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SEO SOSDigital Marketing

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Table ofContents01

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Introduction Persona DevelopmentCompetitor ResearchTech SEO AuditContent AuditMobile Optimisation

Google Analytics TrackingSite ManagementUseful Tools (TBC)Tracking Keyword PerformanceConclusion

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Introduction.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting up or are a well established business with a multinational presence, SEO can be daunting. The Google search algorithm changes constantly, with over 200 different factors that are weighted differently depending on the industry you’re in.

Suddenly losing traffic or dropping rankings without explanation can be incredibly frustrating, and without the right expertise, it can also be difficult to resolve. That’s why we have put together this Whitepaper - for anyone sending out an SEO SOS - and wants help understanding more about their SEO performance.

This Whitepaper aims to breakdown the different processes you need to go through to ensure your SEO campaign is structured correctly from the outset and how you can more accurately track performance.

We hope you find it useful, but if your SEO SOS continues, We Influence are here to help.

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Persona Development.

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Persona Development.It seems like an obvious consideration, but you’d be surprised how many people overlook this part of a campaign. It’s very difficult to implement any marketing campaign if you don’t know exactly who you’re targeting - SEO is no different.

That’s why we always recommend the development of target personas. More specifically, a bullseye persona document.

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What is a BullseyePersona Approach?

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Simply put, a bullseye persona approach requires the development of two different personas.

BULLSEYE PERSONA ADVANCED SEGMENT

The ideal customer; the one that shops regularly with the brand.

The occasional shopper; the persona that could shop more frequently and spend more when targeted with the right marketing messaging.

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UKConsumers

Advanced segment (customers who occasionally shop with

the brand)

Bullseye persona (key customer, regularly shops

with brand)

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BACKGROUND What is the story that would bring them to your website• Students or professionals• Homeowner or renter• Occupation• Character or personality traits?

DEMOGRAPHICS• Age• Gender• Income• Education?

IDENTIFIERS What are the identifiers that make this persona unique • Where do they spend their free time• Are they tech-savvy• Do they drink in gin bars at the weekend• Conservative or liberal• Conformist or non-conformist?

COMMON ISSUES What are the common issues these people face • Struggle to find clothes that fit online• Can’t find a reputable supplier for a job they need• Miss having a designated account manager• Struggle to find the information they need online• Struggle to find retailers with flexible delivery options?

USER NEEDS What are the needs of this persona that your brand can fulfil• Do they want a supplier with credibility or specific accreditations• Do they need a brand with 24/7 customer service• Do they need to see the fit of clothes through video instead of

imagery• Do they need early access to exclusive brand content?

USER CHALLENGES What are the challenges that represent an obstacle to their needs• Lack of experience in a supplier• Lack of credibility in a brand or retailer • Inflexible delivery or payment options

How Do You Create A Bullseye Persona?

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BUYING BEHAVIOUR How does this person use online media• Research on mobile, convert on desktop• Compulsive purchaser• Extensive research prior to investment in a service or product• Follows trends on social media• Reads reviews before purchasing• Follows specific publications or influential individuals online?

GOALS What are the ultimate goals of this persona that your brand can help them achieve• Great range of products at low prices• Flexible delivery and payment options • Better quality of product than competitors can offer • Speed, comfort and efficiency of service• Product supplied on time• Ability to meet a predefined schedule for a product or service?

ELEVATOR PITCH With the above information established, you need to produce an elevator pitch:• How is your business unique• How is your business able to cater to the specific needs of this

persona in a way that competitors can’t?

This elevator pitch should sit at the centre of your online marketing campaigns and influence the decisions you make and the messaging you use. In regards to SEO, this elevator pitch and persona document should inform your keyword research, which we’ll come onto next.

How Do You Create A Bullseye Persona?

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Where do I get the data to create these personas?Established businesses will already have a clearer idea of specifically who they want to target as part of their SEO and other search marketing campaigns. For startups or emerging businesses, a more data driven approach is required.

