 2025, your marketing is working.

If you run a pay-per-click (PPC) or social media campaign or have a marketing company that does, impressions are another metric you should monitor to see if it’s successful. Impressions are the number of people who open a website or app where your digital ad or social media post is displayed. High impressions can indicate that the ad is getting visibility and is in a high-value location.

The CTR is the number of people who click on your PPC advertisement, social media post, or email compared to the number of people who see it. It’s a great measurement to see if your post, ad, or email is converting people into leads for your business. Generally, a higher CTR is better for your business, and the average CTR for your industry is a good metric to see if you’re doing well. For example, a company in the home and home improvement industry has a different CTR average than one in the entertainment industry.

Leads are an excellent way to determine whether your marketing efforts are successful. Leads represent any person, organization, or other entity that interacts with your brand and has the potential to become a future customer. While they haven’t converted yet, you have the opportunity to move them from awareness of your brand to supporting it by purchasing your products or services. If your leads are increasing after your marketing efforts mature, then they’re successful.

At the end of the pipeline, sales are when you successfully convert a lead into a customer. This is a good metric to track and compare the number of leads you have to the number of sales you make. The higher your conversion rate, the better your team is at closing sales. You can calculate the conversion rate by dividing the number of sales you make by the number of leads you have and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.

As a modern business, you know everything is about ROI. If an investment you make isn’t panning out for your business, then you may consider cutting that investment off. While it’s essential to measure this, it’s even more crucial to know when to measure it. Often, digital marketing efforts and campaigns take at least six months to a year of consistent effort to mature, which means they’re fully optimized for your audience and your business and are creating leads for you. It’s essential to give your efforts time and make a judgment about your ROI and the effectiveness of your efforts after they have had a chance to succeed.

While we often wish it weren’t so, business is affected by the life events of its owners and staff, as well as world events. Changes to taxes, economic stability, and even the environment around a business can all affect how it performs. While each of the metrics above is important, thinking about them in the greater context of what’s happening around the business helps ensure a well-rounded approach to marketing and other efforts you make as a business owner.

If tracking the metrics above (and even more) sounds like a lot, our team does it at Creekmore Marketing. As a digital marketing company located in Lexington, Kentucky, we help businesses and business owners like you with their marketing efforts. Contact us today to see how we can help your business grow!