subject: Monitoring Progress – Some Words about Analytics [print this page] The process of search engine optimization would be extremely abstract if we weren't able to monitor progress. The aim of every publisher and every search engine optimisation company is to increase traffic to a site. Without benchmark figures to begin with, how are you to know what overall progress has been made?
You could simply look at your success rate, it's true. The ultimate goal of search engine optimization is to increase revenue after all, but revenue might go up for any number of reasons. If you're a mail order football shirt company and the world cup is on, you can expect a knock-on increase in sales.
Why analytics?
Analytics are important because SEO is directly concerned with influencing the volume of traffic to a site, and this is a complex science. It doesn't just involve visitors arriving at your homepage. That is by no means the end of the story. As a business you'll want to know which pages might be losing you the most visitors, and which stages of an online application form are the ones where the most users quit, for example. You'll benefit greatly from knowing which search engine optimisation tools are working best for you and which ones might be in need of some attention.
Source
You'll want to know where your visitors are coming from to get a feel for which links are serving your site best. This is where tracking software comes into play. SEO link building is one of the most important factors to consider.
If they're coming from search engine referrals (and we so!) it's very useful to know which search engines they're coming from and through inputting which keywords. Always remember that SEO is not a job that can be done once and forgotten. Your site needs constant maintenance to remain optimal, and this can mean making changes based on information garnered through analytics. You'll want to pay attention to which search engines are looking favorably on your site in terms of search results for other reasons too. Each search engine has its own criteria for who should rank well, and if you're failing with one big one in particular, you'll need to address the reasons why. Analytics gives you the knowledge you need to start addressing problems.
Links
If visitors are being referred from particular sites you'll know who your friends are, so to speak. This can help immensely from a marketing standpoint. You'll be able to target useful sites more and stop spending as much effort on the less useful ones. Marketing is the ultimate aim of all analytics tools and the information you garner through analytics can help in a great many ways.
Best Features
Another thing you'll want information about is which features of your site are popular. You may have had a particular feature designed especially for the site, but without figures you can't be sure how many people are using it. If no one is using it, of course, it needn't be there at all.
Improvement
Analytics give you the means of setting goals and measuring the extent to which they've been achieved or even exceeded. As such, they're vital for search engine optimisation services and those who've had their sites optimized. Knowledge is power, and in this case, through analytics, it's the power to change in order to better provide for customers and ultimately increase popularity and sales.
Some analytics software is free. Google and Yahoo both provide their own services for our benefit and they're very worthwhile. Any good SEO company you employ is likely to use them and many other programs to measure success.
Analytics software usually makes results highly accessible. The benefit of this is that any of the members of a team can discern the effectiveness of methods employed at any time. If it's a joint effort involving a number of aspects, this can be very useful indeed.
In conclusion, web analytics can be seen as the icing on the cake of SEO. It's the SEO tools employed that give real substance to the process of enhancing your website, but for the improvements to be visible and quantifiable, analytics software needs to be employed.
Through measuring results you'll realize how worthwhile it's been employing a company to enhance your search engine optimization. You'll also get information that will help you to continue to improve over time. SEO is always an ongoing, changing process, and analytics software is there to act as your compass.
