Measure everything that you can and build on what you have

Jess says: “Measure what you can and whatever you have access to, and then iterate on that. By this I mean there are many different ways you can go about measurement and tracking and analytics, across many different platforms. The space is only getting more diverse. For most companies, you just have to work with what you have, and then get buy-in as you go to build on that and make it better, faster, stronger - as Daft Punk would say.”

What are some of the most important things that you absolutely have to be measuring?

“The number one thing is revenue. Ideally, you want to track that back to whatever channel you’re working on. For most of us in SEO, tracking a channel back to revenue is always the most effective option and the biggest metric that you should be looking at, in whatever way that you can.

Most of us are familiar with Google Analytics 3, or Universal Analytics, so you should be setting up goals there. However, knowing that Universal Analytics is going the way of the dinosaur in the next couple of years, I think that’s going to open up the space in a lot of different ways.

That’s why I like tracking it back to the metrics themselves, instead of just relying on an overall programme. You can always use a programme, just make sure that you write down the specific metrics that you want to track - whether that’s pageviews, impressions, etc. Track them through your funnel and identify your revenue through that. Then you can attribute that information to whichever programme or software tool you’re using once UA is gone.”

Can being forced to focus solely on revenue mean that SEOs end up concentrating on bottom-of-funnel keyword phrases, and lose the opportunity or incentive to pay attention to the top of the funnel?

“Absolutely. SEOs should have secondary metrics that go along with revenue because they’re all leading metrics of success. Tracking multistage attribution is not at the point that it should be in 2023. You should always have leading metrics like pageviews, impressions, click-through rates, and all those wonderful things - and then you should be setting up goals throughout your website as efficiently as you can.

GA4 is based on that. It’s based on events and tracking multiple metrics. While GA3 is becoming extinct, GA4 opens up that play box, and gives you the ability to track whichever success metrics you can and set them up specifically for whichever organisation you’re working with.”

What’s the best way of dealing with attribution at the moment? Is there a standard model that tends to work more effectively, or a software that you recommend?

“Currently, I’m using Fathom Analytics. They’re a privacy-based analytics platform and they have pulled attribution through a little more than Google Analytics. I’m actually able to see if somebody’s clicked on a WhatsApp chat or something else, and it brings in that direct model which is often a dark hole that SEOs struggle to measure. There are other options out there too, like Atom Analytics, where you can actually look at different variations of that dark direct traffic, which is very helpful.

As well as that, UTMs are always the go-to for any attribution model and metric, in any platform throughout the internet. Wherever you can use UTMs on any campaigns it’s always a helpful thing.”

Is there any kind of ideal model that you favour?

“I haven’t seen anybody do this super effectively yet, especially with everything changing so quickly. Let’s hope for a helpful content update in 2023.

I’m still working on a specific basis with clients for their content models depending on how much content they have, how often they’re updating it, how many people they have in-house that are working on the content and how close they are to the topic, how much they’ve covered that content in that topic, etc.

These aren’t things that you can put into Google Analytics at this point. We’re doing it manually between Airtable and other places that are outside of GA. It’s important to have conversations with clients about what matters to them, and what success looks like to them.”

In terms of reporting, is GA4 the big thing that’s happening at the moment? Is that something that all SEOs need to be completely comfortable with?

“Maybe. I think it would be good for all SEOs to at least install it on a test site and start pushing through your own events, to be able to understand how that measurement model works and how it will work in the future. If you’re working on client sites, then somebody along the way will have GA4. You’ll want to be able to track those models throughout the ecosystem.

On top of that, GA4 will better integrate into Data Studio. Having that connection will be fantastic because then you can pull in other third-party sources, including Search Console. I’ve been making some Search Console dashboards with Data Studio and then integrating some HubSpot metrics in there as well, to create as full a picture as we possibly can get to at this stage.”

What are some key events that SEOs absolutely need to be tracking in their analytics?

“Definitely impressions through Search Console - and clicks. Clicks and impressions are my go-to success metrics. Besides that, look at indexing. I like to see where the sites are at as far as indexing goes.

There has been all kinds of fluctuation throughout the web, and Search Console has been updating their stuff like mad recently, so monitoring the indexing of your site, then monitoring the impressions that you’re getting in search, and then monitoring your click-throughs, is definitely going to show you how everything’s going.

