Web Analytics and SEO

A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO

One of the final tasks that small business owners need to complete before launching a new company website or e-commerce business is to ensure that an adequate web analytics solution is set-up. So, in this stage of my guide, I will look at the analytics options available, the tasks to set when monitoring website activity and ways to use web analytics data to improve your performance in the search engines. This article follows on from Part Eleven: Competitor Benchmarking. To go back to the start of my guide click here.

Web Analytics for Small Business

Installing a web analytics solution on your site is crucial for numerous reasons. You need to be able to track not only the volume of visitors your site receives but also other crucial metrics and information such as how long your visitors spend on your site, what key-phrases people use to find you, where your visitors come from (for example, via Google referrals or third party websites) and which of your site pages appear to be most successful at converting visits into sales or enquiries. Bigger businesses require more complex solutions to monitor their site activity. For sites with 100,000+ visitors per year, paid solutions such as Coremetrics or Webtrends are recommended. For many small businesses an investment in a paid solution is not essential or necessary. However, installing a web analytics solution of some sort is an absolute must. Two of the most popular free options are Google Analytics and Statcounter (although the latter is only free for a “basic” level of service). Both of these analytics tools are essential for equipping small business owners with the information necessary to improve SEO performance.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is easy to install, especially if you use a Content Management System such as WordPress (where you can utilise a plug-in such as this one to add the tracking code to all your web pages). Once Google Analytics is installed and you have started to experience site traffic you need monitor the following:

• Your Dashboard. This gives you an overview of key metrics such as unique visits, page views, pages per visit, bounce rate, average time spent on your site and percentage of new visits. Pay close attention to your site average bounce rate. If it’s over 60% this suggests that there is a serious problem with either your site content and its relevancy or your site design and navigation. This is not good for your long-term SEO! You should aim to keep your bounce rate under 40%. Under 30% and you’re in a good place.
• Monitor Your Visitors Overview. This panel offers technical profile data such as which browsers people use to view your site. If there is a particularly high bounce rate associated with a certain browser, run some tests to find out if that browser is displaying your site correctly. Poorly displayed sites will lead to higher bounce rates so you need to ensure cross-browser consistency.
• Monitor Your Traffic Sources Overview. This panel is the most useful for viewing a snapshot of your SEO performance. Are you receiving any traffic for the target key-phrases you are optimising your site for? If not, why not? If you are, which pages are your visitors landing on, which pages do they go onto view and how long are they spending on your site? Use Google Analytics to explore these questions and figure out ways to improve your visitors’ experience and journey through your site. For example, if you find a particular landing page has a high bounce rate, edit that page to include links to more enticing related content within your site. Look at improving the visual impact of your web pages or use more “call to actions” to engage your visitors and encourage them to participate with you or get in touch.
• Monitor Your Content Overview. This panel offers a snapshot of your best performing web pages. Use this information to assess why certain pages appear to be more successful than others. Consider the position, accessibility and importance of certain web pages for improving your conversion ratio. Pay close attention to the bounce rate of individual pages (not just your site average). Individual pages with very high bounce rates indicate that work must be done to improve their performance.
• Set-up Goals. This is possibly the most important analytics tool for monitoring your SEO process. Discover which key-phrase referrals lead to subscriptions, online purchases or enquiries via your contact form. Monitor the journey your visitors make and use this data to streamline that process.
• Use your data to improve on performance. If you discover that you rank well for a particular key-phrase, make sure you optimise your pages to exploit other, similar key-phrases within the same niche. A large proportion of your site traffic in the long-term will originate from long-tail or local search phrases, so you need to ensure that your content maximises this potential.

Web Analytics and SEO Checklist

• Install Google Analytics or your prefered solution before your site launch
• Monitor your bounce rate closely
• Monitor your landing page performance and adjust where necessary
• Make sure your pages entice visitors to look at deeper content on your site
• Use the data you receive over time to exploit other SEO opportunities

Part Thirteen

In part thirteen I will cover the topic of sitemaps and how installing a sitemap improves your website’s chances of indexation. Click here to go to part thirteen.