Step Wise SEO

With your site structure improvements in place and your PPC campaign purring, you’ve never been more ready to get some serious conversion tracking underway.

Conversion tracking is a simple concept to grasp:

You count how many people are performing a desired action, you determine where those people came from, and you figure out what keywords they used if they came from a search engine.

Here’s the simplest scenario:

Your goal is to get more unique visitors. You use data from your servers to tell you how many unique visitors came to your site and what search terms they used.

But tracking online activities like making a purchase, filling out a form, or downloading a file, not to mention offline conversions like phone sales and walk-in business, requires a more sophisticated tracking system.

In this article you’ll develop a plan for tracking the conversion goals. You’ll find the tools you need and some ideas for tracking even the most challenging types of conversions. Here are your tasks:

PPC Conversion Tracking
Let’s assume your starter PPC campaign has been running for a few weeks now, and you have probably already have seen a nice influx of click-throughs.

But do you know which, if any, of these click-throughs has turned into a conversion? For example, let’s say you sell left-handed guitars.

Your PPC reports can tell you the number of people who came to your site after searching for “left-handed guitars,” and your server logs or sales figures can tell you how many people purchased a left-handed guitar, but to tie together those two actions requires some additional steps.

Both Google and YSM offer built-in conversion tracking that can connect the dots. Their systems keep it simple by answering only one question: which PPC click-throughs turned into conversions for your website?

How it works To implement the built-in conversion tracking on Google or YSM, you’ll need to define a page or pages on your site that indicate a conversion has been completed.

Very possibly, this will be your transaction completion page or confirmation page-it’s wherever you say thank you to your customers for a purchase, download, registration, or form completion.

You will put a tiny piece of code or image (also called a tag or tracking pixel) on that page to communicate with the PPC system.

On Google, you can also assign certain variables like a dollar amount for conversion value.

You will then be able to view information such as total conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion in your admin interface and reports.

Benefits Since you already have a PPC account, there is no easier way to monitor conversions from your SEO efforts and expenditures!

The process requires very little technical intervention on your part and nothing in the way of server setup.

Google, always wanting a bigger piece of your organization’s pie chart, also makes it possible for you to track campaigns you’re running on other PPC services. Yahoo! offers a similar capability, called Marketing Console, for a fee.

Limitations As much as you may wish otherwise, your site visitors aren’t going to march in lockstep through your site from entrance to conversion.

Much more likely, they’ll browse around your site, go to other sites, and then come back minutes, hours, or weeks later.

When they return, they may perform another search or type in your site URL, or perhaps their web browser will remember your site address and fill in the URL for them.

Whatever the case, you may have lost the link between the original keyword search and this conversion.

Your PPC service may hold onto visitor information for some period of time, perhaps 30 days, using a cookie. This feature will save you from losing at least a portion of your wanderers.

Another obvious limitation of the PPC tracking systems is that they only track PPC visitors, not people who came in through organic search results.

Hey! Where’d Everybody Go?
Let’s assume that you have a 1 percent overall conversion rate from the moment someone views the keyword on a search engine to the point at which the purchase is completed.

That means that 99 percent of the visitors are not converting. This is great data, but you need to get to the next level of detail to take action and optimize the conversion rate.
Where are the trouble spots:

• Is the user not clicking through the ad [on a PPC sponsorship]?
• Is the user getting to the site and immediately exiting?
• Is the user engaged in the product description but not buying the product?
• Are they dropping off in the checkout process?

Through further analysis and experimentation, you need to work to discover exactly why users are leaving the site.

For example, …let’s say that 80 percent of the users exit when checking out. This clearly identifies an issue with the checkout process.

You can conclude that the visitor is engaged, they found the product they were interested in purchasing, and were ready to buy, but somehow had a problem with the checkout process. This issue could be

• the checkout process is too tedious and time consuming;
• the checkout process has a bug that prevents people from checking out;
• the visitor continued shopping and somehow got distracted and never came back to check out.

The good news is, if you can reduce this drop-off by even a few percent, it will greatly increase your conversion rate.

Finally, tracking tools provide so much data and you can easily spend hours per day viewing it.” For a streamlined approach, focus on the highest-priority metrics:

• ”Am I driving visitors to the site?
• ”Are they converting?
• ”What are my ad costs?
• ”What are my revenues?”

Before you set up a PPC conversion tracking tool, be sure your organization is comfortable giving the PPC engine access to potentially sensitive information about your conversions.

