Web Analytics Tutorial

Lesson 3 – Search Engines

Introduction

Figure 1. Search Engines are the most common tool for promoting a web site

When we want to find something on the web we look to a search engine, such as those in Figure 1. Sites like Google, MSN and Yahoo! let you search for web sites that contain information pertinent to topics of interest to you. Potential visitors looking for your site are going to do the same thing. This makes it imperative that your site get ranked high enough for important keywords that visitors can find it. Knowing what keywords are important means knowing what visitors are looking for when they find your site.

Keywords and Search Phrases

Using web analytics, you can find out what engines, phrases and keywords visitors are using to reach your site and produce reports to help you improve your site content and search engines listings. Each search engine will offer links to your site for certain keywords or phrases. When a visitor types these phrases your link will be given, along with many others. Summary’s Search Engine report, in Figure 1, shows you which engines are sending you the most traffic. In this example, you will see that Google is the top ranking search engine, sending 1,685 hits.

Figure 2. Knowing the entire Search Phrase visitors used can illuminate what they were looking for.

Summary can also determine the phrases that each visitor entered when they found your site and can break this down into keywords. The Search Phrases report, in Figure 2, shows the entire original phrase, which can be extremely helpful in knowing exactly what a visitor is looking for. Often you will see complete sentences or fragments that give you an excellent understanding of your visitors’ interest. Using this report you can tailor the content of your site to help your visitors find what is important to them and to make the site more relevant to the subjects of interest.

By breaking down the search phrase into individual words, the Search Words report shows you what keywords bring the most traffic. When you are listing your site with search engines, this can be very useful in determining what keywords you should include. In the next section we will delve into detail about how to use the Search Words report to improve your ranking in search engines.

Figure 3. The Search Phrase by Search Engines report breaks down phrases used at each engine.

Summary includes two advanced reports that you can use to dig deeper into the details of searches your visitors are conducting. The Search Phrase by Search Engine report lists which phrases were used at each engine in a hierarchical layout (see Figure 3). The converse reports, Search Engine by Search Phrases, shows which engines each particular phrase was used at. With these two reports you can quickly determine the relative value of phrases at given engines or engines with given phrases. When analyzing your positioning within engines, this can be amazingly insightful.

Figure 4. The Search Words report includes other metrics like Average Steps or Goals.

Qualifying Search Terms and Engines

As we have discussed in previous lessons, Hits are not always the most important metric. In each of the basic reports, Search Engines, Search Words and Search Phrases, there a columns for Average Steps (see the Search Words report in Figure 4). Average Steps tells you how many steps (or non-graphics hits) there were in each visit, on average, for visitors who found your site with the given search word. If the intent of your site is to deliver as many page impressions as possible to each visitor, then the search words that rank with the highest Average Steps count are the most valuable. For example, if each page on your site can carry an advertisement and you generate revenue on advertising impressions, then you will want to make those search words that generate the most Average Steps per visit more prominent in your page content and keyword listings.

These reports also contain columns for Goals, Goals % of Hits and Value, when your subreport is configured with those. In addition, Summary has Search Words by Goal and Value and Search Phrases by Goal and Value reports that provide explicit statistics in relation to these metrics. Goals allow you to define specific business goals or desired outcomes of a visit and rank visits based on whether they achieve the goal. Many of Summary’s reports can be analyzed in this context, so all of Lesson 9 - Incorporating Business Goals is devotes to this topic. Values can be used to assess potential revenue or costs associated with actions on your site. Revenue could be from advertising or estimated revenue per impression. Costs could be for pay-for-placement listings or bandwidth estimates. Lesson 5 - Revenue Modeling discusses this concept in full detail.