Website Analysis & Performance in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s).

In order to optimise a web page for SERP’s, you first need to understand how users interact with it.

Analysing how a website we have full access to is performing is easier than trying to analyse a competitors website if a web analytic program has been installed to track activity on your website pages. If not, we can install Analytics to provide useful statistics on how your website is performing, with meaningful data available between 30-45 days.

On our competitors analysis page, we describe the process we go through when analysing a competitors website. Those same steps are applied to your website, but installing ‘Analytics’ provides so much more.

Below is a list of 10 features Analytics provides for website analysis and how each feature benefits SEO of your website. From a visitors computer, or internet connecting device such as laptop, tablet or mobile phone the devices Internet protocol (IP) address allows visitors actions to be recorded.

• New Users

  A new user is a visitor that has made at least one hit on one page of your website during the time period selected in your report. If a user makes several visits during the time period defined, it is only counted once.

  The number of new users will increase as a result of effective SEO work on your web pages. These numbers will also reflect seasonal fluctuations and events that impact on the number of people searching the Internet.

• Returning Users

  A returning user is simply a person that has previously visited your website within the selected time frame and has come back to any given page on your website.

  A high returning user count is a great gauge of how authoritative and informative your website is. There are a number of ways you can increase the returning user count; such as with e-newsletter subscriptions.

• Traffic Sources

  Traffic sources show you where your website’s users are coming from. These numbers are broken down into direct traffic, social network referrals, search engine (organic) referrals, search engine (paid) referrals, if you have a ‘Pay Per Click’ campaign such as AdWords running and referring website referrals.

  The website analysis stats for your traffic sources will be a direct reflection of your SEO efforts. If you are implementing the most cost effective form of marketing, search engine optimisation, the majority of your traffic should be coming from referring search engines and other websites as a result of your link building efforts.

• Bounce Rate

  The bounce rate stat shows the percentage of visitors that left your website after viewing only the page on which they landed. The bounce rate for all pages should be viewed before taking any corrective action. Users that bookmark one of your pages may return to that page to retrieve specific information; such as prices, frequently and not visit any other pages.

  If your web page’s bounce rate is floating above 40%, then you should look at a call-to-action reason to have them visit another page of your website.

• Average Session Duration

  Website analysis will show the average amount of time users spend on your website from first landing on a page.

  Try to give your users a reason to stay on your website for at least 2 minutes. Related information sections are very useful for allowing users to read more about a given subject than what was on the page they landed on for a given keyword or search term.

• Top Content Pages

  Your top content pages show you which pages on your website users visit the most. This is one of the most underrated and under used stats although it provides you with some of the most pertinent information about where visitors are spending time on your website.

  Evaluate your top content pages and figure out why visitors are landing on these pages the most and why they are spending the most time on these pages. This data can then be applied to other content pages that may not be receiving the attention you would like to see from your visitors.

• Keywords

  The keywords data in your analytics program displays the keywords and phrases that visitors are using in the search engines to find and land on your website.

  Siphon through the keyword data provided by your analytics program to find keywords that are driving traffic to your website that you may not have included in your search engine marketing campaigns. You can also use this data to reallocate your search engine marketing campaigns to focus more heavily on keywords that are bringing visitors that are spending more time on your website and even completing set goals that you have determined (ie. purchasing a product).

• Device Used

  The device used data will confirm the large number of people visiting your website using small screen devices. laptops, tablets and mobile phones are being used more by people searching the web. Do not be surprised to see tablets and mobile phone numbers out perform PC hits.

  Mobile search is getting an increased focus from search engines. Google ranks responsive sites higher when viewed on mobile phones compared to sites that are not mobile phone friendly; all other factors being equal. If your site is not mobile responsive, you will be losing business, and wasting money if paying for SEO.

• Location

  Knowing where your visitors are located when finding your website is important for local SEO. If you provide services to Adelaide customers only, what is the benefit of being found by people living in Melbourne or overseas.

  Local SEO as a signal has increased importance with Google products, especially ‘Places’ to increase the number of people who are exposed to your business and website.

• Entry and Exit Pages

  One of the most useful yet overlooked statistics is what pages your visitors first see when they search and what page they exit from. Your ‘home page‘ should be the page visitors land on first the most, with contact, about and product pages exited from the most.

  The results of this data can help you improve how you direct visitors around your website.

Costs of Installing, Analysing and Reporting Analytics

Analytics can be installed simply, or thoroughly to gain the most accurate empirical data about how your website is performing.

All new websites we build, with a monthly SEO plan of at least $1,000 per month for a minimum of 12 months have Analytics installed by us, included in the cost. Analytics allows us, and business owners to see exactly how the SEO work we have done so far has impacted on page rank in SERP’s, visitor traffic numbers to the site for targeted keywords and the path taken to reach the desired goal.

As a stand alone service we charge $500 for a comprehensive analysis with weekly Analytics reports emailed to you.