An analytics nerd’s guide to modern SEO metrics — Brianna Anderson // BEAST Analytics

Quotes

• “I started with Google Ads and that morphed into search engine optimization then I started finding patterns within PPC and SEO and finding the opportunities within those patterns to create better strategies for people.” -Brianna

• “When Google is looking at your search performance, they are looking at a combination of things like how many people are coming at your website, how long are they staying on your website, are they getting that information. It doesnt really matter where they come from, whether social media, organic search, or paid search. If they come to your website and they get the information they need, also for a specific query, Google is still taking a tally of that.” -Brianna

• “Lets just get this out of the way, Google does not always tell the whole truth. They want you to know what they want you to know, they hold some of their cards close to their chest and they do that on purpose. At the same time, they dont know everything that impacts their algorithms.” -Brianna

• “Google has moved closer and closer to make their ads look like organic content. It is something that they walked a fine line trying to figure out what is the way that they can make the ad perform the best while still somewhat differentiating between the ads and the organic listing.” -Brianna

• “Everything has to go back to the search intent and knowing where each of your keywords falls within the intent. So if you are a camera brand and you want to show up for the keyword camera, if people look that up, they are probably not looking to buy a camera right then and there and so if you have a no-click SERP but it is still branded, that is going to be of value so you can look at things like impressions.” -Brianna

• “Now, if a keyword is a little more specific like how to buy a camera or where to buy a camera, that has a little more intent in it so the impression in the no-click SERP while it may be beneficial, it is not as beneficial.” -Brianna

• “To evaluate if you are actually making a business impact, you look at your revenues. You cant rely on one metric or even two.” -Brianna

• “So its a brave new world for SEOs. Normally SEOs sit somewhere in between the brand team and the performance marketing team. The moral of the story is, there is the performance marketing angle is going to be looked at on a direct response basis.” -Ben

• “The brand campaign is totally different. Hey, we did something. There is no click. We just talked about our brand in these places, there is no way to attribute some sense of value but the business is doing better so we get credit for it and SEO is now somewhere in between and the problem is, this is all happening at once.” -Ben

• “When I start a strategy with a client, I always start with the highest ROIP keywords. You have to prove that value upfront I think and then you work your way up the funnel.” -Brianna

• “At the end of the day, all of our marketing should be working together. It is going to take multiple touches to get someone to convert. You cant attribute everything to one channel and you shouldnt expect SEO to work that way either.” -Brianna

• “Ilike to look at the behavior flow. So if you go to strictly organic and put in the secondary dimension of the keyword in Google Analytics, you can see which keywords are driving people to actually interact with your website and go through it. I can see intent from that chart.” -Brianna

• “If they end up five pages deep. Sometimes that can be a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. This is why I say you cannot just look at one metric because if you see people go five pages deep, that is great unless theyre lost.” -Brianna

• “For me, I always start with that behavior flow, and then I go out to the numbered organic entrances to the page then from there the bounce rate, time on page, and time on-site, and then what pages they go to afterward.” -Brianna