During the lifecycle of a website a redesign is inevitable. Ensuring measurement and analysis of organic search traffic is possible and reliable requires forethought and careful attention to the little things. This presentation covers what preparation you should before a redesign, what to check right after, what to expect with respect to timing of search engine pickup, and what can go wrong.
A top 15 list of things to do to avoid organic traffic analytics melt down is included.
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Is Organic Search Visibility Measurement Insane?
1. Is Search Visibility
Measurement Insane
– during a redesign
and after?
eMetrics
Boston 2014
2. 2
What to Expect Today.
! Keywords? Where do they come from..
! Redesign and measurement – careful
! Tools, tools – forensic examples
! Ignorance is Bliss
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3. 3
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The Origin of Keywords
! What words/phrases do potential customers use
to find services/products like yours.
! Review:
! Industry words in press/twitter/blogs – ie.
Content
! Internal sales and customer support materials
! Competitive Review
! Ispionage
! SEMrush
! Keyword Discovery Tools
! Google Adwords
! Search Results
4. 4
@webmama
Top Reasons for Redesign
! New SEO Company =
Tactical changes too
many to mention in
this small box
! New CEO/CMO = New
brand agency, new
web design
! Repositioning of
Company/products =
New content, new
keywords
! Company name change
/acquisition = Domain
name change, every
URL Changes
5. Prepare for Redesign (1) 5
! Keyword discovery research – what keywords define the company
! Which content drives traffic into site (review landing pages) and
set content/SEO strategy to maintain that content
! Look at Page Authority (moz.com) and don’t kill pages with high
page authority
6. Prepare for Redesign (2) 6
The Tedious Part
! WebMaster Tools – Queries, Keywords, Clicks - TAKE
SCREENSHOTS! The data only lasts for 90 days and you can
only to ‘change’ comparisons for the most recent 30 days.
! Download the data that you are able to download.
! What do search results look like today! TAKE SCREENSHOTS!
! As much as I hate to say it – run ranking reports
! Set up redirect file for .htaccess
10. 10
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Little Things
! Error Page in place?
! 301 redirects for all renamed URLs
! Turned on the tracking code (since it was
probably off on the beta site)?
! Filtered out the design/development team
(Search company too) from the analytics?
! Connected Google analytics and Google
Webmaster tools and have the same person
looking at both
11. 11
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Right about Now
! Spot check for redirect errors – click on
organic
search results
! Home page change? 3 hours
! Sitelinks? 1-3 days
! Old and new URLs at same time – yup –
some overlap
! DNS propagation – 4-5 days across world
! Major ranking changes – 2 weeks
13. 13
Organic Search Traffic
Comparing Pre-Post Launch
Traditional Analytics
! Site Wide
! Visits
! Unique Visitors
! Time on site
! Bounce rate
! Rankings for Top Keywords
! Traffic to pages where URL has NOT changed
! Questionable
! Number of Pages Viewed/visit
! Form completions
16. Organic Search Traffic
What you CAN’T Compare
! Content by page (unless you kept the URLs the same) (ie.
Visits to company/mgt/ceo would need to be mapped to
company/management/ceo)
! # of Pages visited
! Path through site
! Top content
! Landing pages
! Questionable
! Consumption of resources (whitepapers, etc)
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18. 18
The Misconception that keywords
are ‘not provided’
! Enter WebMaster Tools!!!
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Google WebMaster Tools
providing Referring Keywords
for a given Landing Page.
19. 19
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Google WebMaster Tools
providing Landing Pages for a
given Referring Keyword
23. 23
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Review Queries In Google
WebMaster Tools
Shows Drop in
Queries
24. 24
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Review Landing Pages
in Google WebMaster Tools
! Key Page (top product page) is showing change in
queries and click-throughs
25. 25
Review of Pages that Changed
! Discover page goes to Error!!!!!
! Review error page traffic – accounts of lost traffic
! Page redirect put in place
! Queries go up
! Traffic recovers
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26. 26
Good Error Pages
• http://www.liveops.com/ddd
• http://www.hp.com/ddd
Bad Error Pages
• http://www.opentable.com/ddd
• http://www.vmware.com/ddd
• http://www.cisco.com/ddd
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27. 27
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Example #2 - Follow the Increased
Traffic Trail to Unexpected Results
Increase in organic traffic
Increase
in search
visits from
Google Marketing has no idea
A few
marketing
programs
run but
not
enough to
justify
increase
Marketing takes credit
With
limited
conversion
metrics in
place
WebMama
turns
forensic
scientist
Marketing took
credit ☺
28. 28
Checked MOZ.COM
Tracking rankings over time. Looked to see if
there had been a substantial ranking increase
for top branded keywords. Nope.
Checked with
Demand Generation
Team
They hadn’t changed anything in the way they
tracked Google Paid Search – no tag changes, no
drop in their conversions/traffic that would lead
to increase in non-paid traffic.
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29. 29
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Google WebMaster Tools Next
Looked at Queries to see if there was an
increase in queries and/or clicks that
could account for traffic.
Looked at landing page traffic to see if any
one page (like a press release) traffic had
increased to account for the increase in
traffic.
Nothing…..
30. 30
@webmama
Back to Google Analytics
Looked at landing page traffic to see if any
one page (like a press release) traffic had
increased to account for the increase in
traffic.
Nothing…..
31. 31
@webmama
Talked to Engineering/IT
! New Product Release
! Traffic was flowing directly to Login Page but it
was on the engineering/product side of things so
it just looked like a bounce traffic off the home
page
! Login Traffic was not subtracted from corporate
site traffic
33. 33
@webmama
Top 15 TakeAways
1. Use 301 Redirects
2. Put tracking code on Error pages
3. Filter out development team, web producers, agencies, etc.
4. Keep Google WebMaster Tools connected into Google Analytics
5. Don’t silo WebMaster Tools to IT and Google Analytics to Marketing (or the
analytics team)
6. Turn your analytics on at launch not on beta site
7. Make sure your beta site is not visible to search engines
a) Bonus – don’t leave the noindex tag or robots.txt disallow from beta site
on the live site when you switch
8. If you do change URLs for pages, remember that you will lose the ability to
do page-page comparison
34. 34
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Top 15 Take-Aways - Continued
9. Question US-centric/CEO-centric decisions on tracking (ie US marketing
taking all credit for .com traffic)
10. User multiple tools which may not be connected to validate data
11. Understand Google Analytics limitations with respect to on-page click
analytics – use CrazyEgg instead
12. Rankings will look different for you, the CEO, your Mom and your
colleagues
13. Spot check 404s reported by spider (Moz, Google webmaster tools). Don’t
obsess on fixing all of them.
14. Carefully review home page bounce rate by looking at repeat visitors vs
new visitors. They may be heading straight to a login page after searching
for your brand
15. Good luck.