Here are some of the most useful sources of data that you can use for your persona document:

Twitter Analytics

Google AdWords / Google Search Console / Google Analytics / Google Trends / Google Shopping Insights / Google Consumer Barometer

Facebook Business Manager / Facebook Page Insights

LinkedIn Website Demographics

YouGov

ONS (Office for National Statistics)

Existing industry research or whitepapers

Online surveys (SurveyMonkey, OnePoll)

Live chat logs

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Competitor Research.

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Competitor Research.It’s easy to benchmark yourself against competitors that are either way ahead of you in terms of organic visibility, or conversely, competitors that you are already much stronger than.

You should also use your persona document to inform this aspect of your SEO campaign. For example, if you are a fashion retailer specialising in quality occasionwear and your bullseye persona is a young professional with mid-level disposable income and a lot of events to attend, it makes no sense to benchmark yourself against a fast fashion retailer.

Inevitably there will be some crossover, but ultimately this can distract your brand from focusing on the specific keywords and keyword groups that are going to make your organic channel more profitable.

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How do I identifythe right competitors?

Established businesses have an advantage here as industry knowledge will inevitably help identify the most relevant competitors to benchmark performance against and to inform the strategic elements of an SEO campaign.

However, for startups and emerging businesses, it can be a more challenging prospect. Luckily there are a number of online tools that can help.

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SEMrush.

SEMrush is particularly useful tool when it comes to SEO, but one of the most useful features is its ‘Competitors’ feature (found in the ‘Organic Research’ navigation dropdown).

The report lists sites that your domain is competing against in Google’s top 20 organic search results. This structured approach to identifying competitors helps you understand exactly who you are competing with in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the keywords that matter to your business.

The ‘Common Keywords’ report will also prove very useful when it comes to keyword research, but more on that later.

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SearchMetrics.

Similar to SEMrush, SearchMetrics will identify competitors for you based on your existing search visibility and who you are sharing SERP space with for relevant keywords.

The traffic value and shared keyword reports in SearchMetrics can also be very useful for benchmarking performance against relevant keywords and filtering out the competitors that aren’t visible for the keywords you want to target.

A benefit of SearchMetrics against SEMRush is that you’ll be able to view a number of competitors without having to invest in a paid license.

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Does it matter if I get my competitors wrong?

In a word, yes.

If you don’t benchmark your site against relevant competitors then it will become very hard to effectively track the performance and profitability of your SEO campaign.

Identifying the correct competitors also has a significant impact on keyword research, so getting it wrong means you could start chasing keywords that aren’t going to drive converting traffic to your website. This can waste time, resources and cost your business money.

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KeywordStrategy.

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KeywordStrategy.Although establishing the correct personas and competitors are important, they arguably don’t have the same impact that keyword strategy will have on your SEO campaign.

It is something that is easy to get wrong, and many businesses that are struggling with their SEO performance may well find that an inaccurate or incomplete keyword strategy is one of the main issues holding them back.

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Keyword Strategy, Not Keyword Research.

Let’s establish the difference between these two things; it’s subtle but important.

Keyword research can be restrictive if you only think of it in terms of identifying keyword opportunities and mapping those opportunities to target landing pages.

A keyword strategy is inherently more expansive; a larger piece of work that incorporates keyword research but then elevates it by mapping out user intent, seasonal search trends, longtail opportunities and more to create an overarching strategy that will touch every facet of your SEO campaign. It’s a keyword strategy that we’re talking about here.

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How Do I Develop A Keyword Strategy?

Your keyword research begins by harvesting all the keywords you and your competitors are ranking for, or could be ranking for. You can use tools like Search Console, AdWords Keyword Planner, SEMRush and SearchMetrics to help you compile this list.

Harvest

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Filter & Prioritise. Mapping.

Using a number of different data sources for the keyword harvest will create duplicates, so make sure you filter those out. These tools are also likely to pull through irrelevant keywords, so try and remove as many of those as possible.

You’ll then want to run through this list and assign a priority level to each keyword - low, medium or high. When you’re doing this, don’t just consider search volume and instead think about the commerciality of the keyword. If you know a particular brand converts very well in your niche, then it should be considered a higher priority than a different brand with more search volume that doesn’t sell.

