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SEO Measurement 101

Presented jointly by:
Jordan LeBaron; Senior Business Consultant, Omniture
Richard Calentine; Senior Web Analyst, Scripps Networks
SEO Measurement 101

INTRO: SEO 101

If you live in search marketing on a daily basis, you can probably skip this initial
section. You could probably recite much of this in your sleep. (If you do, seek help).
Otherwise, to set the stage for the rest of this workbook here is a brief primer to
basic concepts of online search marketing.

It’s worth starting out talking about the two types of search marketing.

First is natural search.

Natural search is any of the efforts you

make on your Web site to optimize it for
those who are likely to be looking for
your site, or those you want to attract
to your site; often, these groups are one
in the same.

As for paid search, this is the process

of bidding auction-style for keywords
that you feel are prominent and key in
bringing people to your site.

In either case, what you’re trying to

do is make your site more attractive to
both those consumers who you want on
your site, as well as the search engines
(e.g. Google, Yahoo!, Bing) that your
consumers are using search for you.

Search engines use “crawlers” which

scan all Web sites to find sites or pages
that match the searcher’s keywords.
SEO Measurement 101

Then, the search engines rank and display the Web sites they deem to be the best
options according to what the consumer is looking for. Obviously, a business wants
its Web pages to rank as high as possible for their ideal customers. Therefore, it
becomes important for businesses to be strategic about all aspects of content from
architecture to copy to design to make sure it’s attractive to the search engines
and your consumers to get them there quickly and in great numbers.
SEO Measurement 101

So, how do you get your pages to rank well? Here are three factors to consider:
1. Accessibility
How accessible are the pages in your Web site to search
engines? Are there road blocks that impede the crawlers
such as non-descript URLs? Does your site have broken links?
Do your URL links have improper redirection? Any of these
issues and others can impede the accessibility of your site.

2. Relevance
Are your Web pages relevant to the keywords that your
target audience is typing into search engines? Is the content
How do you get on your site clear and easy to find that relates specifically to
those keywords?
your pages to rank
well? Accessibility,
Relevance, Popularity. 3. Popularity

Popularity is becoming more and more important in search
engine optimization. How many other Web sites link back
to your site? How many different or diverse pages do they
link back to? Do most simply link to your home page, or are
they linking to more precise information (potentially more
relevant) deeper into your site? As more sites link to your
site in more diverse places, it builds the ‘trust’ that your site
has amongst its peers on the same subject.

From 1-10 rate how you think your Web site does in each category for improving it’s rank.

Rank 1-10 Comments: what would you change?

Accessibility
Relevance
Popularity
SEO Measurement 101

With those basics out of the way, it leads us to the next question in search marketing…

WHY MEASURE?
One way to frame that question is with this quote:

To be truly successful Can you relate to that?

with your SEO, you Put another way, a study from JupiterResearch shows that 43 percent of marketers
don’t or can’t accurately measure the ROI from SEO. (Source: JupiterResearch,
must accurately SEM Executive Summary, 2007).

measure success to To be truly successful with your SEO, you must accurately measure success to drive
value and action. Why? Because in the end, it’s not about driving traffic to your
drive value and action. site, it’s about making money. Right?

COMMON SEO METRICS AND TOOLS

There are common types of metrics and tools used to measure what’s going on
with a site:

1. Search Engine Data:

»» Keyword research (Google Insights)
»» Keyword rankings (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.)
»» Pages indexed (Yahoo!)
»» Link popularity
»» Webmaster tools for crawl data (Google, Yahoo!, MSN)

2. Competitive Intelligence tools

»» Google Trends (Keyword usage and fluctuations of traffic)
»» Compete, Alexa, Quantcast (provides information of competitors’ sites and
keywords, etc.)
»» Hitwise (research keywords driving to your site and competitors’ sites)
SEO Measurement 101

WHERE DO YOU BEGIN?

There is so much data out there. Where do you start?

Again, here is a quote that sheds some light on this:

Data might be Sounds a little too simple, right? Well, Jim is exactly right. Don’t get bogged down
by all of the data that is available. Focus on the data that helps you accomplish
interesting, but in a your business’s goals, and don’t worry or spend time on the rest.

useless context, it is a Start by identifying your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A runner might
measure how many miles they’ve run in a week. That info might be interesting but
waste of time. otherwise useless to a professional football player. It’s imperative that you find out
what your business’s unique KPIs are. There are many common KPI’s that many
businesses measure, but the mix of which of those are important to you may differ
from businesses in another industry or even your competitor.

Commonly used KPIs:

»» Keyword Conversion Rate (revenue per search)

»» Entry Page Conversion Rate (leads per search)
»» Conversions (leads, orders, subscriptions)
»» Bounce Rate (keyword or entry page)
»» Average Time on Site (keyword or entry page)

Start with any or all of those. But use them with the right perspective: improving
your site and making money. If they don’t help with both of those, the data might
be interesting, but in a useless context, it is a waste of time.

ADVANCED METRICS AND STRATEGIES

At this point, we’ve built a pretty good base for describing what SEO is and
why you should be doing it. Now, let’s go through some of the most important
strategies that you should consider incorporating into your search marketing—
again, only if you think they will affect your bottom line.
SEO Measurement 101

1. Paid Search Detection

While we’re talking about advanced ways to measure search marketing, this is
actually one of the more basic things you can do.
SEO Measurement 101

Setting up Paid Search Detection allows you to see whether a search engine
referral came to your site through paid search or from a natural keyword.

2. Natural Search Keywords

Use this report to identify high-value keywords to determine where to focus
resources and make adjustments to your keyword strategy.

