Web Analytics and SEO: Learn the Ropes, Work a Plan, Measure the Right Stuff... Declare Victory!

#musedata#musedata
11/1/2016
Web Analytics and SEO
Learn the Ropes… Work a Plan… Measure the Right Stuff…
Declare Victory!

#musedata#musedata 2
Part One: Web Analytics

What web analytics is often about

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Web analytics is often about:
“So What?”
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What web analytics is really about:
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Your goal: use data to tell a story
 What was happening.
 What it meant.
 What you did.
 What’s happening now.
forbes.com

There is a systematic, step-by-step process
 Articulate your program’s goals.
 Decide strategies to achieve those
goals.
 Decide tactics to pursue the
strategies.
 Decide what and how to measure
to validate the tactics.
 Benchmark to get a sense of
what’s normal. homedit.com

Articulate specific goals
 Express what you’re trying to
accomplish.
 Make high-level goals more
specific:
 “Increase influence” - too broad.
 “Become the definitive source on
Smithsonian history” - more specific.
 Specificity makes it easier to
identify strategies and tactics.
 Not too many!
It’s a Wonderful Life
Start the conversation! Articulate goals
and next steps on your own; work with
management to finalize.

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Determine strategies & tactics
 Strategies – the plans you make to achieve the goals.
 Employing social media is a strategy.
 Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy.
 Producing a specific type of content is a tactic.
 Individual channels (facebook, twitter) are tactics.
 Per the example:
 Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.”
 Strategy: Increase engagement with history of the Smithsonian content.
 Tactic: Make SI-history content more findable and measureable.
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Decide how to measure your tactics
 Choose measurements to learn if
your tactics are succeeding.
 Choose a few measurements.
 Trend them over time.
 Per the example:
 Strategy: increase engagement with SI
history website content.
 Tactic: make website history content more
findable / measureable.
 Make a “history-content” segment and
measure for engagement:
 Visit frequency
 Visit depth
 Bounce rate
History-related
visits
All visits
“Deep history visits” were 94% higher!

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Decide how to measure your tactics (cont’d)
 Acquisition-related goals
 Sessions
 Users
 Campaigns
 New vs Returning
 Entrances
 Referrals
 Engagement-related goals
 Session frequency
 Page depth
 Time on site
 Bounce rate
 Events
 Content-related goals
 Pageviews
 Page depth
 Bounce rate
 Issue-related goals
 Event-based conversions (exits from on-site
search results, etc.)
 Contact form submissions
 Funnel abandonment
 Design-related goals
 Users / Events flow
 Page depth
 Time on site
 Funnel abandonment
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 The measurements you choose depends on your goals:

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Examples!
 Measureable Goal: Increase
social media followers in the 5 key
regions by 20%
 Tactic: Facebook and Twitter Ads
targeted to the five regions
 Measurement: Twitter and
Facebook followers by geography
 Measureable Goal: Increase
website sessions and engagement from 5
key regions by 20%
 Tactic: Google AdWords targeted to
the five regions
 Measurement: sessions,
pageviews, page depth, time on site
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 Broad goal
 Raise national visibility, especially in five key regions
 Strategy
 Digital advertising in the five key regions

You can’t set targets w/o benchmarks
 You need at least six months of
data.
 Data is seasonal.
 Depends on your traffic.
 Balance targets with factors
beyond your control:
 Are the improvements you’re seeking
difficult to achieve?
 How much resources will you have to
implement tactics?
Drinks Enthusiast

Keep it simple!
 Don’t do too much!
 Minimize the number of
measurements.
 If they turn-out to be inconclusive,
change up.
 It’s an ongoing process!
arvinddevalia.com

Army Times
GOOGLE ANALYTICS Basics

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Dimensions and Metrics
 Dimensions describe the data, or an
attribute of the user (“what”):
 Traffic source
 City
 Page
 Metrics measure the data (“how
many,” “how long”):
 Sessions
 Bounce rate
 Time on page
 Lunametrics
 Optimizesmart
 Dimensions & Metrics Explorer (Google)
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Optimizesmart
Dimensions Metrics
GA’s familiar
color-coding
helps you
keep track of
Dimensions
and Metrics.