The next stage is to map out a target landing page and a position in the buying cycle against this sanitised keyword list. The landing page can potentially be pulled from Search Console if it’s a keyword your site is already ranking for, but you might have to assign it manually.

An IF / OR formula in Excel can be used to automate the process of classifying a keyword against a particular part of the buying cycle (awareness, consideration, decision), but you might also need to do this yourself.

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Strategise.

By using the ‘Competition’ metric from SEMrush and a number of other considerations (SERP features, level of competition, search volume), you can assign each keyword a label defining where it will sit in your broader SEO strategy. These labels can include:

Attack

Keyword group/s where you don’t currently have visibility that you want to expand into quickly.

Future Opportunity

Keyword group/s where you don’t currently have visibility that you want to expand into once you have improved the authority and technical setup of your website.

Longtail Opportunity

Research based keywords that are unlikely to drive significant traffic in isolation, but combined make up a significant portion of your search landscape.

Defend

Keyword group/s where you do have visibility that you don’t want to lose as you ‘attack’ new areas.

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Seasonal Search Volume.

Using the sanitised keyword list you now have, you can use the monthly search volume export option in Google AdWords to pull through volume for these keywords on a month by month basis.

If you’ve mapped the keywords against a specific landing page, you can then group the keywords into a structure that follows the category and subcategory hierarchy of your website.

Apply conditional formatting in Excel or Google Sheets, and you should be presented with a chart that clearly shows how search volume fluctuates across each month for the target categories and subcategories on your website. This will make it a lot easier to focus activity on specific areas of your website during key seasonal trading periods.

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What do I do with this Keyword Strategy?

If you’ve been able to replicate some of the steps outlined here, you should have a working document that will allow you to target specific keywords and keyword groups based on how much of an opportunity they represent - both in terms of ranking and revenue.

You will also be able to action specific tasks to specific keywords based on their classification. For example, if you have a ‘longtail opportunity’ keyword it’s likely to be a question-based search query that could be targeted as part of an editorial strategy. If it’s an ‘attack’ keyword, you can go about optimising the on page content for the target landing page, improving internal linking and diverting more external authority to that page.

Lastly, you will have a clear roadmap showing seasonal trends that will dictate at what times of year it becomes a higher priority for you to be visible for a specific set of keywords.

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Tech Audit.

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If your SEO performance isn’t where you want it do be, one of the first things you need to do is a comprehensive tech audit.

This is fundamental if you want to be confident that your site is compliant with SEO best practice and is as efficient as possible when the search engines crawl and index it.

Having a site that isn’t well technically optimised can severely impact your SEO performance, and it will make your organic channel less profitable. To effectively audit the technical efficiency of your website, it is necessary to have access to a tool such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl as well as Google Analytics and Search Console.

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An effective audit should analyse the following areas of your website:

It should also look at the tracking on your website and Search Console configuration, which will be referenced in Chapter 07 of this Whitepaper.

• URLs• Site Architecture, Crawling & Indexing• Site Speed• Canonicalisation• Mobile Friendly Compliance• Schema• On Page Optimisation

StructureIs the folder structure of your URLs optimised to improve keyword performance and usability?

Trailing SlashAre you consistently using trailing slashes (or not using them) across all indexable URLs?

ParametersAre any URL parameters being correctly handled in Google Search Console to avoid creating duplicate content?

Internal Anchor TextIs internal anchor text descriptive, relevant and structured in a user friendly way?

BreadcrumbsAre navigational breadcrumbs present on every page deeper than the homepage and is every crumb linking back to the correct folder level?

SitemapsAre there correctly formatted XML, HTML, image and video sitemaps on the website?

RedirectsAre there any internal redirects that could be causing crawling inefficiencies or redirect loops?

Error pagesAre all error pages correctly returning a 404 status code or any 503 server errors that require immediate investigation?

URLS Site Architecture, Crawling & Indexing

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Tool TestHave you tested the site on the tools available from Google, GTMetrix and Pingdom to identify any issues slowing page load time?

