Description: How can you translate analytics data into meaningful, actionable, recommendations for improvement of an SEO strategy? The focus is on ACTION. Simply getting a statistics report isn’t enough to consistently manage an optimization or a keyword campaign. How do you do the deep dives into the data, and what should you be looking for? For some, they find gold, but it has to be communicated up the ladder. Finding, interpreting, and communicating the data are all very different things and all must be used to build a successful analytics program. Find the holes in your SEO strategy by evaluating different keyword and link based traffic, so that you can make a business case for change and increased investment.
Introduction by:
- Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
Speakers:
- Matthew Bailey, President, SiteLogic
- Laura Thieme, President and Founder, Bizresearch
Amanda starts us off with a general declaration that web analytics are great but the bottom line is you have to know what to measure and what it means. So, first up is Matthew.
Matt starts off by evangelizing analytics and talking about how passionate he is about the field. People who love what they do generally make great presentations. So far, so good. Analytics can not only tell you what your site is doing but what you can do to your site to make it improve almost immediately. Everyone loves to sit in brainstorm sessions and say “I think we should do this…” or “I have a feeling that we need to start…” Matt argues it’s a better idea to say “I know that we should do this because the data tells us it’s the best thing for us right now.”
The first step is start with specific goals. Ask yourself what do you want to accomplish and what do you want your users to accomplish? The typical web analytics package looks at the following:
- Page views
- Path analysis
- Top 10 pages
- Top 10 referring keywords
- Number of monthly visitors
- Number of hits (’cause it’s a nice big number)
Just because this is what all the other kids are doing, it’s not necessarily the best stuff to be looking at. This is telling you what is happening, but it does not give insight into what you should be doing. These are the macro-actions. The micro-actions will lead to the next step of what to do.
Typical cycle of sales follows a path like this: Entry page > products pages > detail pages > the close > conversion. The biggest piece of this cycle is to segment the data and find out who is coming and what are they coming for? So, to illustrate this Matthew gives us a real-life example that we all have fretted about at least once: The Red Shirt Phenomenon of Star Trek. For those of you who don’t know what this is all about, I will illuminate: there is a theory in the Star Trek community that if a crew member of the Starship Enterprise was wearing a red shirt, they were more likely to perish during the show’s run. Matthew wanted to confirm this, so he sacrificed himself and watched the three seasons that made up the series.
 In his findings, there were approximately 430 crew members during the 5-year mission of the Starship Enterprise. In the 5 years, there were 54 deaths of crew members. The shirts make up the following metrics of those reported deaths:
- Yellow shirts: 10 %
- Blue shirts: 17.2 %
- Red Shirts: 72.8%
Now, breaking down the red shirt fatalities a little bit more, we find that 57.5% of the red shirt deaths occurred when they beamed down with Captain Kirk onto an unfamiliar planet. So, the question becomes: what can stop the red shirt phenomenon?
The answer: When Captain Kirk meets a female alien, the red shirt survival rate increases by 84%. Unfortunately, Captain Kirk only meets a female alien 30% of the time.
This is a (great) example of how segmentation can help you improve the performance of a Web site and apply this to improve the conversion rate accordingly. It also shows how you can apply certain conversion rates (survival) to specific segmented groups (red shirted crew members). You get the following items through segmentation:
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Context
-
Conversion
-
Contrast
By comparing & contrasting segmented data, you can create a context that surrounds a conversion or a drop in metrics.
Important KPI’s:
-
Time on site
-
Conversions
-
Pages Viewed
-
Progress on goals
After all, analytics is all about improving users’ experiences for your Web site.
Relevant segmentations:
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Blogs
-
Web sites
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In-market links
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Social news
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Search
Also look for the entry pages that result in conversions. Your home page could be a hindrance when it comes to conversion. But taking a look at the types of links that result in conversions is key. (I heart links)
Next up is Laura and she’s all about a Cause for Action (or how to keep your ship from sinking). When it comes to our industry, we are always discovering something new. Change is a constant dynamic for SEO. Yep.
She gives a shout out to the big analytics programs and tools and then says if you at the macro level, you will not leave any calls to action at the micro level.
Analytics need to be like a ship with a double hull. She recommends at least two analytics tools. Google analytics and be sure to enable conversion tracking. She also likes to activate the metrics for referring domains/ links to find out what kind of traffic is coming from them.
Now, I’m not an “analytics person” so to speak – although I’m considering conversion. Ok, no I’m just kidding. I’m gonna stick with links. Back on track – so Laura talks about a whole bunch of tools, metrics, and stuff that we need to keep in mind when it comes to SEO and managing Web sites. So I’m gonna move on…
