Use Analytics To Improve Your Organic SEO

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Avinash Kaushik has written one of the best manifestos on analytics that I’ve read in recent memory. His nine point checklist is awesome and I’ve got to say that when I read it I come up way more short than I want to. There is some really awesome stuff in there!

I specifically love Point #7: Search, Organic, Get Good At It.

This should be a gentle reminder that all web business begins with organic search. You may use analytics heavily for PPC, and you should, but how well do you use it for organic search? Here are three ways that you can use analytics to improve your organic search campaigns and search engine optimization efforts:

Learn and Know Your Top Search Queries (from Avinash): This is actually a Webmaster Tools metric, but you can use it alongside your analytics program and you should. By knowing what your top search queries are, you know full well how your users are using your website. By extension, you also know how they are not using it. Focus your monetization efforts on those top queries and you can’t go wrong.
What Are Your Top Traffic Sources?: This is very telling. Is your traffic coming from Google? From social media sites? From third party sites? Use this information to leverage your SEO and PPC combined efforts or to better your organic SEO campaigns. Knowing where your traffic comes from is useful in segmentation efforts as well (Avinash’s No. 1 point).
Bounce Rates: Bounce rates are very important. Avinash says this is your only true analytics BFF (point No. 3). Your bounce rates tell you the quality of your pages. If you have a high number of bounces then you need to improve your pages. Low number of bounces then you’re doing fine. But what about conversions? Know how to analyze your bounce rates.

There is a lot more to learn about analytics than this, but these three points are a starter for newbies and if you really want to learn about analytics, I suggest learning from the master himself. If you need help in using analytics to improve your organic SEO campaigns then try hiring a professional to give you the basics.