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How GA reports are organized
 The way the reports
are organized
speaks to specific
types of questions.
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LunaMetrics
Audience
Acquisition
Behavior
Conversions

How can Google Analytics HELP?
 Improve your program?
 Yes! Good for you!
 Satisfy your boss with
monthly Big Numbers?
 Sure. It is what it is.
 Validate (or not) something
you’ve already done.
 Um, maybe. Wikipedia

Improve your program!
Metrics as proxies for user engagement
 Under Audience >> Behavior
 Frequency
 Recency
 Page Depth (“Engagement”)
 “New vs. Returning” (e-nor post)
 Use with segments:
 Traffic from search
 Traffic from mobile
 Etc.
 ‘Time on site’ is great, but do not rely solely on it.
 Due to technical issues

Segmentation: GA’s most powerful feature?
Segments are accessed
by clicking “Add
Segment”. “Organic
Traffic” is shown.
All Users
Organic (Search
Engine) Traffic
 Analyze subsets of traffic.
 Search engine traffic
 Social media traffic
 Demographics
 Segments can be copied and shared.
 Google Blog
 Kissmetrics Overview
 Examples (Cutroni)
 Examples (Kaushik)

Exercise: create a new segment
 Google’s Avinash Kaushik wrote about a segment of
engaged visitors he called Non-Flirts, Potential Lovers
 “Why not analyze people who DO engage with us?”
 Engagement / Page Depth shows the distribution of
the # of pages people visit on your site.
 “The "tipping point" at which a core group of people decide to stick
with your site.
 Navigate to GA’s Reporting section
 Click on “All Users”, or “+Add Segment” (next to it)
 Click
Kaushik’s blog
Occam's Razor
is a great resource
for making web
analytics fun and
understandable.

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Set-up your segment’s Conditions
 Click ‘Conditions’ (left menu, @ bottom)
 Note that you can select between Sessions and Users
 Select Sessions
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Select your segment’s Dimension
 Click ‘Ad Content’
 Type-in ‘Page Depth’
 Select the green
‘Page Depth’
dimension.
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Make a new segment (cont’d)
 In the ‘Conditions’
pull-down, change
to
 Type ‘3’ in the box to
its right.
 Name the segment
“Sessions 3+ pages”
and click ‘Save’.
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Sessions 3+ pages

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How can we use the new segment?
 In his blog post Kaushik wants you to ask yourself “What’s unique about
(any) segmented group?”
 Where did they come from? (Source/Medium)
 What pages did they enter on? (Entrances)
 What campaigns have a higher percentage of these people? (Campaign referrals)
 What countries? (Geo >> Location report)
 What is the difference between content they consume on your site compared to everyone else?
 Do they all happen to use the (comparison chart) first?
 Do they all read the (Sports) section?
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#musedata#musedata
A ‘real world’ example from @sosarasays
 Question: “Is anybody using those resources my department
created?”
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Behavior > Site Content > All Pages >
 Search for the web directories in question, e.g., /resources/guides/

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 Next question: “How might we increase the use of these specific
resources?”
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 Make a new custom segment!
 Allows you to benchmark the sessions which included viewing at least one of the
“guide” pages.
 Improve the data by working on:
 Making the guides more visible in navigation
 Getting more inbound links
 Optimizing page metadata to help with search engine findability (SEO)
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 Package entire datasets for
deeper analysis.
 Saves time
 Shows just the data you need.
 Create and manage Custom Reports
(Google)
 12 Awesome Custom Reports
Created by the Experts (Kissmetrics)
 5 Google Analytics Custom Reports
FTW! (Kaushik)
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Custom Reports can save you time & effort
Create and access
Custom Reports from
the ‘Customization’ tab.
Custom Reports can be
scheduled for delivery via
email in a variety of
formats.

