A critical distinction when looking at a graph like this is whether the site's performance is increasingly worse than the competitors, or whether the whole industry is in decline. In this post I want to recommend some metrics that can be tracked to benchmark your site against competitors (independent of market behaviour) and to check the health of the industry. I'll then make suggestions for finding opportunities to slow or reverse the trend of dropping traffic.
For the benefit of the time-poor, the post ends with a three point checklist / summary.
Competitors and Benchmarking
There are a couple of different metrics you can use track, which will demonstrate the more direct outputs of your SEO work, and expose your performance amongst competitors.This chart tracks the Site Authority of the target domain (and some competitors) through time.
To date, trying to chart Linkscape metrics has been a bit misleading: the rapid increase in the reach of Linkscape and modifications of the tool's algorithms have meant that month-by-month reporting of a site's Authority wasn't always a fair comparison. However, Nick tells me that the team are currently putting effort into tackling the challenge of tracking this data. Though you'll have more confidence in drawing a trend chart such as this one soon, I'd still recommend collecting numbers right now to get a snapshot of where your site is amongst the competition.
Obviously, this assessment of site strength is query independent; differences in site architecture, on-page term targeting and the anchor text of external links will have a significant effect on each site's performance and number of keywords.
In many ways, the next graph address this. The line for the target site is an 'average ranking position' - I'd recommend creating this by taking around twenty non-branded, representative keyphrases (eg: ten which you're specifically targeting and ten which send a significant amount of traffic) and finding the mean of the site's ranking for each phrase.
The competitor lines should be calculated by finding the mean ranking position of that site, for each of these keywords where the site ranks in the top 20. (We do this so that the mean isn't artificially dragged down by keyphrases which the site isn't trying to compete for, and where it ranks very poorly.)
Even a single month's data points on these two graphs will provide a snapshot of your site's position amongst the industry's other players. Tracking the data each month will demonstrate how your standing has changed, and can directly show the impact of your SEO work - both on-site and off-site.
Industry Assessment
If you have been collecting ranking data in the past, then it can be useful to identify a term for which you've had a relatively static ranking over the last year or so. If your traffic from this term has declined over the same period then this provides a useful example of how market behaviour outside of your control is having an effect on the business.If you don't have historic ranking data, but suspect that your industry is in decline, you should compare search volume trends to organic traffic sent by some specific terms. In the example below, the site sees a decline in traffic for the single keyphrase 'football tickets' but comparing this to the search volume for the term shows that the site's performance has actually improved - they are increasing their share of that traffic.
If the industry really is declining and search volumes for all the typically valuable phrases are unlikely to return, then there can be a serious consideration about even continuing to operate in the market. If your core business was VHS rental, consider offering Blu-Ray; if you rank well for house and holiday insurance but are suffering from the decline in these markets then consider adding pet insurance - a steady / growing market. (Check out this Google Insights data for UK insurance markets.)
Of course, these are extreme examples - and if you're in these particular industries then you shouldn't need a blog post to make these suggestions - but they remind us that there are some markets where a time comes to look for business from elsewhere.
Actions
As we did in the graph above, you must begin by looking at the organic traffic trend for keyphrases individually. A lot of information is lost when data is aggregated (such as in total organic traffic.) Go back and look at your highest volume keyphrases from a year or two ago, and compare these to your current highest volume keyphrases, by charting the monthly volume of traffic they sent over that period. It may quickly become clear that whilst your keyword portfolio has been dragged down by some dogs, there are some stars (or problem children) that are contributing a great deal to the overall traffic.If you last did keyword research 12 or 18 months ago, user behaviour may have changed significantly - even for people looking for exactly the same product. Whilst the metrics mentioned above may bring you to the gloomy conclusion that search volume in your industry is substantially down, it's possible to overlook the fact that there's simply been a change in searcher behaviour.
Examples of such changes that have happened in different geographic regions:
- searchers are using more direct queries ('cinema' & 'film tickets' are steady or down, 'film times' is way up)
- searchers are moving from long tail to head terms ('internet marketing' & 'website promotion' are declining but 'SEO' and 'SEM' are up)
- searchers are moving from head to long tail terms ('currency exchange' is down but specific terms such as 'dollars to pounds' are up)
I promised you a checklist.
