Are your delicious croissants lost online? Many bakery owners discover their website traffic ain’t translating into the sales they anticipated, and the culprit often hides in plain sight that they didn’t set the right SEO KPIs.
SEO KPIs are metrics that reveal whether your optimisation efforts are driving customers, not just phantom clicks.
Real people walking into your bakery because they Googled “almond croissant with comfortable parking” is a meaningful KPI. But new followers that you got after posting an Instagram image of your croissant ain’t a KPI. (Celebrating 1,000 pageviews while your cash register still collects dust is flattering, but it doesn’t pay the flour supplier.)
Numbers That Bake in Profit
Businesses that focus on the most impactful metrics allocate resources more effectively to drive business growth and operational efficiency Sechele (2024). Moreover, choosing the correct indicators separates thriving operations from those perpetually wondering why Instagram engagement doesn’t cover rent. Successful bakeries have instinctively grasped it.
They’re rises in reservations, direct messages, direct visits, branded search clicks, and share of voice. Each tells a different story about whether your digital presence is pulling its weight. Several meaningful indicators matter deeply when monitored within specific time spans.
Good and Bad Examples for SEO KPIs
Below of those good KPIs that manifest in tangible, bankable forms:
* 80 actual orders placed through your website in a single month.
* A roughly 20% lift in reservation forms submitted quarterly.
* 10 WhatsApp messages weekly triggered directly from your site’s call-to-action buttons.
Other indicators can be strong SEO KPIs, such as rising brand search clicks and many more. Click here to find out.
Improved branded search clicks are another solid KPI worth monitoring quarterly. When searching for “parking around Golden Gate Bakery (you may replace it with your own)” triple over three months, this shows your brand recognition evolving into foot traffic.
Similarly, another KPI like increased direct visits monthly, following identical logic.
When visitors type your URL straight into their browsers, they remember your bakery exists because your SEO helped them find you earlier. This behaviour signals trust and purchase intention.
Share of voice rises quarterly are another solid KPI. Tracking improvements in this metric every three months reveals market dominance. If your brand becomes more visible in searches for “how many calories in an almond croissant”, then you’re capturing a larger slice of the search conversation.
Contrast these gems with bad KPIs that feel productive, but lack temporal specificity or business impact.
These include just increased followers, more likes, or rising pageviews.
Increased followers and likes don’t function as SEO KPIs, because they correlate poorly with actual sales. Meanwhile, higher pageviews remain meaningless until you establish a target number within a defined period. Sales of IDR 120 million sounds impressive, but they can’t serve as a KPI without timeframe boundaries.
Pageviews can also look “healthy” on paper while telling a completely false story. Sudden traffic surges, especially those driven by direct links or private sharing, often slip past GA4’s default reports. If you want to catch these traffic pyramids before they corrupt your KPI reporting, I walk through the exact GA4 setup in this step-by-step maintenance guide.
Align KPIs to Business Goals
I always align SEO KPI targets with what a business genuinely needs. However, conversion ain’t always the indicator I prioritise, especially if the website launched recently and still lacks market traction.
Throughout the industry, bakeries target customers across different stages. Some establishments still introduce themselves to the public, while others compete intensely for attention at the deciding stage. Because of these distinctions, the business phase determines which metrics, and ultimately, which KPIs, deserve priority.
Still establishing brand awareness as your primary goal, even after baking for three months? Then traffic growth takes precedence.
For instance, set a KPI like “10% lift in qualified leads from search visitors quarterly”.
This means that if April through June 2025 generated only 50 search-driven sessions, July through September must deliver at least 55 sessions.
Alternatively, pursuing a larger share of voice makes strategic sense. Suppose in August, nobody mentions your brand when discussing fruit-almond pastries in your city.
Setting a KPI to achieve 3% share of voice by November creates measurable ambition. Share of voice matters profoundly when you own only a small slice of local pastry-related searches, while competitors dominate. That gap should become your mission.
