Last month I spoke at SAScon in the UK on the topic of getting actions from analytics. It's something that I feel quite strongly about so I wanted to write a post on here to talk about it a little and expand upon what I talked about at SAScon.
The key question I want to answer is -
"What key metrics should I be tracking?"
I can break the answer down pretty quickly by saying the following -
- Metrics that are actionable - why measure stuff you can't do anything about?
- Metrics that help you get stuff done - using data to fight internal battles is vital
- Everything else - meh, wouldn't worry about it too much!
Whilst I love diving into data and getting into the how and why trends appear in analytics, I have to remember that my time is limited, in particular when looking at a clients analytics account. I need to understand as much as I can, but ultimately I need to focus on the metrics that make a difference. Also if you are a bit of a newbie in SEO or analytics, the amount of data available to you can be very overwhelming. Far too many people make the mistake of focusing on the wrong metrics which can be costly to a project. It can sometimes look like you are doing a bad job if you are measuring the wrong metrics.
Metrics that are actionable
If a metric isn't actionable, then its just fluff that fills up space in a report and doesn't mean very much. Whilst metrics can be interesting, there is a difference between a metric that is interesting and one that is actionable. Below I've listed a number of metrics that I define as actionable.
1. Beat Panda - Measure Content
Whilst the Google Panda updates of 2011 have looked to address a number of quality issues, one of the key ones in my opinion was the amount of good, quality content on a page. Many pages of thin or duplicate content across your site could potentially cause your entire site to fall foul of Panda. One way to assess this on your own site is to use custom variables to measure the content on your page. This works very well if you have an ecommerce site or any site where you collate reviews:
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Action to take -
- Measure the number of reviews on your pages and see if pages with little or no content are as visible in Google
If you want to learn more about using Google Analytics custom variables, checkout this tutorial video.
2. % Visitors who view product pages
The reason this is important is quite simple, no view of a product page = no product sale.
This is one that is usually taken for granted by many ecommerce sites. They assume that because they have lots of product pages, that visitors will automatically find them. However there can be barriers to a visitor getting to your product pages, for example poorly designed navigation, poor internal site search, unclear category names etc. Also lets now forget that many ecommerce sites have other sections of their site such as a blog, a news section, buyers guides, videos and help pages, so a visitor can easily get distracted by one of these and end up leaving your site without ever seeing a product page.
Actions to take -
- Improve internal site search
- Improve navigation menus
Pro tip - make sure your internal site search works for both plural and singular product names. A classic mistake I've seen over the years is exact matching of queries to product names which means either singular or plural returns no results.
3. % of people who search your site then exit
If a visitor has made the effort to type in what they are searching for on your site and still left without buying, then you should take a closer look into why. So many internal site searches are not only badly designed, but also return bad results. If your website is like this, then you are losing sales. Actively improve your search results pages to make them more relevant and useful. it still amazes me that SEOs obsess over Google SERPs, yet neglect to take a look at the quality of their own despite having control over them!
Actions to take -
- Test it and make sure it actually works
- Do the results you see make sense
- Include special offers or discounts in results
- Enhance results with images - see Apple for a good example:
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If you haven't got it setup on your site yet, check out this information on setting up site search for Google Analytics.
4. Page load speed
If it isn't already clear to you, Google is obsessed with speed. I can see why, a faster web is better for everyone and we all get frustrated if a page takes longer than a few seconds to load. Google have confirmed that site speed is part of the algorithm, albeit a small part. They've also made it measurable in Webmaster Tools and more recently they made it available in Google Analytics.
Now that we can measure load speed in analytics, it becomes much easier to see the results of the actions you take. Its also easier to see which pages of your site are slower than others, which allows you to try and work out why and fix the issues.
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Something I wanted to point out here too is that you shouldn't be worrying about site speed because it forms a small part of the Google Algorithm. You should be worrying about it because it is important to your visitors, they will not come back to your website if they are left hanging around waiting for the page to load.
