The Google Analytics Problem (and the solution)

Posted by Mike Essex on 03 November 2011

Standard practice for keyword research for SEO is to use Google Analytics to find a site’s most popular keywords, then optimize relevant pages for them. This can work well for small numbers of keywords. But Google Analytics gives you no way of seeing reports for short and long tail variations of multiple keywords. Mike Essex explains how his SEO agency uses Wordtracker Strategizer to solve this problem and find the best keywords to target.

You can try out Wordtracker Strategizer free for 7 days

The Google Analytics problem

Before Strategizer we would use Google Analytics to look for the most popular organic keywords on a client site and then find the pages that deliver those results. The problem with this method is you must view each keyword independently, so can’t see results for short and long tail variations of multiple keywords.

We can illustrate this problem with a simplified example. The table below shows the visits (traffic) brought to an imaginary page by just six different keywords.

Keyword	Traffic
cakes	250
donuts	190
iced buns	120
frosted donuts	93
apple tarts	57
chocolate donuts	22

cakes is clearly the most popular keyword with 250 visitors. But if we look at all of the variations that sent traffic for donuts then the number is higher (190 + 93 + 22 = 305 visitors). So donut related keywords might be a more attractive target than cakes.

This is a simplified picture. In reality a site might get results for hundreds of thousands of different keywords. The only way to find the most popular keywords (including their variations) is to use a filter on each keyword and record the totals elsewhere (eg, on a spreadsheet) so they can be compared.

That’s simply not possible on a large scale within Google Analytics. And if it is done then you only get a snapshot of one time period. You’ll have no trends and if you want to know what happens ‘tomorrow’ then you’ll have to do it all again.

The Wordtracker Strategizer solution

Wordtracker Strategizer imports the same data set from Google Analytics, so you know the data can be trusted. Then it automatically runs a filter on each of your top 1,000 keywords, calculating how many visits they and their variations have brought.

Back to our example, Strategizer would find all keywords containing cakes (called the cake keyword niche) and add up the number of visits they have brought.

And it would find all the keywords containing donuts and add up the visits they bought. This is done for the top 1,000 keywords bringing visits (the top keyword niches).

Strategizer also shows you how many keywords in a niche brought results (see this number highlighted with a red border on the report below):

(You'll see some other interesting things on that report above - we'll look at some those later. Try out Strategizer for free to have a close look with your own site's results)

You can drill down into a keyword niche to see those specific keywords. This has been done on the report below for the mammut keyword niche (Mammut is brand of clothing, you'll be interested to know).

And you can use a built-in keyword research tool to search for more related and similar keywords to target. You can see this tool with 10 of 50 results (for a search with mammut) in the images below.

It's hard to beat Strategizer's processing power and reports if you’re looking at an ecommerce site and want to know where to start. Here’s our rundown on some of the available filters on Strategizer and how they can help ...

New targets

Click ‘New targets’ and Strategizer will suggest ‘short-term’ target keyword niches by doing the following:

•  Filtering out keyword niches containing your website name. (You already come top for that keyword.)

•  Filtering out keyword niches that have brought fewer than 45 visits. (Any less and a forecast of similar response rates might become unreliable.)

•  Sorting the remaining keyword niches by ecommerce conversion rate, goal conversion rate or bounce rate, depending on what’s available. (This shows the most responsive keyword niches (groups of keywords) at the top of the report (as in the image below).

The report below shows short-term targets for an ecommerce site. The 'ecommerce conversion rate' column on the right shows the highest converting keyword niches are at the top.

These are short-term targets because they are delivering the most response regardless of their size (most will be small niches).

First aim your SEO at your short-term target keyword niches. But I recommend you refine those targets using the first three of the four steps Strategizer gives to do so:

1. Negative keywords. Negative keywords are those you don’t want to target.

This might include brand terms your site already comes top of Google for and products you no longer stock.

2. Response metric. Strategizer helps you target the keyword groupings you already get the best results for. In step two you can choose what measure of response is used to define ‘results’.

The above image shows the different response metrics available:

•  Bounce rate. Bounce rate is a measure of interactivity, specifically the % of visitors that leave before visiting more than the page they entered on. There is a good chance that the keyword niches that bring the most interactive visitors are also the most likely to convert to sales.

•  Goal CR. Goal Conversion Rate (Goal CR) needs Goals to be configured in Google Analytics. A goal might be making a sale or filling in a contact form. Using Goal CR is a way of being more specific about what response you want your SEO to deliver more of.

•  Ecommerce CR. Visitors are good and conversions are great. But money is everything and Ecommerce Conversion Rate (Ecommerce CR) tells you what % of a keyword niche’s visits buy something. Ecommerce tracking needs to be set up in Google Analytics and it’s worth doing this because when you can see the keywords that lead to sales then it’s much easier to make an SEO project effective and efficient.

3. Probability. Probability allows you to adjust the balance between how many keyword niches are considered as targets and the likelihood (the probability) that more visits from a suggested target keyword niche will deliver the same level of response.

Use the fourth ‘New targets’ step - 'Short or long term' - to find your ‘long-term’ targets.

Choosing ‘long-term’ targets does the following:

•  Filters to show only those keyword niches delivering above average (for your site) ‘response’. ‘Response’ is again either ecommerce conversion rate, goal conversion rate or bounce rate (depending on what’s available).

•  Sorts the remaining keyword niches by Niche Size so the biggest (those with the most searches) are at the top.

So you can see those keyword niches that both have the most searches made with them and deliver a good response on your site.

Long term keyword niches are big enough to deserve long term investment with new content and link building.

Google Rank

Strategizer finds your site’s SERPs rank on Google results (your position on Google’s search engine results pages) for up to 100 keywords (more if you upgrade).

You can see Google rankings in the Google Rank column in the above images of Strategizer reports.

You can filter your reports to show you keywords that you already rank for in the top three. If those keyword niches are a reasonable size then you can get more results by building more pages for other keywords in that niche.

You can also filter to see keywords that you rank between 10 and 20 for (ie, you show on page two of a Google search). If you can get these to page one (Top 10) then there should be a jump up in visits and response.

Summary

The first step in any SEO project should be to look at past data and use the lessons from your previous customers to dictate future plans. You can then expand the SEO project in new directions over time, and return to Strategizer to see whether the new keywords are working.

Wordtracker Strategizer is a great way of analyzing SEO keyword data and getting to the real meat of what keywords you must protect and which you should expand or indeed drop entirely.

Try out Wordtracker Strategizer free for 7 days

Read more about how to use Keyword tracking reports for search engine success