Web Analytics Certified Course for Your Skill Upgrade and Carrer

Hi, I’m Takahiro Mashiko of Maboroshi Co., Ltd..

The marketing trend transforming from SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  to SXO (Search Experience Optimization) and the occurrence of “not provide” keywords have influence on SEO KPIs settings and performance measures.

Especially if your website is not large, it is not always the case to do any complicated measures. When you are designing, just bear in mind SXO. That said, if you have a big website, it would be better to take technical measures.
Most measures focus on a wide range of users, not only for those seeking just certain information. Here are some examples: Put up an attractive page title, write clear content, figure out a good way for categorization and tag setting, and improve Call-to-Action appeal to visitors.     

If it is an owned media,  “content based in keywords” is additionally required. By and large, those measures will be able to guarantee positive user experience.
Now let’s look at how you can measure the following, using Google Search Console (GSC) or Google Analytics (GA).

1. Clicks
2. Additional new keywords
3. Organic traffic conversion

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1. Measure the clicks with GSC

Under the navigation heading for “ Search Traffic,” the first link is to “ Search Analytics” which is a section of GSC.

“ Total Clicks,” one of four metrics, enclosed in red shows the total click number registered when a user clicks a link that takes them outside the search results pages. “ Total Impressions” is the total number of URL that appeared in the search. “Average Click Through Rate (CTR)” is the average number of clicks divided by the number of impressions to indicate what percentage of impressions led people to click. The last one is “Average Position” which shows the average position of the top ranking result from your site.

In general, as  “Total Clicks” or “ Total Impressions” increases, “ Avg. CTR” or “ Avg. Position” is likely to decrease. In other words, “ a quantity increase results in a quality decline.”  It means that you cannot exactly verify the effectiveness if you coincide a strategy for increasing total clicks (quantity) with that for heightening Average CTR (quality).

To improve your content and to increase the click number, you should set “ Total Clicks” as a KPI. In doing so, you can set up such a goal as  “ to increase the total clicks by 1,2 times. ” To check the performance, go to the compare box to compare your data from one date range to a previous date range to view your data before and after you improved the pages.  

In this way, you can assess the effectiveness by comparing numbers before and after fixing.   

The current GSC is available to check data for the last 90 days. If you need to view or compare back further, go for the latest GCS as it shows the data during the last 16 months.

 

2. Get an additional new keyword idea with GSC

Head to “Search Traffic” and click “Search Analytics.”  Scroll the screen slightly, and you can see the list of keywords.

To compare the data before and after you improved your pages, go to “Date” and choose the date range you want to compare.     

On the keyword list, you will find both the familiar keywords that appeared before and new keywords, which just came up. Take a look at the Row 21, 41 and 42 and find the mark of  “ 〜” , which means no data. That is, these are new keywords.

To change the ranking of the keywords marked with “ 〜”,  go to header, and click “ Click Number” for the past date range. If you want to process the data, download it as a CSV file, and change the ranking.

 

3. Measure organic traffic conversion with GA

If you want to know what drove visitors to your website (organic traffic), “ Conversion” report tells you everything. Go to Acquisition>All Traffic> Channel> Organic Search.

To learn the contribution of your channel, choose the conversion number (Goal completion) and the conversion rate as KPI.

To assess the effectiveness, compare the data before improvement with those after with date settings.

In Conclusion

Given the marketing trend, you should try a wide variety of measures.
For example,   

• Use Google my business
• Provide structured data
• Deliver reliable information
• Create a safe environment for viewers with HTTPS
• Enhance your Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Build Progressive Web Apps(PWA)

For content making, remember for content creation the trend is changing from “Content is King” to “Context is King.”  Therefore, in addition to the measure mentioned here, assess your data on anytime on site, exit, bounce rate, and returning visitor rate will be also useful for a continuous improvement.   

 

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This article is written by

Takahiro Mashiko
Maboroshi Co., Ltd. / Executive CMO
Born in 1975, in Utsunomiya, Tochigi prefecture in 1975
The graduate school of commerce at Waseda University
Expertizing in web marketing, such as website structuring, project management, listing advertisement operation, social media, access analysis reporting, landing pages SEO etc.
Possessing GAIQ, Google Analytics Individual Qualification
Possessing Google AdWords Certification
A project member of Web Examination, All Japan Federation of Management Organizations.
A member of Marketing Society of Japan
Authored, Textbook of Web Standards