Inc.'s recent article How to Use Google to Improve Your SEO brings up a good point: chances are you're already using Google to help you find what you're looking for online--but are you using it to help others find your business?
The article opens with a summary of three fundamental SEO practices:
1) Getting as many high-quality sites to link back to you.
2) Making sure that the other sites linking to you contain relevant keywords that you would like to rank on. "If you want to reach a high search engine ranking for 'Chicago tutors,' for example, your best links would come from other sites that also rank well for that search term," suggests Inc.
3) Posting keyword-rich content and integrating those keywords into your site's title tags and meta descriptions.
If you're new to the world of SEO, you're probably wondering how to go about choosing keywords that are relevant to your business. That's where Google AdWords Keyword Tool comes in. It will help you identify the terms that people looking for your type of business are searching on. The tool generates lists of keywords that allow you to compare search volume and level of competition for different terms. The article's author, J.J. McCorvey, recommends complementing your keyword research by using Google Trends, which allows you to see the search patterns for a given word over time.
So, you've gotten a respectable number of incoming links, identified the right keywords and integrated these words into your site's content and meta data--now what? How do you measure your newly optimized site's performance? McCorvey points us to the metrics tool Google Analytics. It provides a plethora of stats such as bounce rate, or percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page, average time spent on site and more.
The other performance analysis tool, Google Webmaster, has a Diagnostics feature that can help you identify weaknesses in your site's meta data, crawlability and more. Its Statistics arm, meanwhile, analyzes incoming traffic, including which search queries bring visitors to your site. This information enables you to go back and tweak your content so that it optimized on the best-performing keywords.
McCorvey goes on to say that the beauty of Google's SEO tools (besides the fact that they are free!) is the ability to use them in conjuction with one another. As an example, McCorvey points to Google Analytics, whose data you can use "in conjunction with Google's Website Optimizer, which enables split testing of modified pages. After you've made improvements to a page, you can set the Website Optimizer so that a certain amount of viewers see the old version of the page, and use Google Analytics to compare and analyze the results."
McCorvey closes with a reference to the SEO mantra "Content is King," the importance of which shouldn't be forgotten as you get better and better at using Google's optimization tools. If the Keyword Tool tells you that a given term gets a high number of searches and it "...isn't extensively covered on your website, maybe it's worthwhile to churn out a couple more pages on that topic."
Showing posts with label web analytics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web analytics. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Using Google Analytics filters to measure marketing results
We've recently found the "filter" feature in Google Analytics to be a great way to measure effectiveness of our SEO and other internet marketing efforts for clients over time. In this post I'll explain why and give an overview of how to use it.
The problem with unfiltered reports and totals
If you're like most small businesses using Google Analytics, you spend a lot of time looking under Traffic Sources looking at the Referring Sites report and the Keywords (non-paid) report. These reports tell you much of what you need to know about where your traffic is coming from -- and tracking their total numbers over time can give you a good sense of how well your marketing is working.
The problem is that your Referring Sites report will often be dominated by a small number of sites, and your Keywords report will often be dominated by a small number of keywords relating to your brand name. These sites and keywords are critical, but as you grow, your marketing and SEO efforts will focus more and more on traffic from new sites and new keywords.
Let's say you're an employment lawyer in DC named "Teresa Millbrook." Six months ago, both your Referring Sites report and your Keyword report were very top-heavy:
If you're like most people, you'll scan through your reports to see what new referring sites and keywords pop up, maybe comparing back to your list of target lists. If you're more advanced, you'll compare the total visits from referring sites and search engines 6 months ago to today (e.g. October vs. March).
The problem with these approaches is they miss the long tail, which is the most likely place you've had success. Sure, we all want to see a new referrer or keyword sending hundreds of visits, but the far more likely scenario from SEO efforts is that a large number of new sites and keywords are each sending you a tiny number of clicks. In aggregate, these new sources of traffic may be sending you hundreds or thousands of clicks, but because many of them are only sending you 1-3 clicks a month, they're easy to miss if you're just scanning your reports.
You may notice the trend if you compare total referrer or search visits over time, but you're doing an apples-to-oranges comparison. What if your traffic from usalawyers.com and dclaw.com dropped by 25% over the last 6 months? You might miss the increase from your new referrers. Or what if your traffic from brand keywords increased by 25% over the last 6 months? You might mistakenly attribute the jump in your total visits to your non-brand SEO.
How to use filters
The only way to get around the problems above -- and gain a true measure of your SEO and marketing effectiveness -- is to use filters. Filters allow you to do an apples-to-apples comparison of long tail sites / keywords before and after you implemented your marketing efforts.
If you're Teresa the lawyer, here's how you'd use filters in Google Analytics to measure your Referring Sites traffic growth:
Final Thoughts
The next time you're in Google Analytics, try using the 10-step process above. Hopefully when you're done, you'll see a jump in the Total Visits from "before" to "after" and you'll gain new insights into what is causing the increase.
