Top 5 SEO data pitfalls to avoid for accurate analysis and reporting

In the event you work in advertising or SEO, taking a look at knowledge is crucial to your day-to-day.

You’re most likely analyzing efficiency to see the outcomes of your efforts, assessing the influence of Google’s newest replace, or engaged on a case examine to share with the website positioning neighborhood.

However when coping with website positioning knowledge, issues should not all the time what they appear. The way you understand knowledge on a excessive degree could not essentially be legitimate when you dig deeper.

You have to be thorough, or your assumptions or insights that regarded stable initially could also be inaccurate. 

All through my profession, I’ve seen many pitfalls that advertising and website positioning professionals can encounter when coping with knowledge. Under are 5 examples.

1. Misunderstanding the connection between impressions and rankings

Understanding the connection between impressions and web site’s common rating metric can prevent loads of time once you’re reporting on SEO performance. 

Did your web site impressions enhance and the common rating metric lower? Some purchasers are fixated on this metric and shall be very involved that the common rating metric is performing “poorly.” However is it?

Let’s take a simplistic instance to clarify the relation between impressions and common rating. 

Your web site will get:

• One impression from key phrase X rating 2
• One impression from key phrase Y rating 1
• One impression from key phrase Z rating 3

On this case, the common rating is (6/3 = 2).

Now your web site begins to rank for a brand new key phrase, and now you’re additionally getting:

• One impression for key phrase A rating tenth

That appears like an accomplishment, however at first look, for the common rating metric, not a lot as a result of your common rating is now decrease (16/4 = 4). 

So, whereas the common rating metric seems to have worsened, it doesn’t essentially signify a adverse consequence as a result of your web site is beginning to rank for extra key phrases. Over time, the rankings for these key phrases can additional enhance. Not to mention that rating tenth for a brand new key phrase is an effective place to be.

So, it’s fairly regular that your common rating will increase when impressions enhance, too. It’s not a foul signal and doesn’t imply you’re performing any much less!

Tip: Take into consideration the connection between impressions and CTR. When impressions enhance (a superb factor), CTR could lower.

Dig deeper: How to make better SEO reports for the C-suite

2. Evaluating apples to oranges

It’s frequent to indicate website positioning enchancment by evaluating efficiency month-over-month. Whereas it is a cheap method, there are conditions the place such comparisons are inadequate and must be accompanied by evaluating the efficiency of the identical month of the earlier yr. Right here’s why.

In the event you evaluate January 2023 to December 2022, the outcomes may be an enchancment in site visitors and efficiency. For a lot of companies, particularly B2B, December (and typically November) are low seasonality months, they usually face a pure dip in efficiency throughout these months.

Subsequently, evaluating January 2023 to December 2022 can generally present efficiency enchancment when truly there will not be any, it’s only a “return to regular.”

So saying one thing like “we’ve in contrast the Jan. 1 to April 30 interval vs. the earlier interval, we’ve seen a rise in efficiency by 60%” could also be inaccurate. 

On this scenario, you could wish to:

• Evaluate Jan. 1 to April 30 of this yr vs. final yr.
• Use an automatic software/script that helps you contemplate the seasonality fluctuations.

3. Utilizing self-importance metrics

I get it. There’s loads of strain on SEOs to indicate outcomes and enchancment. Nonetheless, this doesn’t imply reporting on self-importance metrics that don’t actually matter. 

As an example, presenting the amount of inner or exterior hyperlinks created as an “enchancment” metric is an invalid method to reporting website positioning actions. 

“X% enchancment in exterior hyperlinks” shouldn’t be a sound assertion. 

Additionally, a rise in one thing doesn’t essentially imply “enchancment.” Extra shouldn’t be all the time extra. Is a rise in key phrase density of an article an “enchancment,” or does it make it spammy? 

Dig deeper: SEO KPIs to track and measure SEO success

4. Reporting migrations as an website positioning win

Website migrations are a standard website positioning job, and having a profitable migration undertaking is an expectation, not a bonus. It’s frequent for SEOs emigrate domains/web sites and report on the efficiency afterward.

As soon as an internet site is migrated/redirected to the primary area, many SEOs are inclined to make the error of contemplating the following enhance in site visitors to the first area as a definitive website positioning success.

It is essential to acknowledge that this enhance is essentially anticipated, on condition that quite a few URLs and their related site visitors have been redirected to the primary area. Is that this actually a win? 

As an alternative, report the share of site visitors efficiently transferred to the primary area. It could take time to settle, however exhibiting how a lot of the unique site visitors was preserved is the true website positioning win.

5. Failing to report website positioning’s worth and attribution

website positioning is an advanced channel. In contrast to PPC the place you’ll be able to have a transparent motion to ROI path and conversions are nicely attributed, in website positioning, we typically have to dig deeper to indicate the true worth the channel is bringing.

For instance, in a earlier function, the corporate ran only a few PPC advertisements, and the web site’s predominant/greatest site visitors supply was website positioning. 

At first look, every part appears to be clear and simple. However once I began taking a look at knowledge, I observed a giant share of site visitors (and due to this fact conversions) was attributed to “direct site visitors.” I received curious, so I drew a graph evaluating direct and website positioning site visitors, it got here out trying like this:

You possibly can see how the website positioning site visitors straight impacts the direct site visitors. They go hand in hand in that when website positioning will increase, direct site visitors will increase – and vice versa. 

If that is so for what you are promoting, it’s price mentioning in your month-to-month website positioning reporting.

One other factor to verify is the Attribution studies in GA4 below the Promoting part. You possibly can then click on on both Mannequin comparability or Conversion paths. Each gives you insights into how the website positioning channel contributes to or helps different channels’ efficiency. That is one other factor price reporting on.

Try for correct website positioning knowledge evaluation and reporting

We should be thorough when taking a look at website positioning knowledge for auditing or reporting functions.

Making conclusions based mostly on the information you see first is inaccurate, would possibly put you in a good spot along with your purchasers, and you may probably miss out on website positioning wins that go unnoticed.

Nonetheless, we wish to steadiness being thorough and getting caught in evaluation paralysis. Extra knowledge shouldn’t be all the time a superb factor. The most effective method is to:

• Outline the query you wish to reply with knowledge.
• Guarantee it’s legitimate and invaluable.
• Begin your knowledge journey from there.

Lastly, all the time double-check your numbers, assumptions and conclusions. Keep in mind, there’s extra to knowledge than meets the attention!