Mastering Search Analytics by Chaters, Brent -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Mastering Search Analytics

SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly Preface

Audience

Why Measuring Search Is Important

Assumptions This Book Makes Contents of This Book Conventions Used in This Book Using Code Examples Safari® Books Online How to Contact Us Acknowledgments

1. Introduction to Search Analytics

How Is Search Data Different from Clickstream Data? Who Are You Optimizing For? What Are Others Trying to Measure? What Do Companies Most Want to Measure? What Challenges Do Companies Face? Business Objectives What Auditing Tools Should I Be Using?

Website Analytics Link Tracking Page Authority Ranking Position Keyword Search Volume and Competition Social Links and Social Noise Keyword Volume or Keyword Density on Page Mobile and Geographic Traffic Estimations Competitor Insights Multiuse Tools and Sites Spreadsheets

An Explanation of Macro, Micro, Value, and Action Metrics Presenting Search Analytics—Who’s Your Audience? Setting Expectations Establishing What You Will Track

What Website or Websites Do You Want to Monitor? What Keywords Do You Want to Track? What Keywords Are Considered Branded Terms? What Keywords Are Considered Nonbranded Terms?

Concluding Thoughts

2. Establishing ROI

ROI—The Universal Metric

Capturing Actual ROI Capturing Estimated ROI Presenting ROI Data Why Search Matters to Sales Online and Offline The Problem of Only Capturing ROI

Interpreting Data and Studies to Build a Case

Where Do People Click in the Search Results?

Universal search result click patterns Paid search result CTRs Comparing CTRs across all types of search

What’s the Average Spend of SEO and Paid Search? What’s a Visit Worth? An Example of Calculating Values Quickly Identifying Bad Investments

Paid Search and ROI

How to Estimate ROI for Paid Search How to Capture and Track ROI for Paid Search Conversion Rates by Keyword

SEO and ROI

How to Estimate ROI for SEO Accounting for the Butterfly Effect in Your SEO

Capturing ROI for Site Search Tracking Offline Sales Concluding Thoughts

3. Tracking and Optimizing SEO and Paid Search Traffic

Tracking Visitors and Segmenting Traffic from Search

Segmenting and Tracking Offline Transactions Using Campaign Segmentation Data

Segmenting programs by actions

Tracking Pathing Through the Site

High Bounce Rates Low Bounce, High Site Search Low Bounce, High Pathing Exit Using Pathing and Bounce Data

Landing Page Optimization

A/B and Multivariate Testing

A/B testing in a nutshell Multivariate testing in a nutshell

Running a Multivariate Test How Testing Improves Your Search Campaigns

Measuring Engagement

Example 1 of Engagement Example 2 of Engagement Engagement and Search Campaigns

All Traffic Is Not Created Equal Volume of Traffic Versus Number of Conversions Traffic from Search Engines: Not All Engines Are Created Equal Seasonality and Traffic Is There Value in CTR? Capturing Traffic Volume Based on Positioning Tracking Mobile Traffic—SEO Versus Paid Search Tracking International Searches and Linguistics Optimizing Conversion Rates for SEO and Paid Search Concluding Thoughts

4. Tracking Words—SEO and Paid Search

Tracking SEO Keywords

Developing Keyword Clusters and Finding the Short Head and Long Tail Segmenting Keywords in Clusters Keyword Research for New Opportunities How Are People Finding Me Today?

Tracking Paid Search Keywords

Broad Match Phrase Match Exact Match Negative Keywords Tracking Broad Match Words Tracking Top-Performing Words and Underperforming Words Tracking Paid Search Quality Score

Seasonality and Words Concluding Thoughts

5. Coordinating SEO and Paid Search

Monitoring CTR from Paid Search and Applying Your Findings to SEO A/B and Multivariate Testing—Applying Insights from the Paid Search Page to SEO Testing Titles and Descriptions in Paid Search Finding Your Gaps and Plugging Them with SEO or Paid Search Running SEO and Paid Search Together When 1 + 1 = 3, and When It Doesn’t Concluding Thoughts

6. Site Search Analytics

Site Search as Navigation Establishing Your Site Search KPIs

Capturing Terms with High Exits Capturing Secondary Searches Capturing Pages with High Searches Capturing Pages with High or Low Success Rates Tracking Special Campaigns Tracking Spider Volume

What Is the Value of Your Site Search? CRO for Site Search

Search and Refinement Language Use Depth of Search Repetition of Search Average Ranking Clicked

Tracking Trends Site Search Seasonality Concluding Thoughts

7. Correlating SEO/Paid Search and Site Search

Pulling Terms from Site Search for SEO/Paid Search Applying Site Search Patterns to SEO/Paid Search Site Search—Capturing and Using the Second Term Testing Paid Search Pages on Site Search First Pulling Terms from SEO/Paid Search to Improve Site Search Testing the Effects of Optimization on Site Search and SEO Concluding Thoughts

8. Competitor Research and Competitor Tracking

Tracking Share of Voice

Refining Share of Voice

Tracking Against Competitors Capturing Competitors’ Keywords

Mining Metadata Mining Links Mining Footers

Capitalizing on User Behavior Tracking Competitors’ Branded Keywords Capitalizing on Competitor Spikes and Marketing Tracking the Effectiveness of Your Competitors’ Marketing Through Metrics Brand Conquesting Concluding Thoughts