In the example above, a report run from the Food Network, they found that the
“Green Bean Casserole” video was being searched for more and generated four
times the average video plays than the “Green Jello.”
SEO Measurement 101

3. Natural Search Entry Pages

Not everyone knows that with search engines, it’s actually Web pages that
get ranked, not Web sites. By pulling a Natural Search Entry Page report, you
can discover the gaps in your keyword strategy by easily identifying high-value
entry pages via natural search. Also, you can see which landing pages retain
visitors best, and which ones they’re fleeing from once they’re there.

It’s actually Web While, as they say, “there’s always room for Jello,” Food Network may want to think
twice about having it as subject for an entry page. As this report shows, the Green
pages that get Jello video had an unusually high bounce rate. In the case of this report, the Green
Bean Casserole and Chocolate seem to be topics that are keeping visitors around.
ranked, not Web sites.
SEO Measurement 101

4. Leverage Keyword data

Comparing your keyword data from internal site search, natural search and
paid search provides insights into the gaps in your search marketing efforts. In
other words, find the keywords that are not generating conversions in all three
of your search channels.

When you’re conscious about how people are finding your pages, you can start fixing
old ones or creating new ones with a goal in mind—already knowing what works.
SEO Measurement 101

5. Executive Dashboards
With dashboards, you can get quick insight into your SEO performance by
tracking the critical points in an easy-to-absorb format.

These dashboards are also a very powerful communication tool within your business.
Executives love the quick, visual bites of information that the dashboards present.
SEO Measurement 101

ADDITIONAL ADVANCED REPORTS

Here are some additional reports that Scripps Network and Food Network found
useful in their SEO efforts:

1. Keyword Portfolios
Use keyword classifications to logically group your keywords to make analysis
more effective and actionable.

See the above examples: Keyword category, Branded keywords and Keyword
priority reports. With these different groupings of keywords, a marketer can see
exactly how they’re working and know better what to do with them going forward.
SEO Measurement 101

2. Backlinks Report
A backlinks (or inbound links) report, based on filtered referrals, can give
insight into your existing link popularity strategy.

Know who’s helping build your ‘trust’ ranking as well as who is driving traffic to
your site. In this backlinks report, you can see that techcrunch.com is generating
the most conversions.

3. Attribution Tracking: Campaign Stacking

Success allocation allows you to accurately measure and understand the total
impact (monetarily) of your SEO campaigns. Think of it like this:
SEO Measurement 101

Your reports always Before, you knew what the paid search term was right before the sale. Of course
that is useful information. But how much more useful is it to know that that same
need to be providing customer had natural searches of “notebooks” and “Macbook” in addition to their
“Macbook Pro” sale? Is that useful information to you next time you bid for your
actionable insight. paid search? Absolutely.

Remember, a report simply looking cool is not good enough. Your reports always
need to be providing actionable insight.

FOOD NETWORK CASE STUDY

Scripps Network is the parent company to a group of different cable networks.
Among them, the Food Network is very well known, as is HGTV, but few know that
there are several more networks that are part of the Scripps Networks family:
SEO Measurement 101

When Scripps Network wanted to improve its SEO, there were already some
challenges that needed to be addressed:

»» Understanding SEO KPIs and metrics available. Initially, they thought it was
just searches. But there was much more to know besides that.
»» Increase high quality referrals from organic search.
»» Improve visibility and rankings for non-branded keywords. While the Food
Network was pulling well on its branded keywords, its competition, Scripps felt,
was getting too much traffic from the non-branded keywords.
»» A lack of process for SEO. At the time SEO was at the end of the marketing
process so it wasn’t being effectively integrated into the marketing strategy.

Given that set of challenges, here are the solutions that Scripps Network came up
with for addressing the challenges:

»» They leveraged custom reports to accurately measure performance and true

SEO success. Once they understood what they wanted to measure, and what
constituted a success (page views, video plays, etc.), then they could start
looking at page views per search or video plays per search. They realized there
were some keywords that were driving a lot of content consumption that they
were not being taken advantage of.
»» Scripps Network identified optimization opportunities for top performing entry
pages and keywords. For instance, they began to find that the recipe pages on
Food Network were some of the most valuable pages. People would go to the
recipe page, print the recipe, then want to know more about the show where it
was featured or the chef that featured it, etc. So, a new emphasis was put on
optimizing the recipe pages going forward.
»» From a process standpoint, Scripps moved their SEO team from the Internet
marketing group and placed them in the production team. What this did
was move what they did to the beginning of the process where they could
influence the content, rather than at the end where so much was set in stone
and harder to change at that point. Then, of course, the SEO team would also
review how the pages performed after the change.
SEO Measurement 101

Due to these changes and implemented solutions, here were the results (as of
December, 2008):

»» Top search engine rankings for non-branded keywords

»» 39% increase in monthly traffic from natural search from December ’07 to
December ‘08

»» SEO drove 27% of page views compared to 17% the year before
»» Over 4 million monthly video views from natural search
SEO Measurement 101

CONCLUSION
There is a lot more to consider optimizing your search engine marketing. Here are
the strategies you should be thinking about going forward:

»» Utilize Multiple Sources of Data. Get a better understanding of how people are
getting to different pages of your site and what they’re doing when they’re there
»» Identify Your Most Important Metrics (KPIs)
»» Optimize towards true company objectives. Remember success is not about
traffic, it’s about conversion and making revenue
»» Advanced Reports = Actionable Insight

***

If you would like to learn more Omniture’s analytics and acquisition-based

solutions, contact your Omniture Account Manager or call (866) 923-7309.
For internationally-located businesses, visit Omniture.com for the office
information nearest you.
SEO Measurement 101

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SEO Measurement 101

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