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 A conversion is any measureable behavior with
an implicitly (or explicitly) higher value.
 Conversion rates are more informative than
merely counting the number of times something
has happened.
 Typical conversion goals:
 Destination (ex: thanks.html)
 Duration (ex: 5 minutes or more)
 Pages/Screens per session (ex: 3 pages)
 Event (download PDF, play video)
 REQUIRES CODE
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Deeper understanding with Conversion Goals
Studying conversion rates
levels the playing field,
versus merely counting!

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‘Event Tracking’ is super-important
 More sophisticated Goals typically involve creating “Events”:
 External links
 Sign-ups, form submissions
 Downloads
 Many types of conversion goals
 To use Events:
 Define and categorize events.
 Configure and add the javascript code, usually right in the link (not always).
 Many social-share widgets automatically add Events.
 Google Analytics Event Organizer (Smithsonian’s Michelle Herman)
 The Complete Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide Plus 10 Amazing Examples (old
code, but good examples)
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Events in the GA U-I
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Track Campaigns with ‘URL Builder’
 For more granular data about specific Campaigns:
 Email Campaigns
 Social Media
 Banners
 Anything that uses a URL-based click-to format
 As with Events, the work is up front, in the categorization:
 Campaign Source
 (referrer: google, citysearch, newsletter4)
 Campaign Medium
 (marketing medium: cpc, banner, email)
 Campaign Term
 (identify the paid keywords)
 Campaign Content
 (use to differentiate ads)
 Campaign Name
URL Builder (Google)
How To Use UTM Parameters (Kissmetrics)
URL Builder for GA (Raventools)

Satisfy your boss!
The inevitability of “Quantity of Stuff”
 No actionable data
 Sessions (previously Visits)
 Users (previously Visitors)
 Pages (a.k.a. Pageviews)
 Establish scope / context.
 Measure growth / acquisition.
 You can’t improve your site by measuring these.
 Reporting them out of context can be
misleading.
Occam's Razor
“All data in
aggregate is crap.”

Satisfy your boss!
Dashboards are useful, and easy to make
 Display multiple reports at once.
 “My Dashboard” (default) included.
 Import from the Solutions Gallery.
 Share as PDFs.
 Schedule for distribution by email.
 About Dashboards (Google)
 10 useful Google Analytics custom dashboards
(Econsultancy)
 How Google Analytics Dashboards Can Make Your
Life Easier (Kissmetrics) Customize Dashboards by adding / deleting /
manipulating widgets (up to 12 per dashboard)
Google

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Exercise: make a dashboard
1) ‘Dashboards’ menu
2) Select ‘+New Dashboard’
3) Select ‘Blank Canvas’
4) Give the dashboard a title
5) Select ‘Create Dashboard’

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Next: adding widgets
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You can add widgets directly from GA reports
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Here is the bottom line!
 Your measurements validate your
tactics (or not).
 To work the process and improve
your site, you need meaningful data:
 Engagement metrics
 Segments
 Goal completion / Conversion rates
 A-B or MAB (multi-armed bandit) tests
 Qualitative data (surveys)
 If your goal is purely audience
acquisition, you can use “quantity-of-
stuff” metrics to tell your story.
NY Daily News

New(ish), Game-Changing Features
Source: Keith Srakocic, AP
Virginiasports.com

Mobile automated insights
 GA mobile app only.
 Looks at your data, automatically
analyzes it.
 Suggests insights and actions!
 Other cool features too, such as the
‘Users by time of day’ heat map.
 Google blog (9/2/16)
 Google Analytics App now offers Google Now-
like automated insights (MarketingLand)
 Google Analytics can now summarize your data
with automated insights (TechCrunch)