Page File SizeIs the file size of important pages reasonable and are they set up to encourage fast rendering?

Browser CachingAre browser caching and Gzip correctly configured on the server?

CDNIs there a CDN and, if so, is it configured correctly and effectively helping to load rich media onto your webpages?

Canonical TagsAre all canonical tags referencing the absolute URL of the correct page?

PaginationAre rel=next/prev attributes correctly implemented on the site?

Mobile Friendly TestDoes the website pass Google’s Mobile Friendly test?

Mobile UsabilityAre there any mobile usability errors being flagged in Google Search Console?

ResponsivenessIs a responsive website correctly serving mobile and desktop users the best version of the website from the same URL?

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Site SpeedMobile Friendly Compliance

Canonicalisation

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Product SchemaIf it’s an ecommerce website do the product pages contain the appropriate schema, including:• Name• Brand• Price• Reviews

Social SchemaAre pages marked up with optimised social schema including Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards?

MetadataAre title tags and meta descriptions across the site optimised to target keywords and compliant with

character count and pixel width best practices?

H1 TagsDo all pages contain a relevant and optimised H1 tag?

Hidden ContentDo any pages contain hidden content that the search

engines could interpret as malicious?

Alt AttributesDo all images contain relevant Alt Text to help search engines and screen readers?

Schema On Page Optimisation

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Content Audit.

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Content Audit.

Another common issue that can be holding a website back in terms of SEO performance is that they aren’t considering how valuable (or potentially damaging) the existing content assets they have on their site are.

This is where a comprehensive content audit can be very valuable, and is something that should be done early in any SEO campaign.

As content marketing has become a bonafide trend in the last couple of years, it’s common for businesses to have invested a lot in content creation. However, unless this content has been driven by a strategic objective and effectively monitored, a website can find itself loaded with a huge surplus of content without exactly understanding why it exists or what it is doing.

A content audit should remedy this by highlighting what content pieces perform well in terms of traffic acquisition, brand engagement and revenue and which content assets aren’t really adding value and are even potentially holding your site back.

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Building A Content Audit.

The first step in the content audit process is to pull a list of all the URLs you want to analyse as part of your review. In this example, let’s say we’re looking at a website with a content hub loaded with buying guides, content campaigns and news articles. There are a couple of ways you can do this.

The simplest way is to use Google Analytics and export a list of URLs filtered by the identifier you want to look at (/blog/, /resources/, /guides/ etc.). This is useful because you can also export engagement and traffic acquisition data.

However, there is a risk that if any of your pages have not had any traffic then they won’t be pulled through in

this list. For this reason we also recommend you use a tool like DeepCrawl or Screaming Frog that will crawl all URLs in your sitemap. You can also combine these tools with Google Analytics and Search Console to pull though useful contextual data about how well the posts are performing in terms of traffic acquisition and engagement.

If for whatever reason you can’t pull the GA and Search Console data from a tool, then you can always use the handy VLOOKUP functionality to pull them through from a separate export.

Whatever method you choose, you’ll want to make sure you pull traffic from organic search lands, lands from all sources, lands from social sources as well as backlink data and social share data into the same spreadsheet. This will help give you a better all round picture of how different content pieces are performing. Exporting page titles as part of this also makes it easier to spot trends in the data at the next stage.

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Making Sense Of The Data.

When you’ve collected your data using the method outlined, you have to make sense of it to pull some actionable takeaways that can be applied to your SEO campaign.

You can do this by filtering the columns by sessions, impressions or links to see which content pieces are or are not pulling their weight. If any of the content pieces are not getting any traffic, nor have acquired any links or social shares or are generating any impressions then you will strongly want to consider whether or not they are worth keeping.

With the list filtered in the way you want, you can identify trends in what is working well. It is highly recommended that you do this for each channel because what works for organic search might not work for generating social shares or as PPC landing pages, for example.

With this done, you should have a cleaner and more valuable library of content assets, as well as a more informed content strategy that you can apply to your SEO campaigns.