9. Tracking Off-Site Trends

Analyze: Explaining the Bumps and Spikes Auditing General Trends Measuring Off-Site Link Diversity

Webmaster Tools—What It Can Tell You

The Site Keyword Report The Links to Your Site Report The Most Linked Pages Report

Tracking Neighborhoods Tracking Diversity of Links Tracking Domain Rank and Page Rank Tracking External Campaigns (TV, Radio, Print) Tracking Social Volume and Social Media Tracking Changes in the SERP to Improve Clicks Concluding Thoughts

10. Tracking Mobile Search

Do Desktop and Mobile Users Search the Same Way?

Why Is This Important? Answering the Questions

How Important Is Geography for Mobile Searchers? Do Mobile Searchers Return More or Less Frequently?

Are Mobile Users as Site-Loyal as Desktop Users? Do Mobile Users Click Through Content at the Same Rate as Desktop Users?

Tracking Paid Search on Mobile Devices Does Device Type Matter? Do Mobile Users Convert Better than Desktop Users? Concluding Thoughts

11. Social Media and Search

Social Media’s Impact Social Personalization Measuring Facebook Measuring Twitter Measuring +1 Concluding Thoughts

12. Webmaster Tools—Data Direct from the Engines

The Basics Google Webmaster Tools

Messages Sitemaps Crawler Access Settings Search Queries Links to Your Site Keywords Internal Links Crawl Errors Crawl Stats HTML Suggestions Fetch as Googlebot Site Performance Video Sitemaps

Bing Webmaster Tools

Dashboard Crawl Index Traffic Index Explorer

Comparing Bing and Google Concluding Thoughts

13. An SEO Audit (On-Page Factors)

Automating Issue Auditing How to Audit a Page for SEO Elements

Section 508, Applying to SEO Audits HTML to Look For

Auditing a Page for Engagement Tracking Performance Monitoring: The Speed of Your Pages

Make Fewer HTTP Requests Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) Avoid Empty src or href Add Expires Headers Put CSS at Top Put JavaScript at Bottom Avoid CSS Expressions Make JavaScript and CSS External Reduce DNS Lookups Minify JavaScript and CSS Avoid URL Redirects Remove Duplicate JavaScript and CSS Configure Entity Tags (ETags) Make AJAX Cacheable Use GET for AJAX Requests Reduce the Number of DOM Elements Avoid HTTP 404 (Not Found) Errors Reduce Cookie Size Use Cookie-Free Domains Avoid AlphaImageLoader Filter Do Not Scale Images in HTML Make Favicon Small and Cacheable

Detecting Template Issues Versus Page Issues Auditing a Page for Keywords Auditing a Page for Placement in Your Site’s Information Architecture Finding the Bad Stuff—404s, 302s, Multiple 301s, and More

Dealing with Flash Dealing with AJAX Detecting Duplicate Content

Concluding Thoughts

14. Dashboards and Reports

Know Your Audience Understand Why Data Is Important to You

Who Is This Data About? What Does This Data Tell Us? When Did These Changes Occur? Where on Your Site Was the Impact Felt? Why Did This Occur? Why Is This Important? How Can We Learn from This?

Understand Why Data Is Important to Your Audience Segment! Segment! Segment! Dashboards for Executives Dashboards for Creating Action Dashboards Versus One-Off Reports Distributing Dashboards Building and Telling Stories with Dashboards One Metric (Why Leading with One Stat Can Create Action) Information Paralysis—When Too Much Info Creates Inaction Concluding Thoughts

15. Building Your Own Audit Tools and Enabling Others

Rubrics—How to Make Them Answering Questions with Analytics Simplify Your Results Linking Data Sources Creating Alerts and Triggers, Creating Response Plans Overriding Your Alerts: Why and When Checklists of Items to Have for Setting Up an Analytics Plan Building Out Timelines Establishing Roles Being OK with Numbers Going Down Concluding Thoughts

A. Tool Listing

Software Listings

Website Analytics

Google Analytics Adobe SiteCatalyst Other options

Link Tracking

Web CEO Majestic SEO SEOmoz Open Site Explorer (formerly Linkscape) Other options

Page Authority

Google PageRank mozRank mozTrust

Ranking Position

SEO Rank Monitor WebPosition AdGooroo Paid Search Insight Google Webmaster Tools Other options

Keyword Search Volume and Competition

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Trellian Keyword Discovery Wordtracker Google Global Market Finder Other options

Social Links and Social Noise

SM2 Radian6 Addict-o-matic Other options

Keyword Volume or Keyword Density on Page

SEO Book Keyword Density Analyzer Tool SEOmoz Term Extractor KGen for Firefox Other options

Mobile and Geographic Traffic Estimations

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Google Global Market Finder

Competitor Insights

Compete Hitwise Google Trends for websites Other options

Surveys—Qualitative Data

Survey Monkey 4Q (iPerceptions)

Multiuse Tools and Sites

SEOmoz Web CEO SEO Book ClickEquations Enterprise options

Index About the Author Colophon SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly

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