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Demographics and Interests Reports
 Demographics
 Age (traffic by age ranges)
 Gender (traffic by gender)
 Interests – behavior by
 Affinity Categories
 In-Market Categories
 Other Categories
 No PII is tracked!
 You have to turn the reports on in the U-I, and add a
line of code to your pages.
 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2819948?hl=en
 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2444872#trackingcode
 You have to modify your privacy policy.
 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2799357
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Benchmarking Reports!
 Compare your site to others in the same category
(or across categories).
 Compare by:
 Channels (traffic sources)
 Location
 Devices
 How to find the Libraries and Museums category:
 Search box, or:
 Audience  Benchmarking
 Use top left pull-down; click ‘Reference’
 Scroll down to ‘Libraries & Museums’
 Benchmarking Reports (Google)
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Boston Dynamics
Automation

Google Sheets Chrome Add-On
 Free, official
Google Product.
 Directly access
the GA API.
 Higher-level
Google Sheets
skills will help.
 Here’s How to
Automate Google
Analytics
Reporting with
Google Sheets
https://chrome.google.com/webstore

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Supermetrics
 Commercial Excel add-on.
 Easy-to-use and customize.
 Exceptional charting
capabilities.
 Schedule reports to run
automatically.
 14 days free.
 $348 per year.
 Limited documentation and
support.
 Free version for Google
Sheets available.
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http://supermetrics.com

#musedata#musedata
Analytics Edge Excel Add-on
 Wizard-driven interface is clean
and (relatively) intuitive.
 Auto-refresh and schedule
reports.
 Import data from text files,
worksheets or other workbooks
 Support via online community.
 Free and paid versions:
 Free Social Shares connector.
 More features - $6/month.
 Optional connectors - $4/month.
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http://www.analyticsedge.com

Universal Analytics means all new code
 We are (still…) in phase three of a four-phased,
multi-year rollout.
 All GA accounts have been migrated to Universal,
but many website pages still carry the old code.
 Phase 4: legacy code will be deprecated (date TBD
– “in the near future”).
 “Data received from deprecated libraries will... be
processed for a minimum of two years…”
 You should upgrade your code SOON!
 You also need to upgrade custom code, e.g.,
events, virtual pageviews, etc.
 Universal Analytics Upgrade Center Vampyre Fangs

Out with the old, in with the new!
 What code are you using?
 It’s easy to tell!
 If your site is newer than mid-
2014, you have the new code.
 If your site is older, do View
Source.
 Search for:
 gaq  old code
 ga.js  old code
 analytics.js  new code
Scrap for Joy

Google Tag Manager means… what?
 GTM can simplify your life, IF:
 You have multiple JS tags on a straightforward site.
 Your implementation configuration is basic.
 You’re not customizing the data layer.
 You’re not doing ecommerce or Events (link clicks, form submits,
etc.).
 If you’re tracking complex interactions, or have multiple
sites / subdomains, you have to be careful (test)!
 You may need the services of a developer.
 Unlock the Data Layer: A Non-Developer’s Guide to Google Tag
Manager
 10 Ways Your GTM Setup Might Be Broken
Vampyre Fangs

Google’s “Analytics Academy”
 Free video-based courses
 Digital Analytics Fundamentals
 Google Analytics Platform
Principles
 Ecommerce Analytics: From
Data to Decisions
 Mobile App Analytics
Fundamentals
 Google Tag Manager
Fundamentals
analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com

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Web Analytics Resources
 Google Analytics Academy (Google)
 Google Analytics Blog (Google)
 Universal Analytics Upgrade Guide (Google)
 Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics (moz.com)
 Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kaushik)
 Analytics Talk (Google’s Justin Cutroni)
 Jeffalytics (Jeff Saur)
 Annielytics (Annie Cushing)
 Analytics Edge (Mike Sullivan)
 Kissmetrics blog
 Lunametrics blog / Lunametrics Training
 Cardinal Path Training
 Discover the Google Analytics Platform (advanced tools)
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Coffee Break – 20 Minutes