If generating more orders matters most now, then yes, conversion rates deserve centre stage. You may set a KPI like “achieving sales of IDR 40 million in December 2026”.
Targeting more communities to dine at your cafe? Position online reservations as the primary metric. An example KPI might read “20% rise in online reservations for almond croissants from search next quarter”.
Notice the pattern?
We articulate “we want more XXX”, but we must also define what “more” actually quantifies and its temporal boundaries.
Vicky Laurentina, 2025
(Setting goals without specifics is like baking without a timer. You’ll eventually burn something expensive.)
To do this, there’s a proven formula for setting KPIs for an SEO campaign, the SMART model. This acronym represents Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound characteristics.
Let’s consider and break down the KPI “10% lift in qualified leads from search visitors quarterly”:
- S (Specific): Targets qualified leads from searchers, not casual visitors.
- M (Measurable): Quantifies a 10% lift, not a vague “more leads”.
- A (Achievable): Confidence exists that production and service capacities can accommodate additional 10%+ leads.
- R (Relevant): Analysis confirms that securing 10% improved qualified leads generates superior long-term revenue.
- T (Time-bound): It requires 10% improved qualified leads within a quarter.
Impact of Marketing Content for SEO KPIs
Effectively planned content strengthens branding in public conversations. Consequently, more people discover the brand.
Through increased discovery, some individuals begin considering the brand’s products or services. When they patronise the brand’s offerings more frequently within a particular period than previously, the marketing KPI has been achieved.
Fortunately, this tracking apparatus can be streamlined for you. With a partner setting up your analytics infrastructure, you’ll receive actionable insights directly without drowning in spreadsheets.
Instead, you’ll get clear reports showing exactly how your numbers move. That frees you to focus on what you do best: crafting exceptional croissants.
Content to Crunch KPIs
I’ve found that targeted content drives SEO KPIs when it precisely matches customer queries. Businesses producing user-relevant content saw measurable lifts in brand recall, search visibility, and conversion-intent behaviours (Sechele, 2024). This is performance-critical infrastructure.
So, how do we create marketing content that drives SEO KPIs?
- Identify the common questions your audience asks.
Understanding audience needs ensures content resonates. For example, when crafting content about croissants, I investigate audience preferences spanning dietary restrictions to flavour expectations. This prevents me from writing beautiful content that nobody searches for.
- Study potential personas thoroughly.
Suppose you wanna attract people searching for bakeries in Menteng offering almond pastries. These personas might include locals racing croissant variations, or individuals seeking healthier carbohydrate alternatives.
- Research question-based keywords people actually type.
We may research:
* “Where to buy an almond croissant in Menteng?” targeting people desiring a simple croissant with almonds.
* “What carb alternative food is healthier than white bread?” attracts people with dietary restrictions. - Plan to write helpful posts answering these queries.
Discuss how your almond pastry looks to reassure people afraid of burnt pastry bottoms. Additionally, I’ll highlight its moderate sucrose content for those who dislike overly sweet pastries.
People craving for carbohydrate alternatives tend to be highly concerned about digestion. This is where you position how your pastry with its resistant starches can be easier to digest than white bread. - Include calls-to-action within the content.
Calls-to-action can shift people from considering into deciding. I put sentences like “Visit us today for 10% off” or “Reserve your custom croissant now” to convert casual readers into buyers.
- Let content be crawled easily.
These discussions can get cited by AI models and distributed to people searching relevant keywords. As this happens, more prople discover the brand, and amplify visibility through word-of-mouth. People confirm their awareness by visiting the website.
This discussion helps more people discover the bakery’s brand and increases foot traffic by a measurable amount. When discoveries reach sufficient volume, the SEO KPIs ultimately materialise.
Handle the Heavy Lifting
Measuring content KPIs requires proper tracking discipline. Without systematic monitoring, we’re flying blind.
However, you shouldn’t need to become a data analyst to run a successful bakery. I set up this tracking infrastructure once, then manage monitoring and reporting as required.
