Be Curious about your Data: Analytics, SEO Audits, and You
Recently, Apis Productions hosted a webinar where I discussed the benefits of using data about your website visitors to enhance your brand, your client retention, and your bottom line. The power behind the data provided by Analytics software such as Google, Lucky Orange, and SEMrush is, on its own, a static power. To make it a truly dynamic power, we must use the insights gleaned from these programs to take actionable steps toward improving the overall User Experience of our brand, our offering, and our website. In this article, I want to discuss the importance of this data, how to access it, and ideas on how to use it to your best advantage.
Website Analytics: The What, The Where, and the Why
You have most likely heard of Google Analytics. It is a free program that tracks a number of data points about your website’s daily visitors. Everything from which pages they visited, which buttons they pressed, how long they stayed, and more are recorded by Google and available for you to analyze. Incidentally, Google is upgrading its analytics and you will want to be sure to upgrade along with them if you want to keep your data. Let Apis know if you would like us to perform that upgrade for you by filling out this short form. In the quest for Search Engine Optimization, Google Analytics is often the first adventure a website owner takes. It is not, however, the only adventure.
Analytics has many heroes
Analytics comes in many shapes and sizes depending on what question you are trying to answer. From basic data sets provided by Google to more advanced heat mapping software showing you precise mouse movements from visitors on each page of your site. All data that is fit to be analyzed falls under the purview of analytics. For example, a simple poll on your website that asks your users about their thoughts on whether or not your website is easy to use can be a valuable piece of real-world analytics data.
If you care about your client, you should care about your data
Ultimately, the reason your data is important is because your customer is important. Understanding their experience of your digital brand helps you better serve their needs, expose unseen opportunities in your relationship with them, and out-compete your peers with a more cohesive offering.
The power of an SEO audit and why you should want one
An SEO audit is a process where an expert analyzes your website for potential changes that need to be made in order to improve the overall visibility of your site on search engines. The goal of an audit is to identify weaknesses in the current design of your website that could negatively impact its ranking on Google, Bing, or other search engines. This includes elements like content quality, keyword density, page loading speed, backlinks, meta tags, etc. These elements all help determine how well your webpages rank on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Additionally, an audit can uncover any issues with duplicate content or broken links which can be addressed for better visibility. There is an inherent entropic effect that occurs over time with any website. Pages that no longer work, links that go nowhere, and files that are orphaned in the system. Among other things, an SEO audit will excavate these issues and bring them to the surface to be dealt with properly.
What Can You Learn from an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit will give you a detailed overview of how well your website is performing from an organic search standpoint. It can provide valuable insights into how users interact with your site and which areas need more attention. Additionally, it’s a great way to find out if there are any technical problems that could be preventing you from gaining more traffic or achieving higher rankings on SERPs. An audit will also allow you to benchmark your current performance against competitors so you can better understand where you stand in relation to them. Finally, it can give you specific recommendations on what improvements should be made in order to increase visibility and drive more traffic as well as conversions. The end result is a series of reports and actionable steps that can be taken to dramatically improve the health of your website.
Metrics to care about: The Core 4
Apis Productions is your partner when it comes to your digital footprint. We are always happy to consult our clients on how to analyze their data. We understand how overwhelming Analytics can be, especially if it is new to you. To simplify things, I feel the best place to start is to answer 4 basic questions.
- How many people are visiting?
- Where are your visitors coming from?
- What pages are they reading?
- What actions are they taking?
Focussing on these four data points can tell you a lot about your website!
- Which pages are popular?
- Which areas of your site are people missing?
- Are your calls to action being ignored?
- Are your gaining users over time?
This is invaluable information and once you know it, you can’t “un-know” it. It practically demands action. These answers allow you to double down on your success, improve your site’s areas of weakness, and hone the message of your offering in a meaningful way.
Tying it all together: Pollinate your data
I could write pages upon pages about the nuanced data that you get from analytics and I plan to dive deeper into each facet in upcoming blog posts to fully flesh out the importance of every data point. For now, however, I leave you with this. If you are curious about your clients then you must be curious about your data. Your goal as a business owner is to create a strong connection with your customers. A trusting relationship that generates revenue for both of you. The richer your understanding of their experience with your company, the richer your company will become. These are, practically, laws of nature.
I encourage you to reach out and learn how Apis can help you enrich these relationships through marketing strategies, SEO audits, analytics interpretation, and service campaigns. We are your partner and our goal is to keep you ahead of the game.