Part Two: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Bone Tone Brass Band

#musedata#musedata
What does “SEO” mean today?
 Search Engines (SE’s) are smarter than ever.
 Almost all traffic is personalized, which affects SE results.
 Google has worked to defeat tactical SEO, but…
 “Old school” stuff, (titles, text content, links, URLs, site
architecture) still matters.
 Depending on who you believe, Google has between 73%* and
90%** of worldwide desktop traffic.
 …Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex “and the rest” still account for
billions of searches every month.
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*source
**source

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Importance of Personalization
 Virtually all search results are personalized now.
 This is true whether or not you are logged into Google, but especially
true if you are.
 SO… there is no standard rank for a given keyword.
 Analyzing rankings for specific keywords is a flawed strategy anyway!
 Tip: try Chrome’s ‘Incognito’ mode – Shift-Ctrl-N
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#musedata#musedata
SEO and Museums
 In our favor:
 We have great content!
 We (sometimes) have ultra-high domain authority!
 Smithsonian: 94 out of 100! (moz.com)
 We have some of the strongest brands in the world!
 Brands matter on search engines
 Many sites receive 40-60% of traffic from organic search.
 Social media helps (but maybe not as much as we think).
 Challenges:
 Despite great content, many sites aren’t optimized.
 Some have technical issues such as “duplicate content.”
 Some are too small / unlinked, to break through.
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Drew Bowie

#musedata#musedata
SO MUCH going on, on a ‘SERP’ these days!
(With a little help from the moz.com Google Glossary)
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Paid Search
(PPC) ads
Twitter results
Organic search
result with
“mini-sitelinks”
“Google My
Business”
(formerly
Google Places)
“Knowledge Panel”
– MANY things can
show here – team
rosters, “popular
times,” etc.
Social Networks
Recommendations (“People
also search for…”)

#musedata#musedata
Importance of Local
 Over 50% of Google trillions of searches / year are mobile
 Nearly one third of those are location-related. (source)
 “Every month people visit 1.5 billion destinations related to what they
searched for on Google.” (source)
 Searches with local intent are more likely to lead to store visits and
sales within a day. Fifty percent of mobile users are most likely to visit
after conducting a local search. (Google / source)
 “Authoritative OneBox” (right) is the grand prize.
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 Appearing in the three-listing snack-pack is
critical for businesses, but not always do-able.
 Organic optimization plays a large role.
 Correct/consistent “NAP” (name, address,
phone) is critical.

#musedata#musedata
What influences Google’s algorithm?
 Moz 2015 Ranking Survey
 150 expert opinions
 One-to-ten scale
 “Old school” factors still
rank highest, but exact
keyword matches are less
influential
 Social ranks lowest, but
shares are impt.
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“…The data continues to show
some of the highest correlations
between Google rankings and the
number of links to a given page.”

