bonus: screenshots to help you track your efforts.
by becky livingston
the accountant’s social media handbook
now that you’ve put all this effort into your site speed, keyword research, meta tag implementation and more, what can you expect in return?
more: top 20 social media hacks to build your business | get found online: four mobile seo tips | quick tip: accelerated mobile pages | why you need an ssl certificate now | why tracking urls are so important | what goes into a buyer persona? | what is seo and why is it important?
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seo is a marathon, not sprint.
you’re not going to be on the first page of search after implementing all of these items. you need to work at seo in everything you present online, from emails to blog content.
also take into account that seo fluctuates based on trends, product life cycles and service cycles. for example, tax terms trend in the first quarter of the year in the u.s. and canada, even though tax-related activities take place all year long.
what should you be tracking to know if you’re getting a good roi?
according to semrush, you should measure
- total organic clicks,
- number of goal completions via organic traffic,
- bounce rate for top landing pages and
- lifetime value for users.
total organic clicks
your website analytics tool should offer this ranking. in google analytics, you find this under the dashboard admin area. once there, click on the property column > property settings. choose the website you want to use (e.g., your domain name). click save.
that will tie your site to google’s webmaster tools (search console). once that opens, you may need to click on your domain name. open the search traffic drop-down on the left panel.
now you can view a variety of search-related things, such as analytics, links to your site, internal links, manual actions, international targeting and mobile usability.
you can choose to view a custom range by clicking the dates drop-down field on the right. below the chart, you will also see the terms used to search your content.
by comparing date ranges, you can quickly see what queries are generating direct clicks to your site. you can also identify the landing pages generating the most clicks. plus, you can see which devices are sending the organic traffic (mobile, computer/desktop/tablet).
tip: be sure to filter based on type > web or you could see searches for images, which you may not care to see.
goal completions
if you do not have goals set up on your site, you should add them to track what is being completed, e.g., downloads, form submissions, pdf opens, video plays, etc. learn how to implement goal completions using kissmetrics’ article “critical goal types” found at https://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/.
in google analytics, view conversions > goals > overview. choose the dates using the buttons in the top right corner. see the example below.
from that screen, you can quickly determine many seo metrics – such as goal completions, value and conversion rate – and identify your roi from organic traffic.
bounce rates
a bounce happens on a website when a visitor enters the site on one page, doesn’t leave that page and exits from the same page. you want to track this because it can help you determine the pages on the site that may be driving visitors away.
there are a few exceptions when you might not worry too much about bounce rate, such as
- if the page contains a link to a third-party registration page;
- if it is a landing page with a form that does not present another page once the form is completed; or
- if it’s a landing page with login information to another site, such as a portal page.
in most other cases, it’s important to look at the bounce rate for pages throughout the site, especially pages you’ve created for conversion, such as lead-generation pages.
you can find these metrics in google analytics from the left dashboard using behavior > site content > landing pages. remember to choose the organic segment for traffic only from organic source. do that by
- clicking the “add segment” box in the top, center;
- scrolling down and choosing organic traffic; and
- clicking apply.
- if the all segment is still showing, delete that segment by clicking the down arrow and choosing remove.
the dummy data shown here is for the feb. 1-28, 2018 period. the bounce rate average for the top 156 pages is just over 46 percent. that’s a bit high. look at these pages to determine their importance, and their bounce rate.
if you discover important landing pages are driving visitors away, review the page’s design, content, call to action and image(s). does it convey the message you want visitors to receive? is it providing enough information (benefits about the product/service) to warrant the call to action? does it include the right call to action for the action needed (e.g., for a video you’d use play now, not download)? finally, how many fields are required for completion? the more fields, the less likely visitors will complete the form.
exit pages
in addition to reviewing the bounces, you also want to view the top exit pages. those are pages from which the visitor exits the website.
with the organic segment turned on, visit behavior > site content > exit pages. this data helps you determine where people leave the site, and if they are leaving where you feel they should.
for example, if you have a lead generation form page with a download action that triggers a thank you page upon completion, the thank you page should have the higher exit rate than the landing page itself. if it does not, that means people are leaving the site before completing the action, or the form isn’t created effectively with a thank you page followup. if that’s the case, review the landing page for the same things you’d look at for a high bounce-rate page.
from the graphics provided and using the same data time period for exit page and bounce rate metrics, mens/mens+t+shirts had a bounce rate of 36.64 percent (line 3) and an exit rate of 37.10 percent (line 6), which means in either case, more than 30 percent of the time, visitors left that page without completing an action (e.g., putting the product in the shopping cart). you can tell because if they had completed the action another page would be visited, e.g., the shopping cart.
mobile usability
with mobile traffic increasing overall, it’s important to measure this metric as well using the search console mobile usability report, which is found in the search console dashboard, rather than in google analytics.
visit search traffic > mobile usability. if mobile visitors experienced any issues they would be listed in this report. if not, you’ll see a message like, “no mobile usability errors detected (be sure to check all site variants).”
visitor lifetime value
this is an interesting metric to review. it provides you with information about each visitor’s experience with your site, along with the revenue potential of every customer who is gained using organic search.
in google analytics, visit the audience > lifetime value (ltv) metric.
in this data view, you’ll find acquisition channel (organic, direct, social, etc.), users, revenue per user (ltv) and revenue (ltv). remember to check the metric and date range at the top of the page.
you can see the cumulative average value per user per the time increment (day). lifetime value is calculated using the cumulative sum of the metric value divided by the total number of users.
tip: if you scroll to the top left of the page, you can change the metric to goal completions per user, pageviews per user, session duration and many other metrics.
conclusion
seo is not an exact science, as i guess you’ve gathered. however, there are many tried-and-true techniques you can use to increase the effectiveness of your site, while escalating your organic search ranking and increasing your marketing efficiencies.
the techniques outlined here, taken independently, will not move the needle on your site’s organic ranking. it’s when you take a series of the steps in succession that you’ll start to see a change.
with that in mind, apply several of the techniques to your content and begin measuring their effectiveness. i will say, without creating conversion goals on the site – with a real value assigned to the content – you’ll not gain the insight desired. it’s invaluable to apply a value metric to content, e.g., blogs = $1, downloads/whitepaper = $5, event registration = $ of the registration, etc. without this metric, you will be missing the most critical piece to the puzzle.
as google and bing continue to adjust their algorithms and artificial intelligence and data collection morphs into more sophisticated data, by starting this process now it will be so much easier to understand what the data is telling you and how you can apply it to your marketing efforts, sales initiatives and lead generation opportunities.