Actions to take -
- Look at which pages or sections of your site are the slowest
- Focus on improving the speed of your money pages
- Bug your developers and educate them on why its so important
If you want to learn more about what you can actually to do speed up your site, take a look at Craig Bradford's site speed for dummies part one and part two on the Distilled blog.
5. Average Order Value
This metric is all about squeezing as much revenue as you can from each order. Quite often, an SEO will start a project and the first thing they do is assume they make more revenue for the client by getting more traffic. Whilst this can be true, the quickest wins can often come from taking a good look at ways to get more value from the existing traffic.
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There are actions you can take though if you are looking to drive traffic that will increase your order value.
Actions to take -
- Add up sells as much as you can to the buying process - Amazon are awesome at this
- Look at keyword trends to see which ones drive a higher order value
- Look at traffic sources to see which ones drive a higher order value
6. Measure SEO Variables
Similar to point one above, you can also use custom variables to track various SEO variables of your website such as -
- Pages tagged with Rel=canonical
- Pages that are linked to sitewide
- Tag certain "types" of content across your site
Action to take -
- Measure things such as the above and see how these pages perform in search results
7. Completion of Tasks
This one falls outside Google Analytics but I still wanted to measure it as it can be a great way of getting quick feedback about your site. I'd recommend taking a look at 4Q survey for this one, they offer a free trial so you can give it a test drive and see what you think. Avinash wrote a pretty in depth review of it on his blog if you want to read a bit more into it.
Quick sidenote, if you are into Analytics and not following Avinash on Twitter or reading his blog, you should be! He is also speaking at Mozcon in July and I've heard great things about his presentations.
Actions to take -
- Ask your visitors questions that matter using this software and feed the answers back into your strategy
8. Share of Search Landscape
I really like this metric. The main reason I like it is that it is a metric that anyone can understand, even people who don't get SEO will understand this. This is because its very similar to a traditional marketing metric of market share, so it can be used when demonstrating SEO growth and targets to your clients.
Here is an example of how this may look (dummy data!):
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9. Form Field Tracking
This is such an easy one to action and can make a big difference to your conversions. If you are able to identify fields that are consistently confusing customers and perhaps making them abandon the form, then you are able to look into why and remove these barriers to conversion. You can even take a step back and ask yourself if that field is even required at all.
Action to take -
- Identify form fields that are causing problems and either remove them or improve them
Pro Tip - you can use Google Analytics events to track which form fields are causing problems. Here is a good thread over on the Analytics help forum which points you in the right direction for setting this up.
10. Branded vs Non-branded Search Traffic
If you are an SEO, or you employ an SEO agency, you should be measuring this metric. The great thing about measuring non-branded traffic is that pretty much 100% of the credit can be given to SEO efforts. Whilst credit for branded search increases can be credited to a number of marketing channels such as PR, offline advertising or online display advertising.
Action to take -
- Measure non-branded keywords and see which ones convert best, then focus on increasing rankings for these
11. Conversion Rate
I'm pretty sure you are all looking at this metric, but I bet that some of you are not using it properly. By not measuring it properly I mean that you are probably looking at this overall figure:
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You can't take any actions from this figure. In order to take actions, you need to segment by relevant dimensions such as traffic source, type of visitor, location, keyword etc.
Action to take -
- Segment conversion rate by best performing dimensions and invest more resource into those dimensions
Metrics that help you get stuff done
The following metrics are focusing more towards helping you get stuff done. You should really make sure you use all available data to fight internal battles and give the business case to effect change at your clients company. Make sure that you backup your recommendations with solid data, however be careful not to confuse key stakeholders with complicated stats or fancy graphs. Just give them the data they need and visualise them in a meaningful way.
I'm going to give a couple of client examples here, whilst I can't give away the client themselves, hopefully these examples will demonstrate the power of data in getting things done.