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Top Tip - DataStudio.

When you’ve reached the final section of this analysis, filtering through the list manually can be useful. However, harnessing the power of Google Data Studio will allow you to analyse the data in a more informed way.

You can generate charts and trend lines to help better spot what types of content work better over different channels. In many cases you’ll find that 20% of your content is doing 80% of the work in terms of traffic acquisition and authority building. If you can spot the trends in this 20% you will be much more efficient in your future content marketing efforts.

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Mobile Optimisation.

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Mobile Optimisation.It was all the way back in November 2016 when Google first raised the spectre of mobile-first indexing. Although at this point it was described as an ‘experiment’, it made a bold statement:

“Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site.”

What this means for website owners is that Google is going to use the mobile version of your site to determine how well that site ranks. Now, more than ever, you need to have a mobile optimised website.

When Google announced that it had been testing the mobile-first index on a number of websites throughout October 2017, it came as a wake up call to many businesses that a mobile-first index was just around the corner and needed to be taken seriously.

It goes without saying that if your site isn’t optimised for mobile, that is a huge problem.

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Making SureYour Site IsMobile Optimised.

The first test to run on your site is to use the ‘Mobile-Friendly Test’ tool provided by Google:

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

This will give you a quick answer as to whether or not Google feels that your page is mobile optimised.

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Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

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Optimise Mobile User Experience.

Mobile UX is very difficult to get right, but there are a number of Google-approved best practices you can implement to make sure visitors on mobile devices get the best possible experience.

Value PropositionDisplay a prominent value proposition on the visible part of mobile landing pages.

Remove CarouselsAutomatic carousels don’t work and implementing them means that important messaging will be missed - use a static image instead.

Easy To Reach ButtonsIf there are any clickable CTAs on your mobile website make sure they are in easy-to-reach areas of the screen.

Prominent Site SearchMobile users that use the search bar are 200% more likely to convert than those that don’t - make sure your site search bar is prominent.

Limit Checkout Exit PointsWhen a mobile visitor enters your checkout page, the only way you want them to exit that page is when they’ve converted - limit exit points and other distractions to achieve this.

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UseAMP.

Structured Data On Mobile Pages.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was a project started by Google that makes pages and ads load almost instantly, creating a smooth and engaging user experience. Importantly, Google seems to preference AMP over non-AMP results on mobile devices, so utilising technology like this can help drive more mobile traffic to your site, and give users a better user experience.

There are now over 2 billion AMP pages across more than 900,000 domains being served in the search engine results pages, highlighting how important the technology is for mobile devices.

Structured data helps Google better understand the content of a page by presenting it with explicit clues about the meaning of specific elements of a page as it crawls your site.

For example, if you offer recipes on your website you can use structured data to tell Google that the page is a recipe, who the author is, the prep time, the calorific content,the ingredients and more. As well as helping Google understand the content of a page, Google can pull some of this information through to the SERPs creating organic listings that encourage a higher click through rate.

You need to make sure that consistent structured data is used across both mobile and desktop versions of your webpages. Luckily, you can easily test this with Google Structured Data Testing Tool:

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

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Other Mobile Optimisation Top Tips.

Search Console

If you’re using a separate mobile website, make sure it is claimed as a separate site in Google Search Console as this will help you get more accurate performance data. There’s also a mobile usability report in Search Console (currently only available in the old version), which provides specific insights into mobile usability issues on your website.

Fetch & Render

Use the fetch and render tool, also in Search Console, and change the device type to ‘Mobile: Smartphone’ to see how Google renders your page on mobile devices. It should be easy to see if there are any potential issues that could be impacting user experience.

Log File Analysis

This slightly more advanced technique involves analysing your log files to see how Google is crawling your website. Usually you’d expect to see the Google desktop crawler (Googlebot) responsible for 75-85% of Google crawling activity. However, if you notice that 75%-85% is coming from GoogleBot Smartphone, it’s likely that Google is shifting your site to mobile-first indexing.

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GA Tracking.

