SEO Analytics: A Step-by-Step Overview

It's impossible to prioritize and get approval for your SEO efforts unless you know what works and what doesn't for your website. Because you can't make rational decisions unless you know which of your SEO efforts are (or aren't) contributing to your SEO goals.

What exactly is SEO analytics?

SEO analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing raw data in order to improve the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts. It enables you to prioritize tasks, obtain approval for SEO campaigns, and make better SEO decisions.

What is the significance of SEO analytics?

It makes no difference whether you're optimizing a personal blog as you learn the ropes or consulting on an enterprise SaaS. Because data eliminates much of the guesswork in developing goals and strategies, all marketers will benefit from the information gained from SEO analysis.

How to Begin with SEO Analytics ?

Different data points will hold value for different businesses. So, while I can't tell you exactly what data points to focus on, I can outline an overall approach to SEO analytics that is applicable to almost every business.

Step 1: Make a work plan

It is all too easy to become lost in the rabbit hole of analysis and lose sight of the end goal. As a result, the first step is to pose the question. From here, you can plan out which tools you'll need and which reports you'll need. Don't let yourself be tempted to skip this step. Good planning is essential for successful data analysis projects. If you rush ahead, you will only add to your workload and miss out on important insights.

Step 2: Gather the necessary measuring equipment

Now that you've determined why you need data, the next step is to set up the measurement tools that will collect it. We need to set up tools that provide insights into our Google search presence and keyword rankings because we're attempting to rank on Google. There are numerous tools available, both free and paid, but we recommend three as a starting point.

Step 3: Create dashboards and reports

After you've set up your measurement tools, you'll need to visualize the data so that it's easy to understand and act on. Most of the SEO tools mentioned above already come with a slew of pre-built reports. These types of reports are extremely useful and insightful, and they provide an excellent starting point for SEO analytics. However, there will be many instances where you will need to create custom reports and dashboards in order to see the data more clearly. This is not possible in Search Console, but it is possible in Google Analytics. You can also use Site Audit's advanced filters to zero in on virtually any problem.

Step 4: Analyze and act on the data

The last step is to go over the data and decide what to do with it. Without action, data is meaningless. Better performance, not perfect client-facing reports, is the goal. Let's look at some of the questions we used data analysis to answer and how we used our tools to do so.

You should still treat this information with caution because some pages will be longer than others. A low average engagement time on a 300-word blog post isn't necessarily a sign that it's uninteresting; there simply isn't much to read. Similarly, you shouldn't read too much into data for pages with few users because making decisions based on small sample sizes is risky.