1. Client didn't appreciate the value of content
A client of mine launched a microsite which had lots of good content on it about their upcoming releases and products. When their main site went live, they took down a lot of this content. This was despite our best efforts to stop them! We saw traffic drop slightly and growth wasn't as fast as it had been in previous months. After a few months (yes I know!) we finally got the content put back up and we pretty much instantly saw an increase in traffic.
So the next chance I got, I did a short presentation to one of the company directors who had the power to make things happen at the client. He wasn't involved much in day-to-day SEO but still had the power to influence the rest of the company's attitude towards SEO. I showed him a simple bar chart showing the traffic drop and the subsequent increase.
It worked a treat and he now understands the power of content and how it effects organic traffic. This means that future tasks that involve content won't be buried deep at the bottom of the developers list and will be slightly closer to the top. Influencing change ftw.
2. Developers didn't like SEO tasks
One client of mine has a team of developers who are probably the smartest I've ever worked with. However they'd previously worked with SEO companies who had got them doing work which didn't make any difference to traffic or revenue. These guys are super busy and didn't want to spend their valuable time on tasks which didn't make a difference. This made them a little resistant to future SEO tasks.
So when we had a situation where it was possible for Google to crawl literally billions of pages on their site, most of which we didn't really want Google spending their time crawling. After some work, we managed to make some changes with the help of the developers to solve this problem and make Google focus on the important pages and spend more time crawling those.
A month or so later, we saw some very good results both in terms of increased traffic and could also see through server logs that Google were doing exactly what we wanted them to do.
With the help of the client, these results were shown to the developers and they were given credit for the increased traffic. They were able to see the results of their work which makes it much easier now to get them to work on SEO tasks.
My understaing of analytics is that there is hardly any metric which is not actionable provided i know how to get useful insight from it. Some metrics by themselves don't make any sense (give no useful insight) like $index metrix. Some metrix make sense only in particular situation like 'TV impressions' (if you are tracking TV ads campaigns). While some other metrics make sense only when used with others like 'avg. page load time' and 'page load sample'.So IMHO saying that this metric is actionable and that is not, is not entirely accurate. Metrics which are actionable for me may not be actionable for you and vice versa. In the end it is all about the individual knowledge level.
Beat Panda - Measure Content
No need to wrestle with c u s t o m variables here seriously. Measuring the number of reviews on a page or no of pageviews or visits to a page is not the smart way to measure the quality of a page. Many of us don't get any reviews on our ecommerce sites. So should we assume that quality of our pages is poor/thin. No. As long as my pages are helping in getting conversions (macro or micro) they are quality pages for my business. IMO the best way to measure the quality of contents on your webpages is to look at their $index value. Through this metrics you can determine most profitable and least profitable pages on your website. Go to your top content report in Google Analytics, sort the $index column in decreasing order and apply weighted sort to get the most actionable data. Any page which doesn't help in a goal conversion or completing an ecommerce transaction is not a quality page (from commercial point of view) no matter how many pageviews/ visits / tweets/ reviews it gets.Period.
Branded vs Non-branded Search Traffic
"The great thing about measuring non-branded traffic is that pretty much 100% of the credit can be given to SEO efforts. Whilst credit for branded search increases can be credited to a number of marketing channels such as PR, offline advertising or online display advertising."
You can safely give up to 100% credit for branded search increase to SEO if the client is not using any other marketing channel. Even if the client is using other marketing channels you can still safegaurd your SEO efforts provided you can prove it through analytics. I often see SEO efforts going into the drain of direct and branded search traffic becuase of poor tracking or lack of knowledge of first touch attribution. Often visitors don't convert on their very first visit and when they return to your site they often do it via branded search. Here lies the problem. You worked day and night to optimise the site for a highly competitive keyword and the vistior converted through a branded keyword. As your site grows in popularity (because of high ranking on non-branded keywords) you will see more and more conversions through branded keywords and lesser conversions through non-branded keywords. With the passage of time your client will start thinking that you are not doing anything much as majority of conversions is coming through branded keywords. Do you face this problem? I did and i quickly realised that i need to protect my efforts from branded and direct traffic monsters. The point i am making here is that it is stupidness to compare Branded vs Non-branded Search Traffic in way that decides the level of SEO efforts put into the project. The action to take here is as your site grows in popularity focus first on branded keywords. See which branded keywords convert best and then focus on increasing its ranking. Cheers!