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Moz definitions (into the weeds)
 Domain-Level, Link Authority Features: Based on link/citation metrics such as quantity of
links, trust, domain-level PageRank, etc. (8.22)
 Page-Level Link Metrics: PageRank, Trust metrics, quantity of linking root domains, links,
anchor text distribution, quality/spamminess of linking sources, etc. (8.19)
 Page-Level Keyword & Content-Based Metrics: Content relevance scoring, on-page
optimization of keyword usage, topic-modeling algorithm scores on content, content
quantity/quality/relevance, etc. (7.87)
 Page-Level, Keyword-Agnostic Features: Content length, readability, Open Graph markup,
uniqueness, load speed, structured data markup, HTTPS, etc. (6.57)
 User Usage & Traffic/Query: Data SERP engagement metrics, clickstream data, Visitor
traffic/usage signals, quantity/diversity/CTR of queries, both on the domain and page level (6.55)
 Domain-Level Brand Metrics: Offline usage of brand/domain name, mentions of brand/domain
in news/media/press, toolbar/browser data of usage about the site, entity association, etc. (5.88)
 Domain-Level Keyword Usage: Exact-match keyword domains, partial-keyword matches, etc.
(4.97)
 Domain-Level, Keyword-Agnostic Features: Domain name length, TLD extension, SSL
certificate, etc. (4.09)
 Page-Level Social Metrics: Quantity/quality of tweeted links, Facebook shares, Google +1s,
etc. to the page (3.98)
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#musedata#musedata
Old-School Website SEO Still Matters
 Good quality “backlinks” (keywords)
 Body content – keywords, semantically-related words
 Page Title Tags and Meta Description tags
 URLs, site architecture, page structure
 Internal “anchor” links using keywords
 Titles, headlines (H1) and sub-heads (H2)
 Images with ALT and TITLE tags.
 “301 Redirects” still matter, but not as much as before (source).
 Misc. content emphasis attributes (bold, italics, underline, etc.).
 The Beginner’s Guide to SEO (Moz)
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New Orleans Public Library

Old-School Website SEO (con’td)
 Navigation and link structure
 Spiders still find pages by crawling the site through navigation and links.
 SE’s like flatter architectures and will index flat sites more thoroughly.
 Infrastructure can impact the crawler's ability to scan and index pages.
• Incorporating links in JavaScript, iFrames, Flash, etc.
 URL / directory / filename structure. Search-friendly URLs:
 Are descriptive, giving some idea what the page is about.
 Are simple, static and short:
• A single dynamic parameter can result in lower ranking and indexing.
• Easier for the spider to understand and put in context
 Use (but do not overuse) keywords.
 Use hyphens to separate words.

#musedata#musedata
You have control of Title and Description tags!
 Page Title tags are important – every page should have its own!
 They tell a search engine what the page is about.
 They are the headline for the search listing.
 Meta Description tag helps improve click-through.
 They need to be short, provide a coherent description.
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Awesomesauce!
Uninspired, but to the point.
No description tag!
Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
Good description, but it’s not the
one they wrote, AND it’s cut off!

#musedata#musedata
Exercise: write a title tag
 Length is important (if you want the tag the display properly)!
 Short! ~55 characters! (source)
 Best case: individual tags for each page.
 Write a headline in 55 characters or less (including spaces) that:
 Imparts an accurate expectation of what the page is about.
 Will serve as a clear, clickable headline for your search result.
 Steps:
1. Open a browser and a text editor.
2. Make a 55-character ‘character counter’ in a monospaced (Courier) font:
3. Pick a page and choose ‘View Source’
4. Find <TITLE> (or <title>)
5. Copy your current Title Tag, paste it into a text file under the character counter
6. Edit / write a new tag!
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (55 characters)
V&A · The world's leading museum of art and design
Home | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Projects | National Air and Space Museum

#musedata#musedata
Exercise: write a meta-description tag
 Meta Description tag helps improve click-through.
 Needs to be customized and short.
 Describe what the page is about in 120 characters or less.
 If for your homepage, describe the site.
 BTW, 120 characters is very conservative! Moz says between 150 and 160 characters is ok.
 I Can't Drive 155: Meta Descriptions in 2015 - Moz
 Steps:
1. Pick a page and choose ‘View Source’
2. Find meta name="description"
3. Make a 120-character character counter in Courier font
4. Copy your current description tag, paste it into a text file under the character counter
5. Edit / write a new tag!
67
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (120 chars.)
Museum of the decorative arts founded in 1852 to support and encourage excellence in art and design. Located in London, England.
(8 extra chars.)

