High 5 search engine optimisation information pitfalls to keep away from for correct evaluation and reporting

For those who work in advertising or search engine optimisation, information is crucial to your day-to-day.

You’re in all probability analyzing efficiency to see the outcomes of your efforts, assessing the influence of Google’s newest replace, or engaged on a case research to share with the search engine optimisation group.

However when coping with search engine optimisation information, issues will not be at all times what they appear. The way you understand information on a excessive degree might not essentially be legitimate when you dig deeper.

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

All through my profession, I’ve seen many pitfalls that advertising and search engine optimisation professionals can encounter when coping with information. Beneath 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 if you’re reporting on search engine optimisation efficiency. 

Did your web site impressions improve and the typical rating metric lower? Some shoppers are fixated on this metric and will likely be very involved that the typical 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 typical 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 typical rating metric, not a lot as a result of your common rating is now decrease (16/4 = 4). 

So, whereas the typical rating metric seems to have worsened, it doesn’t essentially signify a unfavorable 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 improve, 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 improve (a very good factor), CTR might lower.

Dig deeper: How you can make higher search engine optimisation reviews for the C-suite

2. Evaluating apples to oranges

It’s frequent to point out search engine optimisation enchancment by evaluating efficiency month-over-month. Whereas it is a cheap method, there are conditions the place such comparisons are inadequate and have to be accompanied by evaluating the efficiency of the identical month of the earlier yr. Right here’s why.

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

Due to this fact, 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 state of affairs, you might wish to:

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

3. Utilizing vainness metrics

I get it. There’s loads of stress on SEOs to point out outcomes and enchancment. Nonetheless, this doesn’t imply reporting on vainness metrics that don’t actually matter. 

For example, presenting the amount of inner or exterior hyperlinks created as an “enchancment” metric is an invalid method to reporting search engine optimisation actions. 

“X% enchancment in exterior hyperlinks” just isn’t a sound assertion. 

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

Dig deeper: search engine optimisation KPIs to trace and measure search engine optimisation success

4. Reporting migrations as an search engine optimisation win

Web site migrations are a conventional search engine optimisation job, and having a profitable migration mission 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 improve in visitors to the first area as a definitive search engine optimisation success.

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

As an alternative, report the proportion of visitors efficiently transferred to the primary area. It might take time to settle, however exhibiting how a lot of the unique visitors was preserved is the true search engine optimisation win.

5. Failing to report search engine optimisation’s worth and attribution

search engine optimisation is a sophisticated channel. In contrast to PPC the place you possibly can have a transparent motion to ROI path and conversions are nicely attributed, in search engine optimisation, we typically must dig deeper to point out the true worth the channel is bringing.

For instance, in a earlier position, the corporate ran only a few PPC adverts, and the web site’s major/greatest visitors supply was search engine optimisation. 

At first look, every thing appears to be clear and easy. However after I began information, I observed a giant proportion of visitors (and subsequently conversions) was attributed to “direct visitors.” I obtained curious, so I drew a graph evaluating direct and search engine optimisation visitors, it got here out wanting like this:

You possibly can see how the search engine optimisation visitors immediately impacts the direct visitors. They go hand in hand in that when search engine optimisation will increase, direct visitors will increase – and vice versa. 

If that is so for your corporation, it’s value mentioning in your month-to-month search engine optimisation reporting.

One other factor to test is the Attribution reviews in GA4 beneath the Promoting part. You possibly can then click on on both Mannequin comparability or Conversion paths. Each will provide you with insights into how the search engine optimisation channel contributes to or helps different channels’ efficiency. That is one other factor value reporting on.

Attempt for correct search engine optimisation information evaluation and reporting

We should be thorough when search engine optimisation information for auditing or reporting functions.

Making conclusions primarily based on the information you see first is inaccurate, would possibly put you in a decent spot along with your shoppers, and you may doubtlessly miss out on search engine optimisation wins that go unnoticed.

Nonetheless, we wish to steadiness being thorough and getting caught in evaluation paralysis. Extra information just isn’t at all times a very good factor. One of the best method is to:

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

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