Hi Himanshu,
Thanks for your feedback.
The point of my post wasn't to say that only these 11 metrics are actionable. Neither was the point to say that ALL other metrics are not actionable. The point was that you should focus on the metrics that are actionable to you. The 11 I provided are examples of ones that IMO are actionable.
In relation to the Beat the Panda feedback you gave. I'd agree, I think that the best way to measure this is by actually using some gut instinct, common sense and user feedback to determine the quality of a page. But try doing this to a site that has millions of pages (which I've been asked to do!). So you need a scalable way of measuring content on a page and segmenting by organic traffic, custom variables is one way to do this. Sure its not the only way, but its a way that can be used by people who read this blog.
On the Branded v Non-branded point, with respect, I think you've missed the point here. The point is that when you have multiple marketing channels that are trying to claim credit for traffic and conversions that a site gets, it can be hard to truly attribute branded searches to one particular channel. In reality (as you point out) a few channels may play a small part in one conversion. With non-branded search, you are unlikely to hit this problem. For example, how can a PR company claim credit for an increase in non-branded, long tail organic traffic? They probably can't, but you can and you should be. Measuring this can show how good you are doing.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Paddy
In my experience, one of the top prorities of any SEO project is communicating the value of each major tactic (and giving periodic updates as well). I have been guilty too many times of taking it for granted and assuming everyone knows the value of our strategy. Lately, I've been putting together informative presentations to use for new customers, and actionable reports for existing ones. I only wsh I had done it sooner. Thanks Paddy!
I think that the bounce rate is a very important and actionnable metric
remi
Agreed. Bounce rates and average time on page/site can definitely be meaningful. Same with browser-type (maybe your site is busted in a certain browser type - pair that up with Bounce Rate/time on site too)
Very helpful. I'm digging the focus on analytics lately in the SEOMoz blog. This is a huge huge part of an SEO's job and is one I definitely need to work on. Thanks for all of the great links. I'll be reading them throughout the day.
Paddy I was wondering if you could explain #8 Share of Search Landscape. What exactly should I be looking for an how do I put data like this into action?
Hi Cody,
Thanks for the feedback.
You can gather this data by capturing the ranking postitions for your site and your competitors. I'd recommend going for 4-5 competitors. I'd then look at perhaps the top 30 results, then see how many times your site and your competitors sites appear in the top 30. For example if you do this for 100 keywords, and your clients in the top 30 results for 25 keywords, they have 25% visibility.
To do a comparison in the way I have, is a little more tricky as you need to capture ALL of the URLs for the top 30 results. But it is possible with some Excel magic to do a full comparison, so for the top 30 results across 100 keywords, you'd have 3000 SERP results. You'd then need to see for how many of these your site and your competitors appeared. These are unlikely to add up to 100% though, so you need to take into account all the other results, not just your competitors, which again is tricky!
In terms of actioning, this type of data can be used to focus your efforts on a core set of keywords and trying to increase your SERP share for those keywords. It can be great motivation for yourself and your team to have this kind of figure to focus on.
Hope that helps!
Paddy
Hi, Great tips. I'm currently doing linkbuilding for a client and I am having trouble with the quality of my links. I have looked at competitors backlinks and they have a lot of directory submission. But I have been told to stay clear of all directories. IS this true? Also how do you put a target on how many links you should do a day a week? You can force people to get back to you and some people take longer then others to reply to emails? Also what should be the cut off point with regards to quality of links? I usually use domain authority and Linking Root Domains to make a call. I try to find the highest I can but what should be the minimum I should look for?
