This guide will introduce you to SEO analytics and help you become more familiar with optimization efforts. You'll discover that SEO analytics is more than simply data; it's data and ecosystem. Consider data to be words, and the ecosystem a combining material that helps to make sense of those words. Learn how to interpret SEO statistics and how to make your marketing efforts more effective.
Feb 11 2020 ● 15 min read
SEO analytics is defined as a method of collecting and analyzing your data to gain a better understanding of your website's organic performance. An effective SEO analysis helps identifying key areas to focus on when optimizing your site for search engines. To master SEO analytics and report on SEO data, use tools like Google Analytics or Google Search Console.
A standard definition of an SEO content audit - the process of evaluating current content on your website in order to determine how you can get more high-quality traffic to each page. An SEO content audit also helps to identify areas for improvement to increase conversions.
Auditing content will provide you with information on which blogs/e-shops and pages:
A site audit is one of the most comprehensive reports evaluating the overall performance of a website. It combines all the pages' to provide an overall SEO health score.
Improve your site's performance by implementing an SEO audit into your SEO strategy and benefit from:
Off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, refers to actions taken outside of your website to impact the rankings within SERPs.
This is where you'd analyze:
To have a strong backlink profile, there are even more things that an SEO specialist should consider:
In other words, backlink profile analysis shows the aggregate quality of backlinks your website has managed to acquire over time. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush have their own proprietary way of measuring the overall backlink quality of pages using Domain Rating and Domain Authority.
On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the application of SEO best practices to the content you create in the hopes of improving its ranking in search results. On-page SEO analyzes:
But the list doesn’t stop here. As described in this on-page optimization checklist from GOTCHSEO, other factors can influence your ranking in Google, so make sure you identify the ones relevant to your site.
On-page SEO tools data analysis benefits specialists by providing data that identifies areas for improvement. This data can then be used to try:
It can also provide data on the audience of your website, particularly location data, that can help with decision-making on how to expand the site. If your analytics determine a potential audience in a region that speaks a certain language, it might be worth investing in SEO translation to create well-optimized multilingual content.
Technical SEO is a method in which the goal is to ensure that the site meets the technical benchmarks of current search engine standards. Furthermore, technical SEO analysis aids in the improvement of organic rankings. Here are some of those benchmarks:
This is critical because, once again, search engines like Google recognize the importance of security and, as a result, rank websites with HTTPS higher.
To conduct a perfect and thorough SEO data analysis, follow these 7 crucial measures.
"Two seconds is the threshold for eCommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second". According to research, even a one-second improvement can increase online revenue by 7%. Not only that but the negative side of slow loading time could be increased bounce rate and decreased satisfaction with your UX and UI.
As you want your visitors to enjoy 'their stay' on your website, you should check your page speed with, for example, Google PageSpeed Insights. After doing that, try to fix the areas that slow your website down. Usually, to improve the website loading speed, the advice is to:
- Enable caching.
This means that a visitor's browser downloads your website's resources (e.g. JavaScript files or images). Doing that is critical to speeding up return visits;
- Minimize HTTP requests.
If you get more than 50 HTTP requests, you need to focus on reducing this number. Deleting unnecessary images and reducing image size would be the very first things to do.
- Choose, if needed change, the hosting option.
Consider web hosting services that you are currently using. Maybe there is a business offering a better-optimized web with faster load speed.
- Compress files.
Compressing files reduces data transmission time. Use youcompress and compress images, videos, and any doc.
Interesting insight: 3rd party code like GTM and Hotjar could potentially slow down the performance of your website. This is due to the extensive list of tags that marketers use on their websites to track and assess user behavior. Make sure you use tags only on the most necessary pages, pause tags that aren’t in use, and remove the ones that delay the scroll.
SEO visibility on Google is defined by Searchmetrics as a measure of how visible a site is in organic search results when queries are entered into search engines on desktop computers.
This visibility gives an insight into:
Here is a website where you can check your visibility. It will inform you of your website's visibility on mobile and desktop devices. Alternatively, you can get valuable and actionable search visibility insights for the specific region and time period by performing a Google Ranking Check with SE Ranking.
Image optimization influences the way search engines calculate your site rank. To make sure your SEO efforts are successful, back them up by:
Nick, the CEO of DataforSEO, discusses his thoughts on large media files:
"One thing I noticed on a lot of websites are huge media files that slow it down significantly. Businesses want to show high-resolution images which is perfectly fine. However, if those aren’t optimized for SEO, they can create huge issues. Some websites even crash because of the inappropriate size. Videos fall in this category as well. They make it almost impossible to scroll on the website if they take too long to load".
To analyze your URL, Google has provided a free inspection tool that includes information such as:
Auditing website content provides a chance to rank higher than before. You want to stay relevant and up-to-date with your content if one of the goals is to be more visible and increase CTR.
Here are 4 frequently used steps in a website content analysis:
Mike Lowe, Founder & CEO of Growthsaloon.com shared his insights about keywords:
" Many SEOs go back and forth on this one. But I've found it's better to try to rank high for 1 keyword rather than try to rank decently for multiple keywords. If you match your H1 and your Page Title, Google can better understand what your page is about. My motto is that it's better to rank Top 10, Top 3, or #1 Overall for 1 keyword - instead of ranking on Page 2 and beyond for multiple keywords".