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GA Tracking.Having correct session and revenue tracking is an absolute fundamental of any SEO campaign. For that reason it is surprising to see how many businesses are making important decisions based on inaccurate data from platforms like Google Analytics.

It is incredibly important that your analytics platform is tracking correctly, and for the purposes of this whitepaper this will be referring to Google Analytics.

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Google Analytics Audit.

Here is a list of useful checks that you should use when you are setting up your Google Analytics account to ensure things run smoothly from the outset.

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Property Settings

From the ‘Tracking Info’ section of the ‘Admin’ area in Google Analytics, review the following elements:

DEFAULT URLIs this set correctly to either “HTTP” or “HTTPS”?

SEARCH CONSOLEIs your GA account linked to the correct version in Search Console (HTTP vs HTTPS)?

TRACKING INFOCheck the domain’s source code for a tracking code consistent with what you see in the admin area of Google Analytics. You can do this by using CTRL+F (CMD+F) or use a custom extraction in a crawling tool.

DATA COLLECTIONIf you plan on running remarketing campaigns, make sure you enable this option in the ‘Data Collection’ section of GA.

REFERRAL EXCLUSION LISTSThis is really important as it tells Google to exclude the sites you list from your referral traffic in Google Analytics. Not doing this can potentially cause issues with how revenue is tracked in GA. There is no standard list for referral exclusions, but it is considered best practice to exclude your own site, development versions of the domain and any payment gateways.

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View Settings

From the ‘View Settings’ section of the ‘Admin’ area in Google Analytics, review the following settings are configured correctly:

WEBSITE URLIs this set correctly to either “HTTP” or “HTTPS”?

BOT TRAFFICYou don’t want any of your session data to become inflated by bot traffic, so make sure you tick the box confirming you want Google to ‘Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders’.

SEARCH QUERY PARAMETERUse this field to define the search query parameter for the website. It sounds complicated, but it’s actually really easy. On your website, just do a search in the search bar and look for a parameter (letter=). For example: https://www.client.co.uk/catalogsearch/result/?q=blue+dress

Goal Settings

Use the ‘Goal Settings’ area of Google Analytics to configure any goals you want to track. Some of the most common goals for e-commerce websites include:

ORDER COMPLETEDThis is generally set up as a ‘Destination’ goal as you will want to set the ‘Destination’ as ‘Equal To’ whatever the subfolder is for the landing page that visitors will be taken to when they complete a purchase. You can also use this section of GA to configure your checkout funnel - the different steps a user goes through when completing a checkout. This is really important for helping identify key drop off points in your checkout process.

NEWSLETTER SIGNUPThis is generally an ‘Event’ goal as it will trigger when a visitor passes a number of conditions that you define in GA. To set up an ‘Event’ goal you will need to define a ‘Category’, ‘Action’ and a ‘Label’ that reflects the process a person would go through to sign up to a newsletter.

OTHER GOALSOther goals you can set up include the likes of completing a ‘Contact Us’ form, if a visitor chooses to ‘Read Reviews’ for a product, if someone clicks a social sharing option...there’s lots of flexibility around how you can set up goals.

CHECKING GOAL SET UPIt’s essential that you test any goals, specifically revenue tracking goals, after you have configured them. Just remember that if you are filtering out traffic from your IP address, you might need to complete the test transaction from another network.

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Filter Settings

FILTERSLeading on nicely from the previous point, you should configure any filters you want as part of the setup process for GA. Although there’s a lot you can do with filters, one of the first things to do is filter out your IP, your office IP or any other IPs that are frequently accessing the website, which aren’t customers. This is to ensure that you aren’t inflating any session or revenue metrics with internal traffic.

Channel Grouping

Under the ‘Channel Settings’ menu option here, you need to configure the ‘Channel Grouping’ settings.

CHANNEL GROUPINGEnable ‘Default Channel Grouping’ and check through the system defined defaults, ‘Direct’, ‘Organic Search’, ‘Social’, ‘Email’, ‘Affiliates’, ‘Referral’, ‘Paid Search’, ‘Display’ and ‘Other Advertising’. Depending on how you want to track your digital marketing channels in GA, you will have the option to create custom defined groups.