Please take away these three points:- If your organic traffic is down, either for particular keywords or as a whole, be clear whether this is because your site is under-performing, or because the search volume for a keyword / in an industry is descending.
- Benchmark yourself against competitors by regularly recording the Authority and/or rankings position for relevant keyphrases of your site and theirs
- Revisit your keyword research - a year is a long time on the internet, particularly given the current state of flux that so many industries are experiencing.
Nice charts! :D
Nice points
Off-topic: Charts always make an article more interesting :P
Its an interesting issue, trying to determine if your SEO or industry is suffering. Benchmarking specific terms for specific periods of time seems like a great way to determine which is the culprit.
Nice tip. Those industries can include tax, recruiting, and half the industries I guess. Well good luck to all SEOs in those markets. They need more of a conversion help than SEO sometimes.
Great article.
I know this is sort of on-topic but off-topic at the same time but what do you think about the first graph? To the layman, it would look terrible because of the decline in unique, organic traffic... In a situation like this, would you take into account the true monthly traffic? Realistically, most sites do have users that return on a regular basis, something that your initial graph wouldn't take into account?
I think it's important to be aware that if you're in a declining market there is still going to be some demand for products in said market. Could it be worth concentrating on that possible niche?
I've come across similar issues with clients with seasonal products/services. If the client is not aware of seasonality, Google Insights usually does a good job in helping us explain, and show them graphically, right down to the very region the client is in.
Definately helpful information, thanks!
I never thought about measuring clients industries as a whole Rob. I knew to measure competitors against competitors, but I can see the added value here.
Using industry benchmarks, it's possible to take a flat campaign and show the client (assuming this is the case)that although their volume is static, they are outperforming the industry as a whole.
Thumbs up for teaching me something new.
wtf is a declining industy? ship building?
The post was prompted by a client who provides services to the construction industry. Unfortunately, you don't have to be directly in an industry that's affected - it can still have a massive knock on effect.
This post doesn't solely apply to industries that are permanently down but I mentioned print advertising and construction as examples of industries which have taken a massive hit but are expected to rebound to some degree when the economic climate improves.
Dead on in the US at least fusiondesigner. And it's cousin steel is in the same boat.
(edit - no pun intended)
Hopefully most sites are already doing some kind of ongoing (monthly ideally) benchmark tracking, but you highlighted one aspect that is generally missing...market benchmarks.
As the industry matures, these measures will become more common, moving beyond just a site number to a market share number.
Of course, if you are truly in a dying industry, no amount of SEO will fix that, though hopefully the unprecedented amount of information that this industry provides at your fingertips will allow you to predict the decline sooner, slow the decline, and identify other areas to pursue to transition the business to or augment it with.
Great post! Smart advice for those looking to improve their benchmarking and reporting.
I also use Google Insights for Search as a general barometer for both seasonal trends and long-term trends. It gives a good top level view for large volume keywords. In addition to using it as a diagnostic tool, I've used it in reporting as well and it has helped clients see the bigger picture within which their website is operating.
Has anyone used tools that output similar data as a way to check against Google Insights? Or have any other alternatives that may do a bit better at tracking the long tail?
- Evan
I'm a web analyst in the magazine industry. I've spent some time using Google Insights for Search to better understand the state of the market. According to Google Insights, the share of search volume for traditional magazine brands has declined significantly. I wrote blog post on this topic: https://carsonhsmith.com/?p=313.
Great (and important) post.
I also like to use the Google Analytics benchmarking data for comparison
Great article Rob, I totally agree with the checklist.
I usually use google insight to check the industry trends, but sometimes the problem is there are many keywords that customer can use to find an industr so data can be inaccurate. Any method to improve this?
Benchmark against competitor regularly is a great way to track the SEO activity and performance. I will do that in the future, but I have one question though. I assume domain authority is delivered by seomoz tool only, and they are working hard on improving it, so i think it is possible that domain authority is increased due to greater indexation, but not seo activity.
Keyword research is indeed needed to be reviewed frequently, i once conducted a search "christmas shopping" on google insight, it amazed me how quickly search queries were changed.
Thanks for the article again. Thumb up.
I agree with using insights, I think it's imperative to benchmark against searches for a term as a whole, and chart your progress accordingly