Keep in mind that the comparison this process enables isn't perfect; there may be seasonality and other factors at work. But it is much more scientific than the more commonly used approaches: eyeballing and comparing totals of raw traffic reports. By using filters, you'll gain a far more accurate view of what's working and what's not in your marketing efforts.
The problem with unfiltered reports and totals
If you're like most small businesses using Google Analytics, you spend a lot of time looking under Traffic Sources looking at the Referring Sites report and the Keywords (non-paid) report. These reports tell you much of what you need to know about where your traffic is coming from -- and tracking their total numbers over time can give you a good sense of how well your marketing is working.
The problem is that your Referring Sites report will often be dominated by a small number of sites, and your Keywords report will often be dominated by a small number of keywords relating to your brand name. These sites and keywords are critical, but as you grow, your marketing and SEO efforts will focus more and more on traffic from new sites and new keywords.
Let's say you're an employment lawyer in DC named "Teresa Millbrook." Six months ago, both your Referring Sites report and your Keyword report were very top-heavy:
- Two sites - usalawyers.com and dclaw.com - were driving 95% of your referring site traffic
- A handful of "brand" keywords (i.e. keywords related to "teresa millbrook") were driving 95% of your organic search traffic
If you're like most people, you'll scan through your reports to see what new referring sites and keywords pop up, maybe comparing back to your list of target lists. If you're more advanced, you'll compare the total visits from referring sites and search engines 6 months ago to today (e.g. October vs. March).
The problem with these approaches is they miss the long tail, which is the most likely place you've had success. Sure, we all want to see a new referrer or keyword sending hundreds of visits, but the far more likely scenario from SEO efforts is that a large number of new sites and keywords are each sending you a tiny number of clicks. In aggregate, these new sources of traffic may be sending you hundreds or thousands of clicks, but because many of them are only sending you 1-3 clicks a month, they're easy to miss if you're just scanning your reports.
You may notice the trend if you compare total referrer or search visits over time, but you're doing an apples-to-oranges comparison. What if your traffic from usalawyers.com and dclaw.com dropped by 25% over the last 6 months? You might miss the increase from your new referrers. Or what if your traffic from brand keywords increased by 25% over the last 6 months? You might mistakenly attribute the jump in your total visits to your non-brand SEO.
How to use filters
The only way to get around the problems above -- and gain a true measure of your SEO and marketing effectiveness -- is to use filters. Filters allow you to do an apples-to-apples comparison of long tail sites / keywords before and after you implemented your marketing efforts.
If you're Teresa the lawyer, here's how you'd use filters in Google Analytics to measure your Referring Sites traffic growth:
- Under Traffic Sources, click the Referring Sites report.
- Select your "before" time period, let's say it's October 2009.
- Click the Advanced Filter link on the bottom of the page.
- Keep the filter on "Source", change the drop-down to "Excluding", and enter "usalawyers.com".
- Click "Add new condition", choose "Source", "Excluding", and enter "dclaw.com".
- Click "Apply Filter".
- Write down the Total Visits number.
- Select your "after" time period, let's say it's March 2010.
- Repeat steps 3 through 7.
- Compare the Total Visits between the two periods.
Final Thoughts
The next time you're in Google Analytics, try using the 10-step process above. Hopefully when you're done, you'll see a jump in the Total Visits from "before" to "after" and you'll gain new insights into what is causing the increase.
Keep in mind that the comparison this process enables isn't perfect; there may be seasonality and other factors at work. But it is much more scientific than the more commonly used approaches: eyeballing and comparing totals of raw traffic reports. By using filters, you'll gain a far more accurate view of what's working and what's not in your marketing efforts.
Monday, March 1, 2010
WSJ on measuring web traffic
Interesting recent article on the murky business of measuring web traffic from Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal. He elaborates on some points in a post on The Numbers Guy blog. Most interesting to me is his discussion of the gap between internal site numbers from web analytics tools (e.g. Google Analytics, Omniture) and competitive analysis tools (ComScore, Nielsen, Compete, Quantcast), with the latter's numbers much lower than the former's. My two thoughts:
1) While bothersome, this gap is much less of a problem if everything is "directionally consistent". If Compete shows that my site gets 60% as much traffic as Google Analytics does, I want this ratio to be true for all of my competitors. If Google Analytics shows my site's traffic going up 50% over the last year, I want Compete to as well. I think part of the frustration among website managers is that, not only are there big gaps between internal and external counting, there are also inconsistencies in these other areas.
2) If cookies create problems with double-counting users who visit sites on multiple computers, can't we focus more on visits and less on unique visitors?
1) While bothersome, this gap is much less of a problem if everything is "directionally consistent". If Compete shows that my site gets 60% as much traffic as Google Analytics does, I want this ratio to be true for all of my competitors. If Google Analytics shows my site's traffic going up 50% over the last year, I want Compete to as well. I think part of the frustration among website managers is that, not only are there big gaps between internal and external counting, there are also inconsistencies in these other areas.
2) If cookies create problems with double-counting users who visit sites on multiple computers, can't we focus more on visits and less on unique visitors?
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