E-commerce Tracking

E-COMMERCE SETTINGSIf you’re an e-commerce retailer, make sure you enable e-commerce tracking here to start recording transactions and revenue in GA.

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Top Tip - GA vs CMS Test

If you’re worried that GA isn’t tracking properly there are a couple of things you need to keep an eye out for.

The first is an unexpected spike in revenue to an unexpected channel - this is most frequently the Direct or Referral channels. This is normally an indicator that something isn’t quite right.

Another great check is to export sales data for a defined period from your ecommerce platform. You can compare this to the revenue data in GA and this will help highlight if anything is very wrong in terms of revenue tracking.

Don’t expect it to be the same - but the numbers should be relatively close.

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Site Management.

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Site ManagementAnother common issue that can significantly hold back an SEO campaign is if a proper site management strategy isn’t put in place to effectively maintain the optimisation of the site.

One of the best ways to manage a site throughout an SEO campaign is to establish a process for weekly health checks. Here is a template that you can use to ensure that your site is optimised, and performing efficiently, while SEO activity is ongoing.

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Search Console.

Crawl Errors How many crawl errors is Google flagging in Search Console? If the number spikes then you have a problem.

Indexed Pages In Sitemap Does the number of indexed pages correlate with what is in the sitemap? Any big disparities will need investigating.

Index Status How many pages does Google have in the index for your website?

Links To Site How many indexed links is Google finding that are pointing to your site?

HTML Improvements What is the number of HTML improvements that Google is showing in Search Console? You will want to fix these as soon as possible.

Structured Data Errors If you’ve got markup on your page, is Google telling you there are any errors? This might impact how your pages appear in the SERPs.

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Google Analytics.

Organic Visits A weekly record of how many organic sessions are coming in each week to help you identify trends.

Organic Revenue How much revenue is being assigned to the organic channel in GA?

Organic Transactions How many transactions are being tracked in GA each week?

Organic Conversion RateWhat is the weekly conversion rate for organic traffic? Does this go down as organic sessions goes up? This could suggest good non-brand organic growth.

Organic Bounce Rate What is the bounce rate for organic traffic? If you notice a high bounce rate for a page getting lots of organic sessions, you may need to better optimise it for user intent based on the queries it is ranking for.

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Tools & Tool Setup.

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Tools & Tool Setup.There’s no getting away from it, tools are a great way to improve and monitor SEO performance, as well as providing useful strategic insight. Unless you have access to a certain suite of tools, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to understand the full scope of potential that your site has.

Here is a range of tools used at We Influence, and how they could help you improve your overall SEO performance. These will be split into free and paid for tools along with a brief explanation of each.

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Free Tools

Google Analytics Use to track the performance of traffic on your website focusing on acquisition, engagement and conversion metrics.

Search Console Use to monitor technical issues (crawl budget, crawl errors, indexed pages, HTML improvements, schema implementation) on your website and to look at keyword performance.

Google Keyword Planner A tool that can be used for keyword research to help you identify what queries you want your site to be visible for.

Google Data StudioUse to create graphs and charts that can be particularly useful for SEO reporting.

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Free Tools

Google Trends Another tool created by Google that allows you to look at trends in keyword usage. For example, you could use it to find during which month each year search volume spikes for a particular keyword.

Google Chrome DevTools This is a set of web developer tools that allow you to diagnose technical issues, review HTTP header status and analyse site speed performance.

Answer The Public Question-based keyword research tool that can help provide topics for editorial or FAQ based content.

Ayima Redirect Path (Plugin)A Chrome extension that allows you to view the redirect status and redirect path for the URL you are visiting.

Web Developer (Plugin)This is another free Chrome extension that allows you to test various technical elements of your website. You can take a look at your site with JavaScript disabled, view headers, image alt text and look at all the links contained within a page and much more.

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Paid For ToolsDeepCrawl DeepCrawl is an excellent enterprise crawling software that crawls your website and identifies technical issues that are likely to be impacting your SEO performance. These crawls can be scheduled on a regular basis, allowing you to see how errors have increased or decreased between crawls.

