Use Google Analytics To Determine Your ROI
In search engine optimization, measurement is very important to determine whether or not your online marketing strategy is successful. Only by measuring current success, you can improve your SEO techniques and tactics. Many SEO experts make a mistake when they focus only on keyword rankings. High keyword ranking means you’ll get more traffic to your website, but besides that, there are so many other important things you should work on and try to improve. As a digital marketer, you must go beyond keyword ranking and truly understand how organic search brings profit to a certain business. One of the ways to understand this is to constantly doubt your techniques, measure everything you can and always work on improving your current digital marketing strategy. One of the best tools for measuring SEO is Google Analytics. This tool is critical for determining your success and can be a great indicator whether or not you need to change your search engine optimization strategy.
Before going on, it is very important to point out that every website and business is unique and has different metrics you should pay attention to. However, there are some universal ways you can use Google Analytics to measure the success of your SEO strategy.
Measuring the Quality of SEO Traffic
Start by checking your overall website traffic and noticing possible declines. To look at only organic search traffic, open your channel grouping report and click on organic search channel to get a more detailed report on organic traffic metrics. This report is crucial for making your next move because it helps you determine things such as the top landing pages for search traffic, keywords that drive the most traffic, which search engines send the most traffic and so on. Quality in SEO is not a subjective category. You can precisely measure the quality of any traffic source. To do this, use the Assisted Conversions report and set the dates range to last month and previous period. This way you can see a month to month juxtaposition of conversions directly from search. This report can be used to determine an improvement or a decline in conversions from search traffic. For example, if you notice a drop in conversion from search, but you have overall steady search traffic, the traffic that comes from search is not of a very high quality. By determining your problem, you can focus on improving your keyword phrases, content and so on until you see an improvement in conversions from search traffic.
If you are looking for a more traditional way to understand the value of your SEO strategy, you can assign a dollar value to your organic traffic results. This way, besides measuring your traffic, visibility, and conversions in a unique way, you can find out how much your keywords would cost if bought in a Google AdWords campaign. This could also be an interesting way to show your clients how much dollars is your digital marketing campaign saving them on the traffic they would otherwise have to pay for, usually through PPC campaigns.
Optimize Loading Page Times
Unfortunately, many SEO experts overlook optimizing their page load times. Slow loading pages will not only negatively affect the user experience but also your search engine rankings. If you are investing a lot of time and money in keyword rankings and content, don’t blow your entire strategy by having a slow loading website. Google Analytics will not only help you recognize these slow loading pages but also measure their impact on conversion rates. This tool can precisely measure and show you the average load time of your website as well as the average exit percentage on a page. Exit percentage will also show you where the visitor exactly leaves the site. If you have a high exit percentage, try improving your load times and running the same report to compare it to the old data. If you gained additional search traffic, you have done the right thing.
The Importance of Creating Your Own SEO Dashboard
If a client is skeptical about your SEO strategy, create your SEO dashboard and show him/her the results. Laymen will have a hard time understand the complex metrics of Google Analytics, but by using bar graphs, pie charts and other forms of measurement, you will be able to present to your client all the data you have, but in a simple and less intimidating way. Have in mind that if clients don’t understand why they are paying for something, they will sooner all later stop paying you. You have a built-in dashboard that will serve you perfectly to present all your Google Analytics and SEO data very fast and explain your clients everything they need to know. A dashboard basically consists of series of widget that will allow you to easily and quickly pull an individual report, and share it or print it.
All digital marketers have a hard time to efficiently articulate the value of their SEO strategy. By properly using Google Analytics, you can not only measure but also prove the value and success of your search engine optimization strategy.
Understanding Google’s Mobile First Index For Your Website
Many search engine professionals still believe that the most important aspect of optimization is fixing and correcting issues related to the desktop version of a website. In July of 2018, Google will begin reviewing your website first from a mobile standpoint, and then review the desktop version. The reason for this is because more than half of all searches are done on a mobile device or tablet compared to desktop, and Google must take this into account. Here is a great article by mobile insights what shows the trend and the amount of time people are spending on mobile as well as viewing habits.
You want to learn about optimizing your site for mobile with services such as AMP, and then reviewing your ROI on both desktop and mobile. You may be surprised at the enormous potential that is awaiting for those visitors checking you out on cellular and mobile devices. If you would like one of our professionals to review your site, contact the Hit Me SEO office today and schedule an appointment.