Measuring and IdentifyingSEO Opportunities

Melanie PhungDirector, New Media

PBS Interactive

Webinar ObjectivesThis presentation serves as an introduction to:

• Using benchmarking and baselining to set goals• How do you know how much is possible?• How do you measure success?

• Leveraging Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to identify SEO opportunities

• Reviewing PBS Case Studies focused on SEO growth• PBS Kids!• WTJX Virgin Islands Public Television

Benchmarking

How are you doing compared to your competitors?

– Compare total traffic– Compare percentage that is organic– Compare inbound link volume

Competitive BenchmarkingCompete.com:- Compare domain traffic- High-level snapshot of

search terms, referring sites, trends

Compete.com > Compare Sites

Competitive BenchmarkingAlexa.com:- Percent of traffic from

search engines- High-level snapshot

referring search terms

Alexa.com > Site Info > Search Analytics

Competitive BenchmarkingYahoo Site Explorer- See # of Pages Indexed- See # of Inbound Links

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com > Inlinks > Except from this domain

Internal Baselines

• Google Analytics– How much traffic is organic?– Keyword diversity: How many different keywords

send traffic? How many keyword variations per page?

–What percent doesn’t include your brand name or “PBS”?

– How many pages are attracting organic traffic?

Internal Baselines (cont.)

• Other Data– Number of Inbound Links?–Where do you rank for your target keywords?– Content performance: Total pages indexed vs.

pages getting organic traffic – CTR from SERPs for priority pages

How much traffic is organic?

The goal is to grow the size of the entire pie, not one slice at the expense of others.

How diverse is your organic traffic?

Keyword diversity helps protect you against big drops in traffic if you lose a couple of rankings.

Inbound Links/Referring Sites

Links are a major ranking factor. Baseline your current volume of inbound links so you can document your progress over time.

Monitor Rankings

Understand your current rankings to identify opportunities and track success

Google Analytics

• Look for anything unusual that you can act on • Use the "compare date range" feature to see

spikes/drops • Identify your best performing pages to mimic

their success or funnel traffic • Fix pages with high bounce rates or low time-

on-site

Google Webmaster Tools

• Fix anything that is costing you traffic: malware! Duplicate content, crawl error, performance issues, 404s

• Look at your internal link structure. Does it reflect your SEO priorities?

• Identify high-volume keywords with existing rankings on second page. Boost those.

• Identify strong rankings that have low CTR and improve titles and snippets.

Maximizing Existing Rankings

Identify edge rankings with significant impression volume. Focus optimization efforts on terms where edging up a few spots can double or triple current traffic.

Other Opportunities

• Always: Keyword Research!• Address things Google tells you to fix in GWT– Clean up and redirect dead links– Fix duplicate content issues – Page load time issues

• Find sites linking to competitors to secure topical IBLs

Closing Thoughts• Don’t work in the dark. Understand what to measure, why

and how. • Benchmark to evaluate how much growth is possible and

where.• Create a baseline, measure regularly, document successes.• Mine your available data. Google Analytics and Google

Webmaster Tools provide a ton of actionable information if you understand what to look at.

• Avoid data overload: It’s better to use fewer tools well than it is to use lots of tools without any focus.

• Fix errors that prevent indexing/linkability/etc. (Don’t spend money pouring water into a leaky bucket)

• Prioritize low-effort (or scaleable)/high-return tactics

Tools and Resources

• Compete.com • Google Analytics • Google Webmaster Tools • SEOBook Tools • Yahoo Site Explorer