Tip: How to Quickly Measure Your Website’s SEO Performance
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has the same overall performance metric as any of your marketing efforts: positive ROI. In very general terms, your SEO is working if you’re getting more high-quality organic traffic that is converting to sales.
Get into Google Analytics
Choose the best answer for you:
A. You have it on your site and know how to access your account. Log in!
B. You have it on your site but DON’T know how to access your account. The best place to start is with the person who built your site – they installed it and have a login. Email or call them and request access, and make sure to ask for FULL access: “Edit, Collaborate, Read & Analyze, Manager Users.” It’s your site, after all. You’ll receive an email with an invitation and instructions.
C. You’re not sure if you have Google Analytics or not. If you’re doing SEO with us then you definitely have it, so just email your account manager for access. Otherwise you can 1) check to see if it’s currently on your site using this info, and 2) sign up and install it with this guide.
Look at your Data
Now that you’re logged into Google Analytics (referred to as “GA” from here on out), the challenge is finding the right data – the platform can be overwhelming – and filtering it.
Finding the Right Data
If you’re new to GA or want a super fast one-stop shop each time you log in, it makes sense to set up a dashboard. Dashboards are awesome and provide a great solution to see all your favorite/important metrics in one spot. Here’s the easiest way to do it, other than just emailing your Intuitive Digital account manager and saying, “hey, will you set me up a dashboard?”
How to Set Up a Google Analytics Dashboard for SEO
- Select the account, property, and view that you want to see
- Click “Customization” then “Dashboards.” Click on “Create”
- You have a few options here, but we’re keeping it simple and choosing either “Starter Dashboard” or “Import from Gallery.” The starter dashboard is great for a very general overview.
- If you’re interested in more specific information, take a look at the gallery:
- After clicking on “Create,” click on “Import from Gallery,” then “Go to Gallery”
- For better or worse, there are almost endless possibilities to weed through. One of my favorites is a broad collection of metrics called “Custom Dashboard – CompleteDigitalMarketingCourse.com.”
- Click on the name of the dashboard, then click “Import” in the upper left
- You can find your new dashboard by clicking on “Customization,” and “Dashboards.”
- Don’t forget to set your date range when you open your dashboard! (Upper right)
Filtering the Data
When measuring SEO performance, we want to look at organic traffic. My preferred method is to apply a segment, which acts as a filter to show you just organic traffic; this lets you look at any metric in Google Analytics and see how organic performs compared to all traffic, or organic by itself.
When you’re looking at your dashboard, or any metric under “Audience,” “Acquisition,” etc., you’ll see a rectangle toward the top of the page that says, “All Users,” and a rectangle next to it with dashed borders and a grey circle that says, “+ Add Segment.”
Click on that rectangle and scroll down to “Organic Traffic.” Check the box, then click “Apply” at the bottom. You’ll now see data for all users, and a second set of data separated out just showing organic traffic. You can also look at organic alone by reopening the segment rectangle and un-checking the “All Users segment.”
You’re basically an analytics pro at this point – adding segments is an advanced technique! Now you can really nerd out and impress people at parties like I do!*
If you want to nerd out with us or if you have questions, shoot me an email or give us a call. We’d love to chat!
*I’m fairly certain I’ve never impressed anyone by talking about Google Analytics at parties. Maybe I’m going to the wrong parties.
