Title: Digital Metrics Implementation Analyst Description: · Lead support role for Analytics tools (Omniture SiteCatalyst, HBX , WebTrends, Google Analytics); controlling all permissions, providing ongoing training, and ensuring all website pages are properly coded · Responsible to create implementation instruction documents to be delivered to website developers so that analytics code can be properly implemented on websites. Tags will need to be implemented within HTML, FLASH, and AJAX environments. With heavy emphasis on dynamic applications · Define and track SEO Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Title: Digital Metrics Implementation Analyst Description: · Lead support role for Analytics tools (Omniture SiteCatalyst, HBX , WebTrends, Google Analytics); controlling all permissions, providing ongoing training, and ensuring all website pages are properly coded · Responsible to create implementation instruction documents to be delivered to website developers so that analytics code can be properly implemented on websites. Tags will need to be implemented within HTML, FLASH, and AJAX environments. With heavy emphasis on dynamic applications · Define and track SEO Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). You will identify trends and provide actionable recommendations based on data. You will work with business unit management to prepare and present proposals based on the recommendations. · Write Requirements Documents for SEO and business development projects · Participate in site re-designs and enhancements as a measurements…
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Digital Metrics Implementation Analyst

Popularity: 44% [?]

Title: SEO Specialist Description: Experian® is a global leader in providing analytical and information services to organizations and consumers to help manage the risk and reward of commercial and financial decisions. Combining its unique information tools and deep understanding of individuals, markets and economies, Experian partners with organizations around the world to establish and strengthen customer relationships and provide their businesses with competitive advantage

Title: SEO Specialist Description: Experian® is a global leader in providing analytical and information services to organizations and consumers to help manage the risk and reward of commercial and financial decisions. Combining its unique information tools and deep understanding of individuals, markets and economies, Experian partners with organizations around the world to establish and strengthen customer relationships and provide their businesses with competitive advantage. For consumers, Experian delivers critical information that enables them to make financial and purchasing decisions with greater control and confidence. Clients include organizations from financial services, retail and catalog, telecommunications, utilities, media, insurance, automotive, leisure, e-commerce, manufacturing, property and government sectors. Experian Group Limited is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. It has corporate headquarters in…
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SEO Specialist

Popularity: 8% [?]

ClearGauge, ZoomRank Partnership Provides Powerful New SEO Analytical Measure Analyzing search engine keyword rankings as an average over time gives me a much more stable and reliable measurement of keyword performance and improves my ability to deliver to my clients. Now that this feature is automated in ZoomRank, I can shave hours off of my workload per client and instead invest that time in improving their search engine rankings For years, I requested this feature of many companies with desktop ranking software. They all agreed it was a great idea, but that is as far as it went ZoomRank was the first company that actually responded to our needs and I’m glad I got to be a part of developing something that is really cool and truly valuable. Automating this analytical measure will allow ClearGauge to be more efficient and provide even better results to our SEO clients. Building a…
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ClearGauge Partners with ZoomRank to Deliver Next Generation Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Analytics

Popularity: 60% [?]

Earlier this year, a previous post addressed using web analytics
to optimize a paid search campaign.  This drew some attention, as web
analytics (WA) are one of those things that everyone knows they need, but not
always sure exactly what actions are called for in a given set of data. I
suppose some of this can be blamed on the usability of the dashes as it’s pretty
easy for them to get unwieldy…which can lead to a full blown case of
“analysis paralysis.”

It’s time to share some direction on using WA to optimize
natural search campaigns. The following reports can be found in almost every
web analytics package and are fairly consistent, but depending on campaign
goals, the insights and actions taken may vary:

1. Top Referring keywords. Look at the long tail here; 25% of the queries
   performed are ones Google has never seen. The referring keywords to the site will show themes and patterns that
   are otherwise difficult to discern.  More than once we’ve changed
   directions on a campaign because we’re seeing volume around a type of query
   we’ve never seen.  Many times the impetus for a decision like that is born
   here.
2. Referring Domains. This metric is essentially telling you
   who your biggest traffic drivers are.  Search engines and sister sites
   tend to occupy the top of the list.  However, we see some interesting
   things happening in the middle to end of this referral list.  This is a
   great way to: A. Measure the effectiveness of a link building campaign (if
   we’re seeing visitors from sites we built linking relationships with that we
   haven’t before that’s a good thing right?) and B. Find site themes and
   verticals that you may be able to generate buzz with (e.g. if we’ve got a
   particular blogger reviewing a product or service, this can inform the type of
   content on the page which could lead to greater link bait).
3. Click paths. This metric is more or less telling you how
   people navigate through the site.  There are a lot of things to be
   determined here but a big one is the effectiveness of your site layout.
   If we’re seeing a lot of people having to go through a few clicks and all
   ending up on the same page, it would indicate that there’s an opportunity to
   engage people more effectively by improving that click path.
4. Paid vs. Natural. This is an excellent metric for identifying
   gaps.  With paid search, we can quickly target the high volume terms and
   use ROI/conversion rate data to inform our decisions on where we want to
   compete organically.  Likewise, the places where we’re seeing a lot of
   activity in organic terms where we don’t have paid coverage can help us expand
   a paid campaign.
5. Geographic referrals. The more targeted and niche the web becomes,
   the more important geography is (and no, the irony of this isn’t lost on
   me).  Nevertheless, we’ve had instances where a flurry of offline
   promotions leads to a surge in a particular geo-specific market.  Certainly
   the offline team will want to know that the radio blast in Philly led to an $X
   lift in revenue. We’ll use geo data to
   develop new content, launch targeted landing pages, and in some cases, even
   modify service offerings to better target geo revenue sources.
6. Visiting trends. Almost every analytics package puts this
   metric on the forefront of their dashboard so you can see how many visitors you
   have this month verses last month and so on.  Resolution Media uses this to evaluate
   seasonality and optimize accordingly. Correlations between seasonality and
   referring keywords are also helpful in determine where linking opportunities
   could be.
7. Top Landing Pages. Lots of useful action items come from
   here.  This metric essentially tells you where your buzz is.  Keep
   these pages fresh and make sure your users can access them easily.  Seeing
   where human visitors land is a good indicator for what spiders are crawling in
   on as well.  From there, this data can be used to optimize the structure
   and internal linking scheme of the site.   For example, if we note
   that Page A is a much more popular landing page than Page B, C or D, we should
   make sure B, C and D are linking to A with optimal anchor text (based on what
   themes and keywords are on page A).
8. Conversion Rates. This is the million dollar metric right
   here!  When visitors come to the site, are they doing what we want them to
   ultimately do?  How often?  More than they were? Conversions are what
   answer these questions.  From there, we may have a number of action items
   we need to take based on what the data is telling us.   Don’t take
   brash actions if conversions suddenly drop (or spike).  However, KNOWING
   when those spikes or drops occur, and looking at what other things happened
   around it (see almost any other metric listed here) as soon as possible is
   absolutely essential to taking the right actions.  It could lead to
   campaign spending changes, landing page optimization, re-targeting keywords,
   building new link bait and a host of other scenarios.
9. Bounce Rate. This is one of those metrics that I think
   varies quite a bit from project to project.  One bounce rate may be great
   for one kind of site and a total failure for another.  It’s essentially
   telling you how many people happened upon a single page on your site and didn’t
   bother to go elsewhere.  We generally chalk that up to them not finding
   the information they were looking for.  If we’ve got pages targeted
   specifically around one or two keywords, we may be looking for a lower bounce
   rate than a page that casts a wider net.  Measuring bounce rate according
   to page type is essential to evaluating the effectiveness of our content and
   the messaging.
10. Browser type. It’s weird how this was a metric that fell
    out of favor for awhile and is starting to make a comeback.  I’m talking
    about mobile here people!  If we’ve got a project that is a multi-media
    extravaganza with elements that aren’t visible to a spider or a mobile browser,
    and our browser type metrics are telling us a significant amount of traffic
    comes to us from this type of user, then this should absolutely impact how we
    present that information.

There are a host of additional web analytics reports that
lead to the optimization of a natural search campaign.  Reading back over
the list, much emphasis was put on site usability, which supports that driving
traffic to the website is half the battle, and having a website that drives the
traffic to take a desired action can be just as important.

22-May-08 2:00 PM
Continued here:
Using Web Analytics for SEO

Popularity: 31% [?]