Some in the SEO industry have expressed concern that sharing this information will lead to security breaches or a rise in PPC prices.

Get to Know Your Basic Server Stats
You have a website, which means you have a server, which means your server is probably making server logs.

Like a good computer, it logs and logs and logs: who came to your site, where they came from, what browser they were using, and more.

Each time any action is taken on your website, your diligent server log file makes a note of it.

We hope, for your health, that you never look at a server log file. Doing so can cause headaches, dizziness, and a desire to escape to the water cooler.

What you want to see, instead, is output from a web log analyzer-software that takes the raw server log file ingredients and whips them up into an easy-to-digest serving of meaningful traffic data.

Don’t confuse the web log we’re talking about here with the other kind of weblog, the one called blog for short!

The area of web analytics, the measurement and analysis of online activity, includes products ranging from simple to sophisticated. We’ve boiled it down into an at-a-glance table so you can get your bearings.

We’re going to look at data that is available from the most simple, and often free, systems using information from your server logs.

These include Webalizer and AWStats. Most commercial web hosting packages include at least this basic level of web log analysis.

Maybe you already have something like this available. If you’re not sure, talk to your IT department and find out. Here is the information you’ll want to regularly see from your server logs, at a minimum:

Unique visitors Knowing the total traffic to your website doesn’t tell you much. It won’t tell you whether your visitors are the ones you targeted, what path they took through your website, whether they made a purchase, or how happy they were during their visit.

Nevertheless, it’s one of those little numbers that you, just, need, to, know. Your log analyzer will do its best to determine a total number of unique visitors based on IP addresses and any other info it can gather.

Admittedly, the number is not perfectly accurate. But it’s a good tool for tracking trends. After all, what does it really matter if you had 1,000 or 1,035 unique visitors this week? What matters most is whether you’re up or down from last week.

And while you’re at it, banish the word hits from your vocabulary. Hits describes the number of times a request is made to your server, and page views describes the number of times an entire page is called by a browser.

So if there are dozens of images on a given page, there will be dozens of hits recorded for each page view.

Depending on your conversion goal, you may want to focus on the number of page views or unique visitors, but never hits.

Traffic to key pages Traffic to your landing pages, or other key locations on your website, can be a lot more meaningful than overall traffic to your website.

Any web log analyzer worth its salt will be able to show you how many visitors are browsing the landing pages that you worked so hard to optimize.

Referrers After all your link-building efforts, wouldn’t you love to know which sites are actually sending you traffic?

After optimizing for the search engines, wouldn’t you love to know which search terms your visitors used to find you?

This is where your stats start to become truly useful to your SEO campaign. Your web log analyzer can tell you where your site visitors came from, and even more important, for those that came to your website from search engines, it can tell you the exact keywords they searched for.

This can be a good source of ideas for finding new keywords to target. It may also help you identify inbound links you didn’t know existed!

Keep in mind, referrer data is limited to folks that clicked to your site from another site on the Web.

Users that typed your URL directly into their browsers, or clicked from a bookmark, or clicked from an e-mail, are harder to track.

Exit pages If it’s good to know how visitors found your site, it’s even more telling to know where visitors exited your site.

Exit pages can be used to diagnose a whole host of problems, from poor navigation design to poorly targeted traffic.

Don’t be surprised if your home page is high on the list. It’s common for people to arrive at your site and immediately realize it’s not what they’re looking for.

Don’t always assume that exit pages are the “bad guy.” Some websites are set up so that when users click to make a purchase they are taken to a different site. If this describes your site, then exiting your site may be the best thing a user can do!

However, for most websites, exits represent your conversions walking out the door. If a large proportion of your visitors are leaving after viewing just one page, either you’re inviting the wrong crowd to your party or there’s something very unappetizing greeting them at the door.

Errors Among other things, your server will log a 404 error (”File not Found”) every time a user tries to access a nonexistent URL.

This can help you find inbound-or internal-links that are using incorrect or out-of-date URLs.

Your server logs will record a 404 error every time a search engine robot comes looking for a nonexistent robots.txt file, which may be reason enough for you to add one to your website.

The list of useful server stats could go on and on, but you have limited time, so we stuck with the basics.

If you already have access to your server stats through a web log analyzer, congratulations! You’ll look through it for the information just listed.

If you do not already have a way to view server stats, you’ll figure out how to make it happen.

You have several options, including the basic server stats discussed today as well as more comprehensive tracking described in the next sections.