Additionally, you should look at the keywords that Search Console is pulling through. It’s not a full picture of everything (because nothing will be) but you have to measure something. My takeaway is to measure whatever you have access to, and Search Console is what we have access to. It’s what Google is giving us.”

What trends are you seeing in terms of indexing? Are Google less likely to index pages and what can you do to try and encourage them to index more?

“I’m seeing that Google doesn’t want to index thin content. Documentation pages are wonderful, but if they’re super thin and super short then you need to make them as useful as possible. Connecting those pages to other topics along the way is also helpful for getting them indexed.

Additionally, you should be linking pages better and bringing them as close to the homepage as possible. That could be with topics, categories, extra links, or placing links in multiple places throughout your pages and then linking those deeper into the site that way.

I’ve found that Google doesn’t like pagination, and they obviously don’t follow the infinite scroll all the way. Giving Google multiple routes to the same end goal is always helpful. I’ve even seen HTML sitemaps do it. Bringing back the old-school internet, you can do something that dynamically pulls through an HTML sitemap of your whole site, and feed that through Google. Give them as much context and as many inroads as possible.”

Should you be bringing data into other platforms besides Google Analytics, like Data Studio, to do more historical comparisons?

“100%. You should also be uploading your data to some other place. You can upload things to Amazon and their clouds, or any of the other data slicing and dicing platforms. You should definitely be doing that, especially with your GA3 data. Make sure that it’s backed up somewhere before we lose it - because then you’re going to have people like me coming through and wanting to know year-over-year metrics, and we’re not going to have access to that.

Back that data up or make sure that you have it in a secondary location, so that somebody can have that year-over-year data, or at least quarter-over-quarter. You want a quarter that goes back to 2020, or at least 2022. There’s been so much fluctuation in the past couple of years - with the pandemic and in the way people are searching, shopping, and navigating online - that data folks will want to understand.

You should be exporting monthly backups of your Google Analytics data, if your site’s big enough. If it’s a small site, then some of the other analytics platforms can definitely help you out, but if you’re a mid-sized B2B SaaS company and you have hundreds of thousands of views, then you should definitely be backing that up at that point.”

What shouldn’t SEOs be doing in 2023? What’s seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive?

“It’s been said before but, with all the updates we’ve been seeing, SEOs shouldn’t be focusing on search engines alone in 2023. Google doesn’t focus on the search engine alone; Google focuses on the people who are using said search engine. As SEOs, we should be doing the same.

When you’re making a website, you’re not making a website for you - you’re making it for users. You could spend a whole mountain of time looking through what search engines do and how they process things but, at the end of the day, they care about users, so you should too.

When we’re talking about search engines in 2023, that’s including YouTube and TikTok - even Pinterest still has a stake in all of this. All of them attribute back. I’ve even seen people making TikToks of how to Google these days. All of those are helping people find the information they’re looking for.”

How do you identify exactly what your users are doing in terms of finding and navigating through your site?

“I think it depends on the organisation. If you have a UX team, lean on them. If you have a customer support team, lean on them. Talk to support. Open up those channels and those conversations. That way, any pain points, needs, or questions that your users bring up will get fed right to the SEO team and the content team. The same goes for UX.

It’s about opening up those conversations wherever you can within the organisation and making sure that all those pain points are met, so that you can address them as effectively as possible. That will make sure that the search meets the intent, and you’re answering those questions for people.”

Do websites still use onsite search? Do users ask many queries through onsite search, or do they go back to Google?

“I’ve seen users utilising onsite search a lot more in eCommerce. If humans are looking for something and the menu doesn’t make sense, or the hierarchy on the website doesn’t make sense, then they’ll just search. If they don’t see what they need on the homepage (or whatever page they land on) then they’ll use the search.

This is really beneficial, and it can actually help SEOs inform their decisions about what kind of content they want to write. If somebody’s looking for a ‘pleated skirt in purple’ 500 times, then you’re going to want to write about a purple pleated skirt and ensure that answer is being met. Onsite search can be very valuable.”

Jess Joyce is an SEO Consultant and you can find her at jessjoyce.com