Your SEO visibility score tells you something very important about your site: how effectively your SEO efforts are working to improve your site’s search engine rankings. Also referred to as search engine visibility, this score is expressed as a percent and indicates how likely someone is to see and click on your site during organic search through Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. Thus, it shows how visible your site is in organic search results. 

If you’re obsessed with getting an A like the Spigot team is, you probably want to know how to check your score and whether you have a 100 percent. Spoiler: You don’t, and that’s okay.

Rather than worrying about the exact number (since different visibility calculators will give you different numbers anyway), the goal is to track whether your score is increasing or decreasing. The way the score is trending will tell you how well your SEO strategies are working.

How is search visibility calculated?

An SEO visibility score centers around your site’s keyword rankings. Different online tools use different algorithms to determine their version of your score. Generally speaking, however, the basic premise for calculating search engine visibility is the same.

A visibility score typically reflects:

• Ranking positions for all keywords you’re tracking in an SEO campaign
• Estimated number of impressions (times a piece of content or page is displayed on a user’s screen)
• Estimated click-through rate or CTR (the percentage of clicks a page receives in relation to its impressions)

How do I check my SEO visibility score?

As we mentioned, different online tools will give you different scores. So you’ve probably already figured out there isn’t just one way to check your website visibility score. Two of our favorite tools for checking visibility are Google Search Console and Semrush. 

Google Search Console is a great option since it uses real data obtained directly from Google searches rather than estimates. While the tool doesn’t give you a specific score for your site as a whole, it will give you scores for specific keywords or pages. It also gives you the exact number of impressions and clicks your site receives as well in addition to its average CTR and average ranking position.

Semrush delivers a visibility trend score based on the ranking position of your tracked target keywords. Each of these keywords that appear in the top search results has an estimate of how often it’s seen. Semrush uses this estimated percentage in an increasing or decreasing line graph that shows how visible each keyword is. Semush also allows you to compare your score to that of your competitors. While you can check your score now with the tool’s 14-day trial, you’ll need to sign up for a paid account to watch it over time. 

Reasons You Could Lose SEO Visibility

It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what could be causing a drop in search visibility. Some factors that could be causing the decrease include:

• Not maintaining old SEO content or failing to add new, relevant keywords in new content
• A change in the specific keywords or number of keywords you’re tracking 
• Ignoring the importance of website maintenance or redesign for continually attracting and keeping users
• Backlink losses or penalties
• An increase in competition from other sites
• A decrease in interest regarding your topic or site
• Major technical changes (new domain name, migration to new platform)
• Search engine algorithm updates

5 Ways to Increase SEO Visibility Score

If you want to rank higher and see improvements in a web page’s visibility, there are several things you can do. Try these tactics to improve your site’s visibility:

1. Focus on Search Intent and Relevance

The amount of time users spend on your site (dwell time) impacts how much attention search engines give your site. 

To increase dwell time, you must deliver content relevant to your readers’ needs. The goal is to match your users’ search query intent, as doing so will help you rank higher. Part of this is creating helpful, accurate, and trustworthy content. 

This means visitors coming to your site should find useful info that answers their questions and is easy to skim through. Consistently providing quality content will help improve your score over time. 

2. Write the Right Meta Tags

Meta tags (like the title tag/meta title and meta description) tell search engines what each page is about. To optimize them, include the target keyword(s) and make sure they aren’t too long. Title tags should be under 60 characters, and meta descriptions should be under 160 characters. 

Use titles that grab attention but aren’t clickbaity. Write unique meta descriptions that are interesting and informative and communicate to readers that your page has the info they’re looking for. These things impact click-through rate (CTR), which improves search engine rankings and, therefore, visibility. 

3. Consider Site Architecture  

How your site is structured may impact SEO visibility more than you think. One advantage of custom website design is that you can trust an expert to lay out a site correctly. A well-structured site helps users find what they need quickly and easily. 

Popper site architecture also makes it easier for search engines to crawl sites, making them more likely to get indexed and rank. A key factor here is that important pages should be no more than three clicks away from the homepage. 

4. Design for Mobile First

Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it mainly uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking. Over 60 percent of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, so it’s smart for search engines to deliver mobile-friendly results.  

To compete against other sites optimized for mobile, your site must focus on responsive design, improving page speed, prioritizing readability, and much more. 

Want to know if your site is mobile-friendly? Plug your domain into a tool like Page Speed Insights to get specific recommendations for making the mobile experience better for your users.

5. Build Backlinks

A backlink is a link on another site that points users to your site. The more high-quality backlinks you can build (naturally or via specific outreach efforts), the more votes of confidence search engines consider you to have. This boosts your rankings. 

The quality of the links you build matters, though. Spammy, irrelevant, or unrelated sites linking back to you won’t add to your authority. The good news: search engines are generally good at ignoring low-quality backlinks. The rest of the story: There are certain instances when you should disavow backlinks or contact the offending sites and ask the links to be removed.  

Target Search Visibility With Spigot 

Your SEO visibility score is an important metric to watch. If you take steps to improve your score, you can reach more people and see better business results. But monitoring your score and knowing how to improve it takes time. 

If this is a task you’d rather pass off to the experts, let’s talk about how Spigot can help. Whether it’s an ongoing editorial strategy or simple site checks and maintenance, we’re here to support you.