SEO and Analytics

Having a website that is listed in the first few pages of search results when your customers search for the product or service you offer is crucial to your success. After all, studies show that 93% of Internet experiences start with a search.

But is your SEO working for your website? To know the answer to this question for sure, you need to understand how to analyze your SEO efforts and determine specifically what is driving people to your site.

Some SEO companies lead you to believe that simple strategies can skyrocket you to the top. While there is definite strategy involved,

it is important to be cautious of fraudulent companies that will not deliver the results they promise.

Some promises that should send a red flag that your SEO company is not legitimate are:

Guaranteed first page rankings

This is impossible to do right away for all of your keywords, and requires consistent effort to remain on the first page of search results.

Fast rise in the rankings

Just as you cannot guarantee that you will remain on the first page, you also cannot guarantee a fast rise in the rankings either.

Thousands of backlinks to your site

The only way to get thousands of backlinks right away is to purchase them – and often times these are only purchased from spammy sites which, can actually damage your SEO efforts in the long run.

How can you avoid these scams? The answer lies in analytics.

The only way to truly know what is happening on your website, and where your visitors are coming from is through analytics. If your customers are coming from search results, you need to know what search terms they used to find you. If your customers are coming from another website that has linked to yours, you need to know what that website is.

There are three items that are measured by analytics, such as those found through Google Analytics, that can help you determine who is coming, where they're coming from, while also helping you boost your online marketing campaigns in the most effective areas.

1. Increase in Visitors – If your SEO company is doing what they say they will do, you should see an increase in visitors to your website. This can be seen through analytics. When you know how people are arriving at your site, the specific keywords they were searching for when they found your site and how long they remained on your site, you can determine which keywords are most effective for you to target. This can have a dramatic effect on the sales you see in the long run. It will allow you to target high quality leads coming into your website instead of low quality leads that can be found with some fraudulent SEO strategies that may end up hurting your website in the long run.

2. Geographic Regions – You also want to know where people are visiting from. If your business is based in the northern part of the United States, but you are only seeing traffic from people in France, your SEO is not refined enough to be targeting people who have the potential to become paying customers. This is not a good search engine strategy. With a high bounce rate from people who are visiting from outside your market and then leaving quickly, you can actually hurt your website's rankings because Google will see your site as irrelevant.

3. Who is Converting – The ultimate goal of a good SEO strategy is to get people onto your website to convert into paying customers. To know what is working and where you should be targeting, it is critical to know which visitors have converted to paying customers. This can be found using designated landing pages for specific keywords and testing who clicks further and who leaves right away. By doing this, you can distinguish where you should be focusing your efforts for the maximum results.

When you use analytics, you empower your marketing campaign to focus on what works and what has helped boost your SEO and avoid putting effort to items that are not delivering the results you need.