4 SEO Metrics for Ad Agency Analytics
4 SEO Metrics for Ad Agency Analytics
Posted on 10/06/2010, by
DMC
There are lots of good reasons to support your website with strong analytics. Even in what is still a very young market, analytics have evolved way past just counting eyeballs. Qualified traffic is the currency of web success. It is where we focus our efforts and those of our customers. In our opinion, all the other web oriented metrics that companies are looking at – registrations, demos, purchases even shares and re-tweets – all originate from qualified traffic.
However, that also means that marketing departments and agencies who would hope to be marketing partners must have the strategic marketing and analytical chops to define what qualified traffic is based on the individual site, capture and decipher the data, as well as have the ability to make and execute recommendations. It’s the analytical part that we are most interested in here. For our organic SEO clients, every month we distribute and review an SEO report that trends for months of traffic data across a broad range of analytical metrics. Instead of sifting through the entire report I have highlighted a few of my favorites below. Of course you can always
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to learn more about our SEO programs and how they integrate with other interactive and marketing communications programs.
Bounce rate
Simple, unbiased and one of the favorite starting points. Essentially, bounce rate measures if visitors come to your homepage and leave without seeing anything else on the site. If you’re bounce rate is high (45%+) then there are a number of potential issues at play. The site could be difficult to navigate, it could fail at helping the visitor identify they belong there or it could just be boring. Bounce rate is a great starting point with clients for beginning to identify who you want coming to your site – AND what action do you want them to take when they get there.
Non-branded organic traffic
Let’s break this down into two parts – non-branded (search results that did not result from the company name) - and organic (URL not typed directly into the search bar, traffic derived from other indirect means like keyword searches for example). In this case, and for our purposes with clients, we look at the total amount of non-branded, organic traffic over a period of one month. In addition, we look at how that monthly traffic compares with the preceding three months. Remember – good SEO is not a sprint. This type of traffic is SEO gold – these are visitors who have come to your site without typing in or searching the company name. They are by their name and nature far more qualified visitors to your site. Obviously, we like to see the number trending up over time. When it does, that means all the other SEO forces (which we won’t go into here) are working in harmony and bringing a client very positive returns.
Organic traffic percentage
In addition to the total amount of organic traffic we also pay close attention to the percentage of overall traffic coming from organic sources. This metric, I will admit, can be viewed a bit as self-serving for the agency/marketing partner. However, watching this trend closely can provide all kinds of analytical insights. Is the money being spent on organic vs. paid search delivering the balance of traffic the client is hoping for? Are there parallel trends to the growth of organic traffic in the conversion metrics discussed earlier? If organic traffic is up and conversions are either flat or declining, that provides a spotlight on areas to fix in the site.
Referrals
Again, this one is a no-brainer. How much traffic comes directly from other sites. We all know how important link building is to the SEO process, but for our team, referrals mean more than that. In an integrated search program, referral traffic is also an excellent way to provide some baseline measurement on the effects of social media campaigns. How successful is Facebook, Twitter, etc. at driving traffic away from the social media platform and to the client site? In addition, how does referral traffic compare with regular traffic? Just looking at some basics – # of pages visited, length of stay and, of course, bounce rate.
A strong SEO program can have dramatic affects on the overall performance of a client’s website and of course, any marketing communications programs tied to web conversions/qualification.
