Relying too much on web analytics

Relying too much on web analytics – Alexa Flash Briefing Skill (SEO Tips)

Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO Tips today.

My tip today is more of a warning about relying too heavily on your web analytics data (especially Google Analytics) to make decisions about “who” your target audience is.

You need to remember that your GA data reflects people who actually find you and land on one of your site’s pages. That means that the page needs to have ranked in search for a particular query. I have seen plenty of clients who have various issues that result in their pages not ranking for the topics that they cover. 

Then there’s the issue of Google Analytics is incorrectly categorizing the organic search data into other buckets. If your target audience searches for you via a mobile app or the result was read back by Google Home, or there was some other reason (maybe an aggressive cookie consent popup that caused a page refresh), that visit might be labeled as “direct” vs “organic”. It doesn’t mean that your audience didn’t find you via organic search for that topic, and it doesn’t mean that page is not performing, it just means that there is a tracking issue. This is why I recommend that my clients run rank tracking reports in addition to looking at their web analytics to have the most full picture of how their content is performing.

The only true way to know if you’re found by your target audience is to ask them.

Thanks for listening today. Come back tomorrow for more SEO tips.