admin

Better seo reporting and winning over stakeholders

What I have learnt over the last 12+ years of doing SEO inhouse and in agencies I shared today at the SEOBenelux lunch webinar

  1. Better seo reporting and winning over stakeholders SEO Benelux – Friday 10th April 2020
  2. Who am I? I’ve been doing SEO for over 12 years having worked at ebay classified group (2dehands.be/Marktplaats.nl) as SEO Product Manager, director of strategy at BlueGlass, Global SEO Manager for Schibsted Media Group and now Global Search & Traffic Manager for Danone. Follow me on Twitter @Davidiwanow
  3. Brands I’ve worked with?
  4. Stop vomiting up GA stats without context
  5. How do I feel reading this reports?
  6. Put your traffic stats into context ● What was the YoY change? ○ Does it take into account Leap Year? ○ Does it take into account more/less weekends ● What is the trend towards EOY targets? ○ Let’s hope you have a target with a stretch goal bonus ● Were we expecting the numbers to change? ○ Did we do something? ○ Did we outperform or underperform? ● Average engagement increased did we trigger something to influence this? ○ Did we change cookie lifetime? ○ Did we add related articles widgets? ○ Did we improve internal linking? ○ Did we make the website load faster?
  7. Do your industry updates add any value? *Same report different sites
  8. Are they just space fillers? Or excuses?
  9. Bert is to blame….
  10. Yep was medic update related…
  11. Priority shouldn’t be given to rank over volume!
  12. What I see when ranked keyword has no traffic?
  13. What is the relevance of keywords tracked?
  14. Lazy page speed recommendations? Site speed again is still underperforming at 11/100 for the mobile site (+9 MoM). Recommendations on how to fix mobile speed can be found here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftravel-network.co
  15. More actionable page speed recommendations
  16. More actionable page speed recommendations
  17. More actionable page speed recommendations
  18. More actionable page speed recommendations
  19. More actionable page speed recommendations
  20. If metrics move this much maybe explain why?
  21. What I’m seeing in the report….
  22. Do you understand their business or trends??
  23. Traffic was down at Christmas & NYEs?
  24. Please stop the static excel file reports
  25. But the clients want it? Ask the following… ● Do they value more efficient use of your time/budget to do SEO? ● Do they want almost real-time reporting? ● Can you track if they look at the reports in excel (no but you can in GDS/Tableau) ● Can you update the reports if there is an error ie Wrong data range/profile used ● Are they paying you for reporting or SEO?
  26. Excel reports should have stopped years ago
  27. Are you on top of your reporting?
  28. Are you on top of your reporting? Still sure?
  29. Wednesday 5th June 2019
  30. How late are your monthly reports?
  31. Can you prioritize something 3-4 weeks later?
  32. Are you making good use of your budgets?
  33. What tasks I’m cutting from your budget ☑ Crawlability ☑ Site speed ☑ Quick wins ☑ Monthly reporting
  34. What tasks I’m cutting from your budget ☑ Crawlability ☑ Quick wins ☑ Monthly reporting
  35. What tasks I’m cutting from your budget ☑ Crawlability ☑ Site speed ☑ Gap analysis ☑ Quick wins ☑ Keyword rankings ☑ Link audits ☑ Monthly reporting
  36. Automated reports are almost real-time & free
  37. Takeaway notes? ❏ Stop using GA data without context ❏ Ensure industry news adds value and is relevant ❏ Focus on keywords driving traffic not vanity rankings ❏ Make share of voice tracking useful and ranking is possible ❏ Make recommendations actionable ❏ Explain why metrics moved significantly ❏ Stop with manual excel reporting ❏ Ensure your monthly reports don’t take 3-4 weeks ❏ Automate your manual tasks and focus on insights/strategy
  38. Winning over stakeholders
  39. What are common requests ● More acronyms you don’t explain ● Make up data points to get budget ● Reporting ● Better reporting ● Analysis ● Analysis of the analysis ● Forecasting ● Validation of the forecasting ● Less bullshit
  40. Don’t make up data, it’s easy to check
  41. Please don’t do death by acronyms
  42. Don’t try and confuse stakeholders with acronyms
  43. Agree what are the top line metrics?
  44. The report starts out simple enough
  45. Then quality metrics get added
  46. Then traffic channels get questioned for value
  47. Very soon reporting becomes this….
  48. Sometimes you need to draw a line in the sand…
  49. Or the report can become overloaded with metrics
  50. What did the stakeholder want?
  51. What stage of forecasting is required? Stages Metric changes Measurement Workload? Basic forecasting Traffic uplift Google Analytics Low Standard forecasting Rank & CTR improvement Impression uplift > more clicks Traffic uplift Google Analytics Google Search Console Moderate Business forecasting Rank & CTR improvement Impression uplift > more clicks Traffic uplift Increased sales/conversions Google Analytics Google Search Console Moderate to High
  52. Ensure you have validated with their analysts
  53. Even with data sometimes you will lose out…
  54. Don’t overuse the fear card… it loses impact…
  55. Everyone remember #mobilegeddon? Source: SEJ
  56. What was that Google algorithm update excuse?
  57. Ensure you have an agreed strategy & metrics
  58. Takeaway notes? ❏ Don’t try and confuse and mislead stakeholders ❏ Focus on top level metrics ❏ Understand stage of forecasting required ❏ Validate your data with your analysts ❏ Accept your business case will sometimes lose out ❏ Don’t overuse the fear card! ❏ Don’t overuse the Google algorithm update ❏ Ensure you have an agreed strategy & metrics
  59. Dank je wel
  60. April 17th 2020 Google Analytics myth busting Arnout Hellemans

Related