May 28, 2009 on 4:22 pm
Filed Under:SEO
One of my favourite’s over at Search Engine Land is Jill Whalen, a gal who’s sentiments echo my own so often that she has been known to come to my rescue in a forum or two when I haven’t communicated my point properly.
She’s done it again, with something that hits very close to home with me in an article titled, "Using Analytics To Measure SEO Success"
It has only just occurred to me that my last post was about another article written by Jill… cue the creepy stalker-esque music and I’ll get back to digging through her garbage. Thanks.
Back to it then, the reason this hits home so much is that I am in exactly the boat she’s writing about. Servicing SME’s that can’t take their eyes off a ranking report long enough to pay any attention to their analytics. That, or the fact that there are just some things that the Googs chooses not to show those of us with free accounts, asking for the world and paying nothing for it.
About a year ago, it came to the point in my business that I was so befuddled by the lack of certain functionality in analytics software that I decided to write my own.
I wanted to know the basics, because my clients want to know the basics, and most of the stuff that I want to know isn’t that different from the stuff that they want to know.
The "W"s:
- I want to know WHO came to my site. IP can tell me where they’re from basically, so that’s what we’ve got to work with there.
- I want to know HOW they got here. What keywords did they search on to get here? Direct links from somewhere else are super too, but that has little to do with my SEO efforts, so I want to know what their search results looked like when they chose to click me.
- I want to know WHEN. Which, when it comes down to it, is really just about how long they spend on each page. Easy as.
- I want to know WHAT they did on my site. I want to know if they cruised my portfolio or if they just went straight to the contact form. I want to know if they read this somewhat dissociative tripe or if they went to the pages and pages of sales and marketing bleah that I’ve got elsewhere on the site.
- And the big one, WHY. This is the tricky bit, that is more than an analytics program can handle. But still, I want to KNOW it, and my software can help.
What’s that? "HOW" has a "W" in it, so shoosh.
So I wrote something I call SEO Success and I’ve been using it on clients’ sites whenever I can. I’m close to unleashing it upon the unsuspecting populace, so if you’re interested, drop me a line and we’ll talk.
Of course, if you’re one of the chosen few already using it. Drop me a line and tell me how I can make it better.
This one has been priceless in helping me with my business, and I bet it can help others too.
Until next time, Have a Good Website.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
SEO Success rocks. I’ve started using it on a new site and I can’t wait to see the hidden gems it uncovers!