People can often feel overwhelmed when conducting an SEO campaign. It feels like there’s a huge amount of information and data that you need to keep an eye on. This is true, however if you are limited on time there are a few things that you should make sure you check regularly, and if this is all you can do then you should still be able to get a good sense of what is going on. When keeping checks on SEO work, it is important that you think of the main points; how much traffic am I getting, and how many people are talking about the website. If you can answer these questions then you should be heading along the right lines.
Traffic
Keeping an eye of traffic is perhaps the single most important aspect. After all, if someone is paying you to carry out an SEO campaign, then they are effectively paying you to help increase their traffic. Logging into Google Analytics on a daily basis is well worth the effort, even if it’s just for a quick glance over the figures. I would also recommend that you set at least a little bit of time aside to look into traffic patterns. Try and monitor how long people are spending on your website, how high or low is your bounce rate and what your most popular pages are. If you can get a handle on these figures you will start to get a good idea of how your visitors see and use your website, and changes can be made when necessary....without having to rely on guess work.
Traffic Sources and Links
Undoubtedly, in some shape or form you will be trying to increase the number of links pointing to your website, and get more people talking about your business or online project. Checking the traffic sources will help identify which links are providing the most value and give you a good marker with which to measure your success. Checking the number of inbound links is also a good way of keeping tabs on your campaign. Services such as Yahoo’s site explorer will indentify any inbound links you have coming in. The numbers published are not 100% accurate and you will find they vary somewhat, however it’s still worth checking to see how well your content is spreading. Not everyone will let you know if your content or story has been published, so this is also a very good method of seeing who has published any content or news stories you may be distributing.
Ranks
The number one goal of any SEO campaign is to increase your ranks on the search engines. Results should be checked regularly and it’s recommended to use a spreadsheet with month by month results. You will find that some keywords jump around a little, this is perfectly normal and is nothing to be worried about. Google personalise search results which does make tracking your ranks harder, but if you take the long term approach and compare results over three month periods you will get a good idea of what’s going on. Just don’t fall into the trap of checking daily and getting worried when certain results slip or even disappear...it happens!
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Friday, 4 June 2010
Google Analytics For Beginners
As a freelance SEO consultant I always set my clients up with a Google Analytics account. This enables them to keep track of what progress is being made and adds transparency to the relationship. However, there are usually a fair amount of questions directed my way as how to understand the data, and what exactly they should be looking for or expecting to see. The main aim of using Google Analytics is to keep an eye on traffic. Not only does this mean seeing how many visitors your site is getting, but also seeing where they are coming from both in the geographical sense, and via other sites on the internet. This article goes through a few basic things can help someone who is unfamiliar to Google Analytics.
The Dashboard
This is the first page that you will see when you enter the report. It is there to give you an overview on what is going on, and typically includes; Visitor Numbers, Site Usage Data, Unique Visitor Numbers, Map Overlay and Page View details. Any of these modules can be removed and if you’d prefer to include something else in the dashboard e.g Keyword data then you can. To add another module to the dashboard, simply view the report in question and click ‘add to dashboard’.
Visitors Vs Unique Visitors
At the top of the dashboard you should see a large line graph spanning the page. This graph shows you the amount of visitors or ‘hits’ your website has received. The standard display shows data from the previous month, with points for each day. This can be changed to weekly or whatever you’d prefer to see. You can also go back in time to compare results against another period. This data shows the total number of visits and will include yours. The real number you should be interested in is the ‘Unique Visitors’. To get a more accurate view, you can block certain IP addresses from the report.
Traffic Sources
For anyone involved in SEO this is the really interesting bit. It is crucial for any online marketing that you can keep an eye on where the traffic is coming from, and also see what keywords are sending traffic from the search engines. If you are fortunate to spot a dramatic spike in traffic numbers this report will identify where they have come from. With regards to keywords, you can go into quite a lot of detail and find out not only which phrases send you the most traffic, but which ones are actually converting into customers. This is vital if you are engaging in pay per click advertising when each click is costing you money.
Site Usage
This is the bit that confuses most people. Once you understand what’s being reported you will find this information extremely useful as it lays out a very detailed report on what people are looking at, and for how long. The three most important things you should be checking are; Bounce Rate, Average Page Views and Average Time On Site. If your site is doing well, you should expect to see a low bounce rate, a relatively high average page view and again a relatively high average time on site (over 2-3 mins is good!). For poor performing websites the bounce rate is often very high, i.e people are clicking on the website and ‘bouncing’ straight off.
The Dashboard
This is the first page that you will see when you enter the report. It is there to give you an overview on what is going on, and typically includes; Visitor Numbers, Site Usage Data, Unique Visitor Numbers, Map Overlay and Page View details. Any of these modules can be removed and if you’d prefer to include something else in the dashboard e.g Keyword data then you can. To add another module to the dashboard, simply view the report in question and click ‘add to dashboard’.
Visitors Vs Unique Visitors
At the top of the dashboard you should see a large line graph spanning the page. This graph shows you the amount of visitors or ‘hits’ your website has received. The standard display shows data from the previous month, with points for each day. This can be changed to weekly or whatever you’d prefer to see. You can also go back in time to compare results against another period. This data shows the total number of visits and will include yours. The real number you should be interested in is the ‘Unique Visitors’. To get a more accurate view, you can block certain IP addresses from the report.
Traffic Sources
For anyone involved in SEO this is the really interesting bit. It is crucial for any online marketing that you can keep an eye on where the traffic is coming from, and also see what keywords are sending traffic from the search engines. If you are fortunate to spot a dramatic spike in traffic numbers this report will identify where they have come from. With regards to keywords, you can go into quite a lot of detail and find out not only which phrases send you the most traffic, but which ones are actually converting into customers. This is vital if you are engaging in pay per click advertising when each click is costing you money.
Site Usage
This is the bit that confuses most people. Once you understand what’s being reported you will find this information extremely useful as it lays out a very detailed report on what people are looking at, and for how long. The three most important things you should be checking are; Bounce Rate, Average Page Views and Average Time On Site. If your site is doing well, you should expect to see a low bounce rate, a relatively high average page view and again a relatively high average time on site (over 2-3 mins is good!). For poor performing websites the bounce rate is often very high, i.e people are clicking on the website and ‘bouncing’ straight off.
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