Paddy great post, I'm interested in testing my sites' speed and seeing if there are somethings that I can do to fix that. Also, branded vs non-branded traffic. Most of my clients are start-ups or their sites aren't known for much more than their name to the search engines. But its a great metric.
Very nice post. Thanks a lot.
Google's Ver 5 is such a god-send! A google-send? The same thing?
This is a very good article. Keep up the good work!
Probashi
"GMRBIZSOLUTIONS"
Excellent point about page speed. People keep going on at me about how important it is as a ranking factor, and its only part of the mix. absolutely it is about user experience!
Thanks for this article. Btw it seem that google have removed some view from Analytics because I dont seem to have theses options im mine... or I'm lost ;)
I wonder how many of these are still applicable. Perhaps the bump will spur a revisit?
I got all excited about this until I saw the pie chart was dummy data
It consistently blows my mind how many people overlook analytics.
I'm always amazed how many people are absolutely unwilling to cull any low-value pages from their index, only to realize that 90% of those pages get no visitors at all (let alone drive sales). Every site has more important and less important pages for search - if you don't choose them, Google will choose for you.
Most valuable post I have read in a while.
I would add conversion rate by browser and browser version to this as well. Looking at conversion rates across different browsers and browser version is an easy way of determining if you have bugs in your site affecting the look and/or usability.
https://blog.cnizz.com/2010/08/28/debugging-your-website-with-google-analytics-custom-reports/
Could you give some examples of how #8 is actionable? What would you do with it beyond showing clients pretty stats? - Jenni
Jenni -
It seems that metric can be useful when you have clients that want to see their market share, so you can use the data that we are privy to in Analytics to put together these graphs that show exactly what the customer wants to see (in an honest and ethical way). Will Critchlow (I think it was) gave a good talk at Boston ProSEO about visualizing data, which I recommend people watch when wondering about how to display data to their clients.
Hi Jenni,
Coincidently, my comment directly above yours may answer your question :)
The action, as John has pointed out is that it can be used to get buy in from management and people who don't "get" other types of SEO data. It can also be used to show whats possible, ie if you are at 10% share and a close competitor is at 40%, you can bet that management will want to catchup!
So it can also be a great motivator for teams to focus on and put their efforts into the right keywords.
Hope that helps!
Paddy
So my question/issue is #2
What do you do when a shopper can buy from the product page PLUS the site serps pages, category pages and the homepage?
Track it! All of it!
Paddy's primary point (alliteration for the win) was that many ecommerce sites simply work on their SEO efforts, get traffic coming to their site (whatever the landing pages may be), and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done. They don't even think to look and make sure that the traffic is actually making it to a page where they might convert and buy something.
If you're getting a conversion, that's a good thing. If you know where and why those conversions are happening, that's a better thing. If you know where the conversions are not happening, but are supposed to be, and can find out why they aren't - that's the best thing!
If searchers aren't making it to your specific product pages, and you can figure out why and fix it, then you're likely looking at a decent conversion % increase. Likewise if you see that people are converting from your site internal SERP's, or from the home page, you could build out those efforts more heavily if you weren't already and see another conversion % increase. Track, track, track, and then track again.
Internet marketing - it's a beautiful thing, isn't it? :)
What Frank said.. :)
Yes my point was that this is something most sites take for granted. For your specific situation, just make sure that you are capable of measuring if people convert most from SERPS, category and the homepage. Then work on the ones which convert best and push more people there.
I agree with your comment about average order value, I think too many SEO's rely on head terms where often this is not the point where revenue can be made.
But some really good points for any one looking to gather some more knoeldge about SEO =)
Awesome post.
I am gutted I didnt make SAScon, but reading all the follow ups and slides etc. is making up for it a little. Looking forward to picking through this more and combining with the usual stuff I do with analytics. Liking the approaches to GTD / productivity you guys have @ Distilled.
Also interesting point about speed, everyone has thought I was nuts over the last 12 months or so for predicting its going to be a big factor. Since I have predicted this I have seen a lot of very slow, bloated WP type sites get dumped out of the SERP's. I would guess it has to be pending in a future update now Google has made it more prominent for people. I would like to get my sites as quick as possible within the next 6-12 months!
