SEO SEM and being “Google Analytical” are becoming mainstream – just Popularized by Rapper Notorious Big!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c96LTLlaXew

Notorious Big says “… Become Google Analyticized”

Caveat: Google Analytics is a good tool for what it offers – but extremely limited for advanced analytics. Here’s what Google Analytics can’t do and probably never will:

Can’t segment visitors, pathing, keywordsBy visitor frequency, time spent, how deep into the site they went

What are the “Very Engaged Looking at, doing? And that’s just for starters

Low interest 62.5%

Engaged 9%

Very Engaged 28%

Low engagement 66%

Light engagement 13%

Very Engaged 23%

Low engagement 70%

Light engagement 13%

Very Engaged 17%

Use Web Analytics to Compare Paid Search Traffic vs. Organic for Customer Acquisition

Paid Search

Organic Search

Paid Search can be evaluated by the percentage of new visits (visitors), time spent on site, Pages per Visit and Bounce Rate. Paid Search appears to be delivering a better experience relative to Organic.

But numbers can be deceiving – many more organic search visits vs. paid visits results in more conversions, overall, using Organic Search.

We can look at the landing pages and find out if Advertising is being run well

Paid Search

Organic Search

Paid Search is sending almost all it’s traffic to the homepage of this Art Site – that’s usually not recommended.

Meanwhile, the Organic Search sends 74% of it’s traffic to interior pages of the site – that’s normally good.

First 4 of 19,011 pages

First 4 of 274 pages

While Paid Search can be “controlled” and “targeted”, Organic can’t be targeted as well (which is a good thing and a bad thing).

Paid Search

Organic Search

Keyword Quality – Are we going after the right keywords and is there content answering visitors’ needs (questions)?

Most content doesn’t automatically convert but it’s Important to understand there’s two sets of goals and measurements

1 – Your customer/visitors goals2 – Your goals

Long Tail Traffic answers visitors questions but there’s a lot of long tail traffic.

Visitors have a lot of “questions” – queries containing words such as “buy, bought, sold,show (it’s an art site), acquire, etc, will bring up individual visits – but you can’t optimize yourSite for every single visitor – or can you? Answer: You can, but you have design your site for it and have the content. CMS Platform being used will be crucial. Also, use HitTail.

Different versions of the keyword will be more or less successful – and more often than not – it’s all about Google.

So how do we use this information from Web Analytics to help us design more effective Web Sites?

Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 1Best sites for advertising to obtain New Subscribers to Site’s Newsletter (per year): Depending on the sort order your results will be different

Note: Need to export to Excel or Access and filter data multiple times

Answer: artandauction.com, ltbmedia.com, vanityfair.com, artforum.com,Art.blogging.la, theartlawblog.blogspot.com, uber.com

Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 2 Best locations for attracting “Engaged New Visitors”

Answer: Coudal.com, painting.about.com, the-artists.org, bowieart.com. Hirshorn.si.edu, Saatchi-gallery.co.uk, etc.

Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 3 Best Keywords for attracting “Engaged New Visitors” (Organic and Paid)

Answer: artist, artist gallery, gallery listings, artists, new york galleries, artist directory and new york gallery guide.

Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 4 Best Paid Keywords for attracting “Engaged New Visitors”

Answer: artist, artist gallery, gallery listings, artists and artist directory.

Summary – Methodical approach, using Web Analytics, testing your assumptions and beliefs, can pay off.

Additional Refinements – filter on Geography.

Note: Test your assumptions and refine them till you have a working rule set that is adjusted for the client’s site and audience.

Marshall Sponder

www.Webmetricsguru.com