SEO Web Analytics - Vital In Evaluating Success, Failure And Implementing Change

If you are a business owner ready to boost sales or conversions online by embarking on a search engine optimisation campaign, make sure your SEO agency provides you with regular SEO web analytics reports. Don't spend money blind without knowing if your campaign is succeeding or failing.

An effective search engine optimiser will provide regular and clear SEO web analytics, highlighting what is working and what is perhaps not working as effectively as it should and will then make recommendations based on these results - so what should you be looking out for?

Using SEO Web Analytics Effectively

SEO reports can be confusing and it's up to the SEO agency or consultant to present them in a manner which is easy to understand - and there are some key things to look out for. Visiting trends will probably be the first important stats presented in a report. This shows how many visitors your website has had in the current month as opposed to the previous months and if your campaign is working, this should be going up.

Watch out for your top referring keywords, as they may surprise you - as much as you research the top keywords for your business, web user behaviour is notoriously hard to pin down. A good SEO campaign adapts and changes direction, and a decision to look at new query terms will often come as a result of the web analytics.

Referring domains are another important part of SEO web analytics, as they tell you where your traffic is coming from. Most will obviously be from search engines and any sister sites but some interesting insights can be found here - for example, if you start to see visitors from websites you are trying to build a link-building relationship with, then you know it's on its way to working.

A great SEO web analytics tool is the click path, highlighting how users are negotiating their way around the website. This can really point out how effective (or not) your site design is - if you see lots of users clicking through many different pages, all to end up one specific page, you know this can be improved upon.

The Million Dollar Question

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, are the conversion rates contained within the SEO web analytics report - are people doing what you want them to do on your site? After all, this is what all of the hard work is for. Are they clicking on the link, filling out the enquiry form, buying your product, etc?

If the SEO web analytics report is indicating no, then changes will need to be put into effect - maybe new keyword phrases reasearched, building new link-bait, implementing a new design, and so on. Your web analytics gives you the power to know what to action and when in what is a constantly evolving science.