Anything we do should be actionable and reflect with results. these are really great examples and tips , but in the end each one of us has his own approach to analysing data and taking actions on it. personally, I don't see why anyone would look at data that can't be acted upon, really no point... but I know that webmaster tend to do that, but SEO's.. well I guess they come in all packages and sizes :)
The Panda update is surely ensuring that the content is not added for the sake of content and SEO but it is truly informative and useful to the user .
If the site is user friendly added with the technical excellence of surfing and navigating through easily for the user and the SEO has ensured that the content can be accessed and indexed easily by the bots then the site is a sure success from an overall perspective.
Your website itself and the user can have the inbuilt potential to promote your site online if your SEO and developer provide that ability to your site.
All these 11 metrics that are mentioned here surely help us to track that ability of the site.
Thanks.
Some great metrics here - definitely made better by the fact that they're all actionable. The branded vs non-branded traffic results can be particularly important in my opinion, and keeping a balance between the two even more so for a rapidly growing site. Some others that I have implemented for clients include:
I definitely agree that getting developers onside, especially if you work for an agency and have to liase with in-house developers or those at another agency, is really important. The only was to get things done is to show them how interesting the results of their work will be, that this work will be useful to the company and, when it's finished, how useful it has been. That wasy they will be happy to work with you. Also, start with smaller fixes like non-www.rewrites or adding tags to each page. Then, when you ask them to minify all that javascript, remove all that horrible inline styling and start using heading tags, it will be much easier to convince them.
I particularly agree with the part about concentrating on better traffic and not necessarily overall traffic numbers. I think we all (especially clients) get too focused on getting more visitors and overlook the importance of that traffic actually converting. A lot of the thinking is from the sales funnel line of thought. "3% of visitors buy something so if we increase traffic sales will increase." - Not always how it works. To a point quality will always be greater than quantity... especially in ecommerce. Great post!
Tremendously valuable post with much wisdom on, among other things:
How to get things done by going to the top of a client company and demonstrating value.
I have the benefit of dealing mostly with medium-sized businesses and my client is typically the owner or a top exec. My firm controls the platform. I can often make agreed-upon changes on the fly while on the phone with the client. In rare instances, I might have to call in our firm's IT people to do things like 301 re-directs, domain name moves, video site maps, etc...But at least I know the site has been built properly in the first place. There are no egregious errors.
My impression is that too many SEOs spend too much time writing reports that never get implemented due to internal client-company issues....or conflicts with other consultants.
I have now gotten to the point with some of my clients that they don't even want to be taken into Google analytics or adwords reports. I just summarize the findings in one page emails with no attachments and follow up on the phone.
I appreciate not everyone is in my position.
But i offer this general advice:
Fewer reports, more phone.
Great post Paddy! You are absolutely right I have been through this... why developers (most of them) didn’t like SEO tasks is because they think it’s useless and SEO tasks didn’t make any difference in the overall project… I think this is a great idea to give the credit and tell them what difference their job bring to the overall project in this way they will not only started to accept SEO Tasks but also figure out what kind of difference they made to the project.
These are great and actionable Metrics that one should always get in to, analyzing and act accordingly will bring the increase in quality traffic and sales!
As far as Avinish is concern if you are in to analytics and not following ‘The Analytics Guru’ you are seriously missing a great stuff…
Over all a great Read…
I have been working in website speed for a while. I think search engines is the last benefit of a fast loading website. I have noticed improvement in bounce rate, time on site and conversions. Website speed is such a important factor that it has to be in the top priorities. Not because improves the ranking in the search engines, but because improves the whole user experience.
Nice post Paddy!
Thanks!
I can't tell you how greatful I am of this post. I always tell myself and every client I work with that "SEO is about intuition, not just numbers." You NAILED IT here with Thor's hammer.