You probably won’t need to use a basic program if you are also implementing a more advanced system because the more advanced systems incorporate all of the info a basic program provides and more. Consider them all, and choose which is best for your organization.

Tracking Online Conversions
We’re going to talk about options that allow you to take your basic server stats to the next level for your organic SEO campaign.

Instead of recording separate chunks of data (like the number of unique visitors and the number of people entering your site for a specific term), you can set up tracking so that a visitor is “followed” from the time they enter your site until they perform your conversion goal.

Setting up a comprehensive tracking system for your site is usually much more time intensive than the PPC conversion tracking. So, think of today as a day to learn, compare, and get the ball rolling on one of these options:

• Advanced tracking systems
• Implementing your own solution
• Band-Aid methods

Advanced Tracking Systems
Major providers of advanced tracking systems include Omniture, Web Side Story, Web Trends, ClickTracks, and Coremetrics.

Free or inexpensive options for smaller businesses are Google Analytics, measuremap for bloggers, and GoDaddy, a website hosting provider that bundles a tracking service with its hosting options. Consult their websites for more information.

How it works Advanced tracking systems come in two flavors: client-side tracking (also called hosted, tag-based, or on-demand tracking) and server-side tracking.

Client side tracking generally works like this: You add a tiny piece of code or a tiny image to every page of your site.

This little code communicates with a tracking system located on the vendor’s server and the information is used to build detailed reports about activity on your site-for a monthly fee.

Server-side systems provide similar capabilities but stay on your own servers, are purchased like software, and must be set up by your IT team.

You don’t need to know the details of how these systems work. You just need to know how much they cost, what reporting options they provide, and whether your webmaster will let you add the little scripts to the page.

Benefits Both client-side and server-side tracking systems give you much more information about your site visitors than basic server log analysis or built-in PPC tracking will provide.

What paths your users took, where they lingered, where they exited your site-the options are almost endless.

Client-side systems provide the additional advantage that your part of the setup generally doesn’t require heavy-duty IT involvement. If you know simple HTML, you may be able to do this part yourself.

Limitations Got time on your hands? It takes a serious time commitment to review and act upon the data you receive using this method.

But consider implementing an advanced tracking system even if you don’t see yourself cozying up with the data on a weekly basis.

It’s possible to review data on a monthly, even quarterly, basis and collect some fascinating and helpful information.

Client-side tracking also brings about the same security issues that PPC conversion tracking does.

If data security is a major issue at your organization, server-side tracking will be the better option for you.

Another limitation is that both tracking methods are likely to undercount your visitors for various reasons, including the fact that users can disable the JavaScript or cookies (small pieces of text that are saved temporarily on the user’s computer) that these techniques rely on.

Implementing Your Own Solution
If you’ve got the will and the IT firepower, creating your own tracking solution may be an option you find yourself considering.

How it works Your own tracking solution will be limited only by your time and programming capabilities.

We recommend that you start simple: all you really need to do is count conversions and trace the conversions back to search engine traffic.

For instance, it could be done like this:

• Every time a visitor came to the website, you set a cookie that recorded the referring URL, including searched keywords for those that came from search engines.

• Nothing else would happen while the user surfed around the site.

• And then, in the occasional event that the visitor submitted a request for information form, the cookie text was included along with all the other form information submitted directly to Sales.

Your own solution could include a wide variety of techniques to store important visitor data, including setting cookies, adding tags to pages on your site, and creating special tracking URLs. Your choice will depend on your specific needs and abilities.

Benefits There are a couple of advantages to building your own tracking system. One is that it can be customized to your needs and you won’t get bogged down in data overload.

Another is that it eliminates the security and privacy concerns that third-party systems cause.

Limitations If you have relatively few conversions, a basic do-it-yourself system might be feasible for you.

However, the amount of programming you’d have to do to get close to the flexibility of a third-party solution is probably prohibitively high.

Building your own tracking tool is serious work, so you should seriously consider other options before traveling the do-it-yourself path.

Band-Aid Methods
Depending on your business, you may feel that the conversion tracking methods described previously are overkill.

Or, you may not have the time, money, technical ability, or support to gather conversion data behind the scenes.

The only thing left for you to do is to ask your visitors! Sure, it’s not a perfect method, but it’s something. Here are some suggestions:

Bust the “e-mail us” link. Replace any “e-mail us” links on your website with a “contact us” form. This will allow you to ask your visitors how they found you (but don’t hold your breath for any details).

