Analytics - The Missing Piece - Internet Marketing Australia

The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to drive traffic to your site. Many people don't know why, but they aren't achieving this goal.

The key is staying current and evolving with the times.

Way back in the good old days, SEO was a lot easier and people saw results quickly. Your SEO Firm ran a ranking report and was able to see what words held what positions in the various engines. And admit it now, when you received your ranking reports, you promptly pulled up Google or Yahoo and did a search, waiting with baited breath to see your results right there in the top 20. Ahhh, the good old days.

Now, you get a ranking report and you don't see all those wonderful rankings you have seen in the past. Competition is fierce and even though your site deserves to be on top, it may take a while to work its way up there. So, what do you do? You call your SEO Firm, you complain, you work on a strategy to get the results you want.

The missing piece here is called Analytics.

A well-optimized site will bring traffic from many engines, for various keywords that are related to your site. Those keywords may not be on the "approved keyword list" that you and your SEO Firm decided on - however they are words people are looking for and they are driving traffic to your site.

Many people don't give credit to their SEO company for these words. However, they are mistaken -- the fact that your site was properly optimized and content was added is what made the site get noticed by the engines. So, the optimization is directly responsible for these "bonus" keywords that are driving traffic to your site.

Because most people don't understand this, and they don't give credit to their SEO Firm, many SEO Firms don't bother looking at or sharing Analytics information with their clients. They simply care about rankings for the keyword list.

Some SEO Firms DO understand the value of Analytics information, and will add these "bonus" keywords to your ranking reports. You may say, "That's great, but how does that really help us, the client?"

This information helps you because it tells you what words people are using to find you - it gives you insight into how your prospective clients think and search. That information can then be used to improve and really target your marketing efforts.

In addition to the value of the "bonus" keywords - Analytics reveals other information about traffic to your website: what pages people are spending time on, and what pages people are leaving quickly (what interest's people and what drives people away).

Having someone prepare that information for you and deliver it to you in any easy to comprehend manner is invaluable. That information becomes your blueprint for web site improvement, which means increased conversions, which means more sales, which means more money, which means you are one happy camper!

Imagine, rather than guessing at what to tweak on your site to improve results you can take the analysis and suggested changes and use that as a guide to improving your traffic and conversions. Then you monitor the response to your tweaks to ensure your traffic and conversions are growing because the competition isn't sitting idle and what worked yesterday doesn't necessarily work tomorrow.

Web stats or Analytics isn't new - it's been around forever. However most people don't know how to interpret their stats, they often don't have time to gather the data. And SEO Firms typically do not tie this information into a SEO campaign. It's important to find an SEO Firm that will do this, one who is focused on not just traffic, but results, whether that means more sales, more people opting in to your site, or more people calling you.