Are you worried that your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is delivering the right results?
While SEO is an excellent way to build brand awareness and reputation, it takes time to yield results. If you don’t see any noticeable difference in your website traffic and search engine rankings after months of hard work, it can be disheartening.
The good news is that you can use the power of data analytics to understand whether your SEO strategy is working. In this article, we’ll delve deeper into the use of data analytics in SEO and find out how it can help improve search engine rankings.
Data Analytics in SEO: A Closer Look
If you’ve ever developed and implemented an SEO strategy, you’ve likely already used a ton of data to inform your decisions. For instance, you might have tracked metrics, like monthly search volume and click-through rates (CTRs), to identify suitable keywords for your strategy.
Also, you might have analyzed a competitor’s top-performing web pages to identify content formats and topics that resonate with your target audience. You might have even performed similar analyses on your own blog to identify and repurpose top-performing content.
But the use of data analytics in SEO isn’t restricted to keyword research or content creation. When judiciously used, it can help you monitor and measure the performance of your SEO strategy and understand whether it’s headed in the right direction.
For instance, you can track daily average visitors over a specific period to identify to understand whether your content strategy is attracting organic traffic. If that isn’t the case, it’s time to get back to the drawing board and brainstorm new content ideas.
Similarly, monitoring website rankings over time can help you understand whether your link-building and outreach efforts are working. You can even identify new networking and keyword opportunities. Also, you can assess the impact of search engine algorithm updates on your website’s performance.
Modern SEO analytics tools even help your convert website performance and ranking data into meaningful reports. That makes it easier to build a business case for your SEO strategy. It can even help C-suite executives understand how your efforts contribute to overall business growth.
How to Use Data Analytics for SEO?
Now that you’ve realized the importance of data analytics in SEO, you must be eager to get started. But keep in mind that it isn’t as using standalone tools to track organic traffic or rankings.
You must build advanced data science capabilities to collect and process SEO data and turn it into actionable insights. The first step is to select the tools you’ll be using to measure these metrics. The most commonly used tools include Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Google Analytics gives an overview of your website traffic, including how many people visit your website daily, how long they stay on a particular page, and how often they leave your site without taking any action.
On the other hand, Google Search Console offers insight into what happens before a user clicks on your search engine listing. It can help you understand how your web pages appear in different SERPs and identify keywords that drive traffic to your site. Also, you can identify pages with the most backlinks and the anchor texts used for those links.
Additionally, you can use paid tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, to gather more data. Besides aggregating and processing data, these tools also analyze and visualize the collected data.
You can take things up a notch by using a robust, open-source database like Apache Druid to build a proprietary SEO analytics tool. Apache Druid architecture is designed for real-time data ingestion and aggregation. Its sub-second latency makes it ideal for web and mobile analytics applications.
The cloud-native architecture makes Druid scalable and ensures excellent fault tolerance. Also, it’s designed to support thousands of concurrent users. If you’re planning to build your own analytics tool, make sure you compare Druid with other available options to make an informed choice.
The next step is identifying the data sources relevant to your SEO strategy. Besides your own website, you can also collect data from competitors’ websites, blogs, and social media profiles. Also, it’s crucial to monitor your website’s inbound link profile and relevant search engine results pages (SERPs).
Make a list of the metrics you want to measure. These can include:
- Number of users and sessions
- Average session duration
- Click-through rates
- New referring domains
- Domain authority
Whether using a proprietary tool or one that’s already available, make sure it offers sophisticated reporting capabilities. Collecting a ton of data is futile if you can’t make sense of it. Use the analytics tool’s reporting features to convert the available data into tables, charts, graphs, etc.
It’ll help you understand whether your SEO efforts are helping accomplish your end goals. You can even spot gaps in your strategy. Also, you can identify seasonal trends in website traffic and rankings and make better-informed decisions.
Conclusion
SEO isn’t all about creating keyword-optimized content and building backlinks. You must track and measure your website’s performance to understand whether your strategy is working. Effective use of data analytics tools can help you collect, analyze, and visualize relevant data sets to optimize your SEO efforts.
