I did this presentation last year for a Meetup Group on Search Analytics

1. SEO SEM and being “Google Analytical” are becoming mainstream –
just Popularized by Rapper Notorious Big!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c96LTLlaXew
Notorious Big says “… Become Google Analyticized”

2. Caveat: Google Analytics is a good tool for what it offers – but extremely limited for
advanced analytics. Here’s what Google Analytics can’t do and probably never will:
Low engagement 66%
Low interest 62.5%
Light engagement 13%
Engaged 9% Very Engaged 23%
Very Engaged Low engagement 70%
28%
Light engagement 13%
Can’t segment visitors, pathing,
keywords
By visitor frequency, time spent, how Very Engaged 17%
deep into the site they went
What are the “Very Engaged
Looking at, doing? And that’s just for
starters

3. Use Web Analytics to Compare Paid Search Traffic vs. Organic for Customer
Acquisition
Paid Search
Organic Search
Paid Search can be evaluated by the percentage of new visits (visitors), time spent
on site, Pages per Visit and Bounce Rate. Paid Search appears to be delivering a
better experience relative to Organic.
But numbers can be deceiving – many more organic search visits vs. paid visits
results in more conversions, overall, using Organic Search.

4. We can look at the landing pages and find out if Advertising is being run well
Paid Search
First 4 of 274 pages
Organic Search
First 4 of 19,011 pages
Paid Search is sending almost all it’s traffic to the homepage of this Art Site – that’s
usually not recommended.
Meanwhile, the Organic Search sends 74% of it’s traffic to interior pages of the site –
that’s normally good.

5. While Paid Search can be “controlled” and “targeted”, Organic can’t be targeted
as well (which is a good thing and a bad thing).
Paid Search
Organic Search

6. Keyword Quality – Are we going after the right keywords and is there content
answering visitors’ needs (questions)?
Most content doesn’t automatically
convert but it’s Important to understand
there’s two sets of goals and
measurements
1 – Your customer/visitors goals
2 – Your goals

7. Long Tail Traffic answers visitors questions but there’s a
lot of long tail traffic.
Visitors have a lot of “questions” – queries containing words such as “buy, bought, sold,
show (it’s an art site), acquire, etc, will bring up individual visits – but you can’t optimize your
Site for every single visitor – or can you? Answer: You can, but you have design your site
for it and have the content. CMS Platform being used will be crucial. Also, use HitTail.

8. Different versions of the keyword will be more or less successful – and more
often than not – it’s all about Google.
So how do we use this information
from Web Analytics to help us
design more effective Web Sites?

9. Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 1
Best sites for advertising to obtain New Subscribers to Site’s Newsletter (per year):
Depending on the sort order your results will be different
Note: Need to export to Excel or Access and filter data multiple times
Answer: artandauction.com, ltbmedia.com, vanityfair.com, artforum.com,
Art.blogging.la, theartlawblog.blogspot.com, uber.com

10. Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 2 Best locations for attracting “Engaged New
Visitors”
Answer: Coudal.com, painting.about.com, the-artists.org, bowieart.com.
Hirshorn.si.edu, Saatchi-gallery.co.uk, etc.

11. Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 3 Best Keywords for attracting “Engaged New
Visitors” (Organic and Paid)
Answer: artist, artist gallery, gallery listings, artists, new york galleries, artist
directory and new york gallery guide.

12. Marshall’s SEO Analytics Rule 4 Best Paid Keywords for attracting “Engaged
New Visitors”
Answer: artist, artist
gallery, gallery
listings, artists and
artist directory.

13. Summary – Methodical approach, using Web Analytics, testing your
assumptions and beliefs, can pay off.
Additional Refinements – filter on Geography.
Note: Test your assumptions and refine them till you have a working rule set that is
adjusted for the client’s site and audience.
Marshall Sponder
www.Webmetricsguru.com