I usually configure event tracking for critical actions (e.g., “Order” button clicks), set up Google Analytics 4 to capture conversions, and integrate Google Search Console for traffic monitoring. I also track the share of voice using tools like HubSpot.
Businesses usually receive monthly reports showing which content performs best. No manual data wrestling required.
For those curious about the technical details, click here to see the detailed workflow I use.
Step 1: Configure Order Buttons on Key Pages
- Navigate to pages featuring products we wanna track (e.g., your almond-croissant page).
- Add appropriately labelled “Order” buttons linking to our WhatsApp number (or ordering system).
- Ensure everything saves correctly.
Step 2: Establish Order Button Tracking in Google Analytics 4
- Within GA4’s admin panel, create custom events named “order_button_click,”.
- Configure them to trigger when visitors interact with Order buttons.
- Verify the tracking fires properly.
Step 3: Monitor Clicks in Google Search Console for Traffic KPIs
- Filter the Search Console performance data by a specific URL we’re tracking.
- Compare the last 28 days against the previous period.
- Identify whether the content attracts searchers more frequently than before.
- Repeat these steps for another URL.
Step 4: Track Which Pages Lead to WhatsApp Messages for Conversion KPIs
- In GA4’s engagement reports, filter by tracked pages.
- Add secondary dimensions showing order button events.
- Calculate conversion rates.
Step 5: Check Share of Voice Progress
- Using HubSpot’s AEO Grader (or similar tools), input our company name.
- Input location (e.g, San Francisco), products (e.g., almond croissant), and industry (e.g, food).
- Read our share of voice across OpenAI, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Below is an example KPI dashboard you can have monthly to compare performance trends.
Tracking monthly data reveals a pattern that helps me identify which content moves the needle. Sometimes, I find that articles about “healthier carbs options” drive more WhatsApp messages than “where to buy” posts. Other times, weekend traffic converts better than weekdays.
All of these insights usually help me adjust strategies faster without overwhelming bakery owners.
Turning Online Chatter Into Real Customers
Time to stop baking in the dark. Your pastries deserve visibility. No more wondering why traffic doesn’t translate into sales.
Invest in numbers that deliver tangible returns. Precise figures showing your croissants are reaching the customers who want them most. Start by understanding SEO KPIs that truly matter.
Ready to dominate your local search conversation?
I am a content strategist who loves blogging about planning and optimising content for marketing insights. Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram below.
In other words, when an Instagram account of bakery has a lot of followers, doesn’t mean that it has a lot of customers?
A CEO of bakery has to tracking consistently to avoid lack of selling.
Suddenly I remember. A CEO was searching for a WFH content creator (to make contents in his IG business). While the ability of creator is making artistic design (not the KPI).
A bakery can have thousands of Instagram followers. But if the bakery can’t sell its products, it means its followers aren’t turning into real customers.
That’s why consistent KPI tracking matters. Instead of only judging a content creator by how “artistic” their designs are, bakery owners should also look at metrics that actually move sales, like branded search growth and conversion rate from organic visitors.
Oh, making design is also a KPI, but it is not KPI for SEO division. It is KPI for human resources division.
Begini Kak Vicky, maaf komen saya kurang lengkap. Maksudnya jika owner bakery / kafe meminta orang lain untuk bikin desain / konten di sosmed, apakah mereka harus mengarahkan agar konten itu ‘menjual’ dan menghasilkan uang? Soalnya yang selama ini saya lihat yang diminta adalah konten biasa.
Ya, owner kafe atau baker-nya harus mengarahkan desainernya untuk membuat konten yang dapat menimbulkan penjualan. Tentu bukan berarti desainernya harus membuat konten yang super hard selling setiap hari ya. Tetapi, kontennya harus dipastikan supaya mempunyai fungsi bisnis yang jelas.
Contoh arahan yang benar dari owner itu, “Tolong bikin konten yang bantu orang ngerti kenapa croissant kita layak dicoba hari ini juga. Bukan layak dicoba kapan-kapan.”