If you work in marketing or SEO, reviewing your data is essential on a daily basis.
Perhaps you're analyzing your performance to see the results of your efforts, evaluating the impact of Google's latest updates, or working on case studies to share with the SEO community.
But when dealing with SEO data, things aren't always what they seem. How you perceive data at a high level isn't necessarily valid when you dig deeper.
It needs to be done thoroughly. Otherwise, assumptions and insights that initially seem solid can become inaccurate.
Throughout my career, I've seen many pitfalls that marketing and SEO professionals can encounter when working with data. Below are five examples.
1. Misunderstanding the relationship between impressions and rankings
Understanding the relationship between impressions and a website's average ranking metrics can save you a lot of time when reporting on your SEO performance.
Has the number of website impressions increased, but the average ranking metric decreased? Some clients are obsessed with this metric and are very concerned about the “poor” performance of the average ranking metric. But is it?
To explain the relationship between impressions and average ranking, let's look at a simple example.
Your website will get:
- 1 impression from Keyword X Ranking 2
- 1 impression from keyword Y ranking 1
- 1 impression from keyword Z ranking 3
In this case, the average rank is (6/3 = 2).
Your website will now start ranking for your new keywords, and you'll also:
- #10 impressions for keyword A
This seems like an accomplishment, but as an average ranking metric it's not that big of an accomplishment since the average ranking is down (16/4 = 4).
Therefore, although the average ranking metric appears to be getting worse, it does not necessarily mean a negative result, as the website is starting to rank for more keywords. Over time, your rankings for these keywords can improve even more. Even better, he ranks 10th for a new keyword.
Therefore, as the number of impressions increases, it is quite normal for the average ranking to increase as well. That's not a bad sign and doesn't mean it's underperforming.
Hint: Think about the relationship between impressions and CTR. As impressions increase (which is a good thing), CTR can decrease.
Dig deeper: How to create great SEO reports for executives
2. Comparing apples and oranges
To show SEO improvements, it's common to compare performance from month to month. Although this is a reasonable approach, in some circumstances such comparisons may be insufficient and may need to involve a comparison with the same month's performance in the previous year. Here's why:
Comparing January 2023 and December 2022 may improve your traffic and performance. For many companies, especially his B2B, December (and sometimes November) is a low season month and they face a natural decline in business performance during this month.
Therefore, when comparing January 2023 to December 2022, you will often see performance improvements without actually seeing any performance improvements. It's just “back to normal.”
Therefore, it may be inaccurate to say, “When we compared the period from January 1st to April 30th to the previous period, we saw a 60% increase in performance.”
In this situation you can:
- Compare January 1st to April 30th of this year with last year.
- Use automated tools/scripts to help account for seasonal variations.
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3. Using vanity metrics
Understood. There is a lot of pressure on SEOs to show results and improvements. However, this doesn't mean reporting on vanity metrics that don't really matter.
For example, presenting the amount of internal or external links created as an “improvement” metric is an invalid approach to reporting SEO activity.
“X% increase in external links” is not a healthy statement.
Also, just because something increases doesn't necessarily mean it's “improved.” More is not necessarily better. Is increasing the keyword density of an article an “improvement” or does it make it spam?
Dig deeper: SEO KPIs to track and measure your SEO success
4. Report migration as an SEO achievement
Website migration is a traditional SEO task, and a successful migration project is an expectation, not a bonus. It's common for an SEO person to migrate a domain or her website and then report on its performance.
Once a website is migrated/redirected to the main domain, many SEOs tend to make the mistake of thinking that the subsequent increase in traffic to the primary domain is a definitive SEO success.
It's important to note that this increase is largely expected given the large number of URLs and associated traffic being redirected to the main domain. Is this really a victory?
Instead, it reports the percentage of traffic successfully directed to your main domain. It may take some time to resolve, but showing how much original traffic is retained is the real SEO win.
5. Not reporting SEO value and attribution
SEO is a complex channel. Unlike PPC, where there is a clear action to ROI path and conversions are clearly tied, with SEO you may need to dig deeper to show the real value the channel brings.
For example, in a previous role, the company ran very few PPC ads and the website's primary/largest traffic source was SEO.
At first glance, everything seems clear and easy. But when I started looking at the data, I realized that the majority of my traffic (and therefore conversions) came from “direct traffic.” I was curious, so I drew a graph comparing my direct traffic to his SEO traffic, and here it is:
See how SEO traffic directly impacts your traffic. Increased SEO directly increases traffic and vice versa.
If this applies to your business, it's worth mentioning in your monthly SEO report.
Another thing to look at is your GA4 attribution report. advertisement section. Click on one of the Model comparison or conversion path. Both provide insight into how SEO channels contribute to or support the performance of other channels. This is also something worth reporting.
We strive to analyze accurate SEO data and create reports.
When examining SEO data for auditing and reporting purposes, you need to be thorough.
Making conclusions based on the first data you see is inaccurate, can land you in hot water with your clients, and can cause you to miss out on SEO gains that go unnoticed.
Still, I want to strike a balance between being thorough and not falling into analysis paralysis. More data isn't necessarily better. The best approach is:
- Define the questions you want your data to answer.
- Make sure it is valid and valuable.
- Start your data journey there.
Finally, always double-check your numbers, assumptions, and conclusions. Remember, there's more to your data than meets the eye.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