3. Meta description. Make sure your description is within the character limit and has a keyword. Here is a SERP Snippet Optimization Tool that allows you to write meta descriptions and titles that fit the word limit;
4. Secondary keywords. These are usually similar to the primary keywords, yet they play a supporting role. Add secondary keywords by addressing the nuances and subtopics about the related primary keywords that the user is interested in. This will demonstrate to Google that you're a professional who understands things and user intent.
Look at the backlinks your content pieces have. See if any of them are spammy and compare the backlink numbers with your competitors. Here is a tool to do that serpstat. You ideally want to have as many high authority backlinks as possible. That means links from high-quality websites that have good SEO performance, and are relevant to your niche.
As an expert SEO puts it:
I like to look at a couple of things when assessing a potential backlink. First, the usual—organic traffic and Domain Rating. I tend to aim at domains with rising traffic of at least 5,000 and a DR of at least 40. Next, I take a quick look at the cache date on the desired article. It tells me whether that particular piece has been recently crawled, which is a signal that Google likes that URL. If you can easily buy a link on said domain, it’s a no-go for me. Websites that don’t have any specific topical range are also weak in my mind. Finally, using the site: command on Google, I check whether the site has any risky content such as casinos or essay writing.
Milosz Krasiński, International SEO Consultant, Speaker, and Blogger.
Internal links refer to the links that go from one page to another within the same domain. In other words, it's when you put one blog's link on another blog. To add, internal links build a site structure to help Google better assess what the content is about and how your whole website relates to various topics. Investigating internal links will provide a smoother user experience for visitors.
Consider a user who visits your blog and clicks on one of the links only to discover that the link is broken or that the material is no longer available. You should go over your links and eliminate any that don't serve a function if you want to reduce these flaws and give your site a more professional appearance and improve user experience.
SEO metrics are data sets or signs that should be tracked and monitored to maintain a high-performing and optimized website. This is one of the most extensive and detailed SEO metrics lists you'll find online:
If you connect your Google Analytics account with Whatagraph, you'll find your organic search traffic metrics in one comprehensive report or dashboard;
Now let's talk about the tools you could use to perfect your SEO analyses.
Whatagraph is a tool that allows marketers to track campaign results across several platforms. Build detailed SEO reports and let data insights lead the way. Using our automated SEO reporting tool, you can assess the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts. Whatagraph connects with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, and Ahrefs, among other SEO tools. Our SEO reporting software allows you to track any of the already mentioned metrics and visually present them so that you can immediately learn about your website performance.
Whatagraph's features assist marketers to spot patterns in how visitors interact with their website. Those features include:
Google Analytics is a web analytics platform that offers basic analytical tools and statistics for search engine optimization (SEO). They use page tags to collect user data from each viewer.
A JavaScript page tag is inserted into the Google Analytics tracking code of each page. This tag collects data from each visitor's web browser and sends it to one of Google's data collection servers. Google Analytics then generates customizable reports to track and visualize data such as:
Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free service that allows you to manage and troubleshoot the appearance of your website in search results. It can be used to detect and resolve technical faults, submit sitemaps, and view backlinks.
Bing's Webmaster Tools is a useful tool that allows website owners to keep track of their site's status in Bing's search results. It provides search data like:
Ahrefs is an SEO software suite that contains tools for link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site audits. With Ahrefs acc:
Ahrefs features the largest backlink index of any tool on the market. You may use this tool to monitor your competitors' SEO methods, backlinks, keywords, and other factors. If you're on a budget though, there are some alternatives to Ahrefs which perform a similar function at a lower price.
Whatagraph provides a variety of template and widget options to assist you in quickly creating a custom SEO dashboard or report. They’ll be as detailed or as brief as you want them to be; either way, they’ll be equally visually appealing and easy-to-understand.
One of the most popular SEO dashboards is the SEO White Label Dashboard. Specialists would create this dashboard to view: keyword rankings, top-performing pages, CTR, and other metrics to demonstrate the success of your SEO efforts.
SEO White Label Dashboard assesses:
If there was a need to compare website SEO results to the objectives, a Google Analytics SEO report would come in handy. Whatagraph can be connected to a Google Analytics account to allow for simple tracking of KPI progress. One of Whatagraph's features, 'goal widgets', lets specialists easily track the success of their SEO objectives. They can even set a timeframe for achieving those goals.
Sometimes SEO specialists need access to a bit more information. Whether it is to find data patterns or understand current tendencies. A comprehensive SEO reporting dashboard connects to the most popular platforms, such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics; or SEMrush, and provides access to all of the key SEO insights and metrics in one place.
Lastly, we have to mention Keyword Ranking Reports. You wouldn’t find a single SEO specialist that wouldn’t need one! Start tracking and filtering targeted keyword rankings to identify top keywords and make informed content creation decisions.
Whatagraph’s Keyword Ranking Reports automatically pull up-to-date insights and can even schedule them to be sent out at your convenience - daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. Create and distribute comprehensive performance reports in a fraction of the time.
One of the most advantageous aspects of running an SEO campaign is that you will generate a large amount of data to work with in the future. This data will enable you to make data-driven decisions and develop better strategies.
To take advantage of this data and create successful SEO roadmaps you need an analytics tool. Sign up for a free 7-day trial of Whatagraph and start generating SEO reports that are most valuable to you.
Published on Feb 11 2020
WRITTEN BY
Dominyka VaičiūnaitėDominyka is a copywriter at Whatagraph with a background in product marketing and customer success. Her degree in Mass Communications/Media Studies helps her to use simple words to explain complex ideas. In addition to adding value to our landing pages, you can find her name behind numerous product releases, in-app notifications, and guides in our help center.
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