In today’s age, modernizing your digital marketing strategy and incorporating Search Engine Optimization (SEO) into your framework is necessary to stay relevant. With everyone’s attention now pointed towards the online world, tapping into that large audience base requires an even stronger online presence.
The competitiveness of the online market has found it necessary for a business to employ SEO services to remain ahead of the competition. While this may seem to only affect your Google Rankings, the bump in search results positioning increases your web traffic—consequently upping your conversion rate as well.
While digital marketing agencies swear to the effectiveness of their SEO services, having a system to oversee their progress is a great benefit—which is where Google Analytics comes in handy. To help assure its full efficiency, here are five Google Analytics tips that will help analyze the efficiency of your SEO services.
Tip # 1. Create a Google Analytics SEO Dashboard
The most immediate and most effective step to take, before anything, is to create a customized SEO dashboard of information. Google Analytics’ strength lies in its capacity for churning out data—which, if pointed in the right direction, can lead you to an easier analysis of almost anything related to your website’s digital marketing campaign.
Google Analytics has a built-in customizable dashboard interface, meaning you can customize it to easily show the data you need reporting. By providing an easier way to see all the data required, you won’t only get to properly keep track of your SEO service’s progress, but you can also guide it towards something more worthwhile in the long run. With concrete data on your side, you are assured that your current trajectory is the correct one.
While the fundamentals of the dashboard may seem easy, laying it out for the best and easiest view can be quite complicated and confusing. For this reason, you may have to involve your digital marketing service provider in the development of your dashboard—as information is only as useful as how it can be interpreted.
Tip # 2. Review your organic search traffic
The biggest effect of utilizing the services of an SEO specialist lies in the boost in organic traffic. Organic traffic is defined as the volume of web visitors that found your website through unpaid—or “organic”—means. Through the correct use of keyword research and engaging content merged with your business’ industry expertise, then your online presence is more easily found by potential customers.
Organic traffic, however, is merely a facet of your total overall traffic—which is why a dip in your total traffic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the fault of your SEO team. A simple utilization of Google Analytics can point you in the right direction of what actually dragged your total overall traffic down.
To do so, simply enter the “Acquisition” page, go into the “All Traffic” portion, and under “Channels,” select the “Channel Grouping report.” By utilizing this tool, you will see your traffic statistics segregated by channel. Under this report, you can also determine the top landing pages of search traffic, which keywords are going strong, and so much more information.
Tip # 3. Measuring SEO “Quality”
An increase in your organic website traffic is always a decent measure of your SEO service’s working capacity, however, it is not the only way to properly measure their overall efficiency. By taking stock of the total conversion brought by each search channel allows you to somehow designate a concrete indicator of “quality” for your SEO traffic.
One way to do so would involve using the Assisted Conversions report—which can be found under the “Multi-Channel Funnels” in the “Conversions” page. Once there, set the date range to “Last Month” and compare the data to that indicated in the “Previous Period.” Through this, you’ll have a more-or-less good indicator of your overall conversions brought by search traffic.
If, for example, your business’s conversions dipped but the overall web traffic remained the same, then your SEO traffic “quality” is leaning towards the poor end. In converse, however, an increase in conversions patterned with traffic increase is an indicator of good “quality” SEO traffic.
Tip # 4. Ruling out slow web page speed
One of the most basic markers of good web design is fast loading speed. More than just having a bare-bones website, loading speeds are affected by image and file sizes as well as codes. Simpler, shorter codes that go into the development of your website make for shorter load times—which is why a good web developer would plan ahead and code it the shortest and most simple strings possible.
While this may not seem directly relevant to your web traffic, slow loading web pages have been known to cause many visitors to bounce—a phenomenon where a web visitor enters your site, but immediately leaves due to a certain factor regarding your web page. By optimizing your loading speed, this reduces the number of visitors that bounce, thereby increasing the chances a conversion is made.
There are many tools online that can measure your website’s overall speed and average response times. Slower websites that have become optimized to load faster should notice an increase in web traffic—which is why ruling out slow loading times as soon as possible is necessary for the best performance of your website.
Tip # 5. Utilize Google Ads and keyword price points
Another way to measure the efficiency of the SEO service you’ve hired is to assign monetary values to keywords and compare how they’re doing with the help of your hired team. To do so, simply use your Google Ads account to get the average value of the keywords that drive traffic into your website if purchased from that platform. By multiplying that value to the number of click-throughs as indicated in your Google Analytics, you can get an average organic traffic value of each keyword.
Through this, you can more or less determine whether your investment in the SEO service was worth your money—as well as whether your current SEO plan is on the right track. By tracking the total value, you can better appreciate the value of your SEO service.
Conclusion
By utilizing Google Analytics, you can determine the efficacy of your chosen SEO service provider for your business. Although their expertise is definitely a benefit for your business, if they can’t deliver the proper results, then you’ll have to make some adjustments for a better allocation of your digital marketing budget.
Are you looking for a digital marketing agency in St. Louis, Missouri that utilizes strategic marketing solutions to improve your SEO campaign? Get in touch with us and let us streamline your SEO efforts to get your business to the top.