Many companies are taking a much more serious look at Search Engine Optimization as an effective growth technique for their websites. But after investing in an SEO exercise, how will you determine if your efforts paid off? SEO engagements with top firms can be very pricey so when someone finally asks, “Hey - that Google thing we did back last month…how did that work out?” wouldn’t you love to be ready with a detailed 1-page report?

Many companies are taking a much more serious look at Search Engine Optimization as an effective growth technique for their websites. But after investing in an SEO exercise, how will you determine if your efforts paid off? SEO engagements with top firms can be very pricey so when someone finally asks, “Hey - that Google thing we did back last month…how did that work out?” wouldn’t you love to be ready with a detailed 1-page report? Of course you would!

My SEO expert colleague Nima Asar Haghighi (check out his blog) and I have been trying to determine what are the Key Performance Indicators for measuring Search Engine Optimization and here’s what we’ve come up with:

Percentage Change in Visits/Visitors from Organic Search

Although probably the most obvious indicator, this metric is by far the most important. After all, if your SEO efforts didn’t permanently end up in an increase in the number of visits or unique visitors (depending on your analytics tool’s abilities) then those efforts weren’t worth all that much!

Percentage Change in Number of Organic Search Keywords

By measuring the percentage increase in the total number of organic search keywords to your website, your essentially evaluating if your SEO efforts resulted in search engines assigning a broader set of keywords to your content. The benefit of this? A broader set of keywords means your visitors have to be less precise when trying to find your site and what you offer.

This is actually a good time to re-examine the concept of the long tail again for those who are unfamiliar as this metric and ones to follow measure the effectiveness of lengthening the long tail.

The long tail in our case, measures those many, many, many organic search keywords that drive a fairly low number of visits or unique visitors to your site. This is a pattern that happens naturally as for most sites, the keywords that really drive traffic to your site are branded, outside of those though there are a number that drive traffic with many variations. Consider the article I have on installing Google Analytics. Google and Yahoo both drive a fair number of visits to this page, but take a look at the many subtleties in terms of the keywords visitors use to access the same content:

• google analytics install
• google analytics installation
• installing google analytics
• google analytics cross domain
• google analytics multiple domains
• and so on and so on…

Each of those keywords above didn’t drive much traffic, but they make up that long tail which is vitally important! Why? Because SEO isn’t about optimizing for the keywords visitors already identify with your brand, SEO is about optimizing for keywords that visitors didn’t even know related to your site.

Now that we’ve all got why optimizing the long tail is important, let’s move on!

Percentage Change in the Number of Entry Pages

Similar to an increase in the number of organic search keywords, with an increase in the number of entry pages we’re looking at long tail success again.

Specifically with this metric we’re trying to determine, “How effective have we been at opening up our entire site to the world?” Assuming you’ve optimized your site correctly, you should be seeing a significant increase in the number of entry pages as search engines begin including more and more pages into their indexes.

Percentage Change in the Number of Brand Keywords

Similar to both of the above metrics, the objective of this one is to ensure that new keywords you associate with your brand (or just your introductory brand keywords if it’s a new business starting out) are being associated with your site.

When Nike launches a new men’s fitness shoe for example on their site I’m sure (or actually I hope) that they ensure to perform some optimization techniques in hopes that the name of the new shoe for example begins showing when visitors begin search for the product by name.

As Nima would say, you’re measuring “building brand through the long tail”.

Bringing it all together…

Finally bringing it all together, a very simple dashboard report might look something like the table below.

The last note I’ll speak to here is that we’ve done a good job of picking a few metrics that allow us to measure our success in driving traffic to the site organically but what we’re not measuring is what that traffic does!

While Google may be able to drive traffic to your website, the traffic isn’t worth anything to you if they: bounce / never generate leads / never purchase a product / never tell a friend / never [ Insert your conversion event here ].

I’ve chosen to steer clear of mentioning this only because if you’re strictly evaluating SEO, you’re evaluating how your efforts have paid off in driving traffic to your site. After that, it’s the site’s job to give your visitors a reason to stick around which is really a separate topic altogether (optimization!).

In any case, I hope that helps at least some of you with understanding what to measure before heading into a costly SEO implementation. Happy optimizing!

Footnote! Recently read an additional article on KPIs of SEO that you should definitely have a peek at, a few new ones that you can choose to add to your SEO dashboard!

http://www.netconcepts.com/natural-search-kpis/

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The KPIs of SEO

Popularity: 33% [?]