In theory, you could do SEO without measuring and reporting, but a solid grasp of analytics is essential to success. SEO analytics covers a wide range of topics, but often focuses on performance metrics around traffic, keywords, URLs, page speed, conversion rates, and more.
Beyond performance metrics, research metrics present another focal point of SEO analytics. This includes topics like keyword analysis, backlink research, and other areas to inform your SEO strategy.
Here, you can browse our top resources on SEO analytics, as well as find the most recent blog posts on the subject below.
SEO Analytics and Reporting : Check out our free SEO Learning Center where we've collected the top resources on analytics and reporting.
The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics : The most popular website analytics platform in the world, Google Analytics is a must-know platform for all SEOs.
A Beginner's Guide to Google Search Console : A companion to any web analytics platform, Google Search Console offers a wealth of SEO information to webmasters.
When and How to Use Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Link Count Metrics : SEO metrics have a special place in analytics. Rand Fishkin shows you how to use these popular metrics correctly.
The Complete Guide to Direct Traffic in Google Analytics : This article covers a very specific niche topic, but also an important one! Learn why that direct traffic in your analytics platform isn't what you think it is.
I'm not going to come out and say I predicted it, but I had a hunch the most recent Batman movie (The Dark Knight) was going to be dominant at the box office. And even though there were those that doubted me, it was a pretty safe bet. There were too many card...
Pause your SEM spending money immediately. Why? Because there are two things you can do to get your website visitors even cheaper, and then start your spending again. Do these two fairly simple things:1: Optimize Your Site FirstChance are, as you read this, people are visiting your website, and leaving. Never to come back. So you are wasting your SEM eff...
A while back Rand and Scott put together a white board friday on setting up some extra Java Script to trak non traditional conversions and goals. At the time my brother and I were about 5 mon...
INTRO: In the most recent Whiteboard Friday, a good friend of mine, Tom Critchlow (I can call you a good friend can't I Tom??), went over some great PPC basic tips. I noticed a lot of people in the comments wanted to hear more about PPC. Well I've been doing the paid side of SEM for a few years (I remember Overture before Ya...
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It's hard to get anyones attention when you are talking about analytics and data. Often I'll go in to a meeting with a really exciting analytics report. When I start speaking about the data CEO will say something like......”Anyyyyyway, moving right along.”And then i’ll say...... “But don’t you want to hear me talking about the data??”Then the CEO says...
Google Inc. is first and foremost a data company. In the past, it competed on a level playing field by manipulating publicly available data better than its competition. By doing this, it had unprecedented success. Enter Web 2.0. Hard drives, processors, bandwidth and even workers are now all relatively inexpensive. This has caused the barriers to entry in the search field to drastic...
Before I launch into my inagural moz blog post let me make one thing clear. I'm not a blackhat. We don't do blackhat work for clients and frankly I don't do that much of it in my free time either. Just thought I'd like to clear that up before I launch into talking about the shadier things online.... Again!
One of the key considerations raised at the recent SMX even in Seattle, was the need to track all conversions, especially those taken from telephone calls. This is a process we have long been pondering, not least because clients are never forthcoming with the information if you ask them. Given that up to 63% of all sales are occurring offline (Jupiter Researc...
As SEOs we've come to rely heavily on analytics packages - it's how we prove our value. We've always been told spiders don't execute Javascript. That means stats based on log files have bot traffic, while stats based on Javascript tagging don't include bots. Some see this ...
I was using Google Trends the other day and thought "if only I could have something like this for my analytics". For those of you who haven't seen a Google Trends report before here is an example: ...
There was a time, can't quite remember when, that I stopped watching TV and started watching web analytics.It may sound sad and most of my friends have not been backward in telling me so.But I see the bright side. The Analytics tickle me pink. I can watch them all day long. As I grow more confident in my passion, Im starting to tell people that they should be doing the same.Let me give you ...
This is a feature I've been asking for in analytics packages for the last 2 years: This report lets a search marketer actually visualize the healthiness and distribution of their site's keyword-based search traffic. In the example above, I'm showing the repor...
Web analytics users can now track offline phone calls from within their web analytics package of choice with a new service from Mongoose Metrics. Analytics integration support includes such vendors as Google Analytics, Omniture, ClickTracks, WebTrends, Coremetrics, IndexTools and any other web analytics packag...
In the first company, as I started to work with my Adwords campaigns, the only goal there was to get clicks (visitors) as most clients wishes. This was one of the 2 key figures that my boss was watching everyday. The other one was the CTR. If we were under 12%, the campaign was not good enough, and we had to work on the keywords or the ads. As I moved on to some other companies, im...