Don’t miss an opportunity. Every form on your site has the potential to ask your visitors how they found you.

If your site has a store component, you could provide a small incentive, like a discount on shipping, for customers who fill out a brief survey prior to checkout.

Look through your site and make sure you’re taking advantage of every opportunity to get your visitors to volunteer this important information.

Try an opt-in. If your website includes highly desirable content (for example, research papers, articles, or high-res imagery), you may be able to convince your site visitors to provide their contact information-and the all-important information about how they found you-in exchange for a download.

However, proceed with caution on this option: web searchers as a rule cherish their anonymity.

We are always dismayed to see businesses insist on a name and phone number before sharing product information. That’s like expecting people to pay to see your advertising!

Tracking Offline Conversions
One of the more challenging areas to track is offline conversions like phone calls or walk-in customers.

To track your offline conversions, you’ll need to be creative. Here are a few ideas for some of the more common scenarios:

Set up a special phone number. If a large percentage of your sales take place over the phone, it may be difficult to show that the website, much less your SEO campaign, had anything to do with them.

But there is one way: Set up a unique phone number and display it on your website-and nowhere else.

Then, have your sales team monitor and track how many calls come in to that line and how many of those calls turn into conversions.

For a greater level of detail, you can sign up with services (such as ClickPath or Who’s Calling) that will generate unique 800 numbers and dynamically display them on your web pages, linking each call to a keyword and ad source.

Run campaigns on things nobody else is promoting. You can get an inkling of the effects of your SEO work by promoting a specific event or product that nobody else in your organization has taken the time to promote.

For instance, if you put your SEO efforts into promoting Tuesday Night Half-Price Pickles and there is no other marketing for it, you can relish the thought that most of the people who show up found out about the event as a result of your SEO work.

Include coupons or promotion codes on your website. How will you know if walk-in customers used your website to research your products or services?

One way is to create coupons or promotion codes on your website that these customers can print out and bring into your store for a discount.

Sure, it won’t tell you whether they used a search engine to find your site, but at least you’ll have something to link your real world traffic to your online traffic.

Cultivate communication. If your site goals fall into the persuasion category, give your users an opportunity to tell their stories with “Post your success story here”

or “Share your smoking cessation tips” links. An increase in the number of postings can indicate your SEO success.

Simply ask. When all else fails, simply ask your offline customers or clients how they found you.

It’s not the most accurate information, but it’s better than nothing. Be sure that your traditional marketing, sales, and PR team put out the question in print, on the phone, or in person whenever they have the opportunity.

Brainstorm with your team on options for tracking your offline conversions and finalize a plan.

Tracking the Intangible
Many organizations report that branding is a primary goal of their SEO campaigns. But how do you track these less-than-tangible factors?

Whether you call it Branding with a capital B or just ‘keeping up appearances,’ the image that your organization projects through the search engines is important.

If the top-ranked website for your company name is a rant by a disgruntled former employee, or if half of your inbound links mention an outdated product name, you’ve got an image problem that SEO can help fix.

Branding improvements may be a fringe benefit of your SEO campaign, or they may be a central goal.

Either way, make sure you document outcomes like improved search engine listings; inbound link updates; cleanup of outdated, private, or inappropriate content; and mentions in other web media such as blogs or review sites.

Keep a diary or log it in your Task Journal, and pull out these accomplishments when you need some good news in the analysis and interpretation sections of your Monthly Report!

Things like eliminating references to nonexistent products and services and monitoring blog references, media mentions, and hate sites are so important that they need quantitative measurement.

Try to quantify your image-improvement accomplishments in some way. For instance, Eight out of 14 of our misspelled listings have now been corrected,

Our company name has been mentioned on 63 blogs this month, up from 24 mentions in the previous month, or

Our specially designed landing page now outranks the ‘hate site’ listing for the keywords ‘I Hate ZappyCo,’ a phrase that approximately 250 people per month search for.

Companies like Buzzmetrics and Intelliseek work to measure activity in this arena, known as consumer generated media (CGM).

Numbers will help provide a clear baseline and measurable change. You’ll be glad to have facts and figures at the ready when you need to justify another round of SEO spending.

PPC Quick Check/Link Building
Some people spend the majority of their SEO time on these two tasks. As advocates of the holistic approach to SEO, we don’t recommend focusing most of your energy on just one or two activities.

But, in general, you can benefit from spending more time on links and PPC campaign tweaks.

Do you really want to get into the business of building and maintaining a tracking tool rather than focusing on your core business?