Omar Kattan

Archive for the ‘Measuring Success’ Category

Google has been experimenting with AJAX search results meaning that referal strings from Google will no longer show the keywords typed by a user to find a website. What does this mean for Analytics programmes such as Omniuture, WebTrends et al?

If Google’s experiment becomes reality, Analytics programms mentioned above will no longer be able to provide accurate and/or insightful data to users. 

Why would Google introduce AJAX results?  Three reasons..

1. Better user experience.  AJAX technology allows users to load pages without clicking on a link or refreshing a page. This means that Google users will now be able to view a website without actually visiting it. 

2. If Google manages to maintain users on its site, they are more likely to click on sponsored ads meaning more dosh in G’s pockets.

3. If traditional analytics packages such as Omniture or WebTrends are no longer able to provide accurate data to users, these users will most likely migrate to Google Analytics for this data (unless Google provides an API foir these companies to use)

It is not known whether or not Google will launch AJAX search results and given webmasters’ fury about this news, who knows if they will ever, but it is defenitely one to watch…

It seems that Google could have banned the keyword visibility tool Web Position Gold (owned by WebTrends) from automatically querying its database for natural and paid search positions.  The block seems to have occured on August 1st 2008.

Google specifically states on the webmaster guidelines section of its website that tools of this sort are not allowed and it specifically singles out WebPosition Gold.

Moreover, with the advent of “Personalised Search”, the results from these tools were beggining to display a fairly inacuurate picture.

For companies who want to prove results to their clients, I’ve discussed a few in this blog post about SEO KPIS. 

Here are a few of the discussions about Google’s ban of Web Position Gold:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3716136.htm

http://www.webproworld.com/google-discussion-forum/58243-webposition-google-block.html

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=133156

Scott GoodYear, a representative from WebPosition Gold has joined these discussions and confirmed that there is no official ban on the software but that Google has tweaked its HTML code which casued the previous scraping template to return no results.

This could very well be the case and I personally applaud Scott’s efforts to keep clients aware of the situation.  However I hope that this doesn’t take too long!

Google Analytics is by far the most robust free site side analytics program out there.  Now owned by Google, Google Analytics started out its life as a small analytics company called Urchin.

Google Analytics is used by millions of sites (hobby as well as ecommerce) to measure the amount and quality of traffic to a website. 

Moreover, if configured properly, Google Analytics can also measure predefined KPIs and Goals such as purchases, downloads, subscriptions, thereby showing you which keywords convert to business.

Here are a few Google Analytics tips that I’ve gathered to help you get the most out of the package:

1. Use the filter at the bottom of the keywords list to include and exclude certain keywords.  For instance, you can exclude your own brand name thereby allowing you to see which generic keywords are driving traffic to your site.

2. Use the compare two dates/metrics at the top to be able to see trends across the same variable on two different dates.

3. Exclude your IP address so that your figures are not skewed

4. Configure site search measurement  in order to get valuable data on how users  search  within your site. 

5. Under “Content” use site overlay to see what links on you site are most popular.  This will give you a better idea of what content on your site is appealing to your users and  gives you the confidence to remove or  place “Nofollows” on non popular links.

The above are a few tips for using Google Analytics.  There are many more fantastic features including the ability to export and email reports as well as integrate with Adwords in order to measure the performance of your paid ads.

In a nutshell, if you haven’t used Google Analytics yet, you’re completely missing out on a fantastic free Analytics resource. 

How do you measure the success of your SEO activity?  What KPIs do you look at?  Do you know what KPIs are?  Key performance Indicators and here are a few I use:

SEO KPI 1:  Brand vs Non-Brand Traffic
The percentage of traffic coming from brand keywords versus the traffi coming from non-brand keywords.  Ideally you should aim to have at least 4o% of your traffic coming from non-branded keywords.

SEO KPI 2 – Search Index Saturation
How many pages of your site are indexed by the search engines versus how many pages you actually have. You should aim for at least a 3 to 1 ratio.

SEO KPI 3 – Percentage of Pages Attracting Traffic
How many of your site’s pages are actually attracting traffic?  You should aim to have at least 15-20% of your pages attracting traffic.

SEO KPI 4 – Keywords per Page
How many keywords is each of your pages attracting?  The more the better but you should aim for at least 2 to three keywords per page.

SEO KPI 5 – Unique visitors per keyword
How many unique visitors are each of your keywords attracting? The more the better and it depends on the industry you’re in but obviously you need to aim for the highest traffic/best converting  keywords.

Now that you have a few KPIs to examine, go and measure your SEO success.