Screaming Frog Screaming Frog is another crawling tool that is more useful for analysing specific parts of your website in isolation. For example, if you need to crawl a specific category on your site, or crawl all products, then Screaming Frog can be particularly useful.

SEMrush / Sistrix / SearchMetricsThese enterprise level tools are the SEO equivalent of Swiss army knives. Functionality ranges from keyword tracking to backlink gap analysis, organic visibility scoring, SERP feature analysis, PPC keyword visibility and much more.

AHREFS / OSE / Majestic Each of these tools are for backlink research. They allow you to review the links that are pointing back to your site or a competitor. This information can be fed into your own content strategy as you will be able to see what type of content is attracting links for competitors.

AWR / SEO Monitor / AccuRankerThese are all keyword tracking tools that allow you to closely monitor a select set of target keywords for your site and competitors. Depending on the tool and the level of subscription, you can see historic ranking performance, SERP feature visibility and lots more.

These are just some of the tools that can help you recover or better understand your SEO performance. There’s a lot more out there, and they can really help so make sure you keep your eyes and ears open for the newest tools.

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Tracking Keyword Visibility.

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TrackingKeyword Visibility.

Tracking keyword performance is one of the most important, and challenging parts of an SEO campaign. You need to be able to effectively monitor the visibility for keywords, and segment them by brand and non-brand, in order to judge their overall impact on SEO performance.

There are two options that you have to work with here. The first is to use a tool-based solution. SEO Monitor, Accuranker, AWR, SEMRush and others all offer keyword tracking solutions that will allow you to closely monitor performance over time.

However, if you don’t have access to these tools then you will have to use Google Search Console (SC). Although there are always discrepancies between SC click data and sessions in Google Analytics (GA), it does represent a good indicator on how certain keywords are performing.

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Using Search Console To Track Keyword & Ranking Trend Performance

The first important consideration is that in the new version of SC, Google allows access to 16 months of click data. In the old version, you only get 3 months. Straight away this offers a much broader dataset for you to work with.

Exporting this data from Search Console on a weekly basis will allow you to develop your own library of ranking performance data. You can even use a Vlookup if you export straight to Google Sheets or Excel so you can focus your attention on a specific set of keywords that you want to improve rankings for.

You can also use the handy filter functionality directly within SC to remove branded searches so you can get trend patterns for non-brand growth (or brand growth).

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Using Search Console Data In Google Analytics

While exporting data straight from Search Console is great, it can mean that you miss specific actionable insights that could be incredibly valuable. This is where working with SC data in GA comes into its own - the additional filtering options in GA are ideal for this.

For example, you can filter queries that are ranking on page 2 of Google that are generating a certain amount of impressions. This can show you where there are really valuable opportunities where you might just need to tweak your on page content, internal linking or navigation structure to give the relevant page a boost onto page one of Google.

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Conclusion.

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Conclusion.

We really hope that this might help you with your SEO SOS distress call. We’ve covered what background research you need to do to launch a successful campaign:

• Persona development• Competitor research• Keyword research

What you need to check if performance isn’t heading in the right direction:

• Tech SEO audit• Content audit• Mobile optimisation• Google Analytics setup

And what you need to keep an eye on to make sure that your SEO is improving:

• Technical website management• SEO tools you can use• Tracking keyword performance

If you are still struggling with your SEO performance then We Influence is here to help. We’ve helped many businesses hugely grow their organic visibility, as well as helping websites that have been penalised or lost visibility. Get in touch today to find out more about our service, our experts and exactly what we can do to help you.

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About Us.We Influence is a digital marketing agency, helping brands achieve commercial success online through building engaged audiences and converting them into loyal customers.

The agency has a broad range of B2C and B2B clients across a variety of different industries.

Services on offer include SEO, PPC, Content and Influencer Marketing, Paid Social Advertising, Affiliate Marketing and CRO.S

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Get in touch to see how we can help your

business grow.

Tel: 0800 917 7388Email: hello@weinfluence.co.uk