#musedata#musedata
“Keyword research” was HUGE!
 BUT – Google has gotten very (VERY) good at:
 Understanding what pages are about.
 How words relate to each other (“semantic keywords”).
 If you have great content, you are probably using a rich variety of the right keywords.
 I.e., the ones people actually search for!
 MAYBE. You should know.
 BUT… concentrated keyword research is an intense process:
 STEP 1: Use Multiple Sources to Get Keyword Suggestions.
 STEP 2: Selects Keywords that Match Multiple Types of Searcher Intent Based on Your Content Strategy.
 STEP 3: Collect Keyword Metrics and Sort/Filter/Prioritize Based on Goals.
 STEP 4: Determine Keyword Targeting & New Content Creation Needs/Priority.
 These tips are easy-to-do however:
 Google auto-suggest (search entry box pull-down).
 Google “Searches related-to _______” (similar searches).
 Moz’s Keyword Explorer can help identify keyword suggestions.
68

Keyword research (into the weeds)
 Process:
 Discovering and Prioritizing the Best Keywords (Moz)
 Keyword Research in 2016: Going Beyond Guesswork (Moz)
 How to Do Keyword Research for SEO (Hubspot)
 A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO (Moz)
 Tools
 Google AdWords Keyword Planner (free, but limited usefulness)
 Google Trends (free)
 Moz Pro Keyword Explorer (paid / limited free usage)
 11 Best free keyword research tools for SEO in 2016 (SEOstack blog)
 SEMrush (paid)

#musedata#musedata
You’re relaunching your site!
 Launching a new site hurts in the short run…
 If you change your URLs, your site disappears from engine DBs and must be
reindexed / reassessed.
 You’re starting from scratch!
 Don’t worry – your traffic will come back, but it can take months.
 Re-launching is an opportunity to improve your rankings by:
 Migrating to https.
 Using unique Title and Description tags.
 Incorporating logical directory structure and navigational elements.
 Having search-friendly URLs. (No numerical parameters!)
 Providing lots of indexable text.
70

#musedata#musedata
You’re relaunching your site! (cont’d)
 Minimize the loss of traffic and rankings by
employing 301-type (permanent) redirects from
your old pages.
 They tell the engines that a page has permanently moved.
 “One-to-one” redirects are optimal, but not always possible
(practically speaking).
 Google is working on lessening the importance
of using 301s, but it is still the best practice.
 301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know
for SEO (Moz)
71
301-type redirects are the way
you tell the engines your old
site hasn’t died. (It’s also an
old highway in Maryland.)

#musedata#musedata
New-ish stuff that matters
72
Tyler (10-weeks)
 Mobile-friendly / responsive design is boosted in Google.
 Page speed matters, but what matters more is having relevance
reduced for having a slow site.
 People expect a page to load in about two secs.
 Security - https is better than http.
 There are new ways to improve the way your search results
appear.
 Structured data - “Rich snippets.”
 User reviews matter!
 Improved CTR if your Google listing shows high-star reviews.
 Social media content is more integrated into search results.
 Localized results – Geo-targeting is pretty accurate.

#musedata#musedata
New stuff that matters – AMP!
 Google-backed, open-source initiative.
 Accelerated Mobile Pages provide a MUCH faster mobile
experience!
 Speed up the load time of mobile webpages using existing
technologies.
 AMP for mobile search results gives the appearance of these
pages being prioritized…
 Google says they are not boosted in search results. BUT...
 Load time and page speed ARE ranking factors!
 AMP Testing Tool in Google Search Console.
 Testing tool blog post (Google)
 Another blog post (SEO Roundtable)
73
Look for the symbol.

Google’s ‘divided we stand’ strategy
 Currently, Google has a single
search index.
 “Within months,” Google will be
dividing its index, giving mobile users
better, fresher content (10/13/16).
 The separate mobile search index
will become the primary, more
frequently updated one.
mobile searchers
everyone else!
A mobile-optimized site is no longer a luxury!

“Off-Page” stuff that matters
 More important:
 LINKS (a.k.a. “backlinks”)!
• HIGH QUALITY external links back to your site, using keywords.
• Poor quality links can really hurt you!
• Moz free Open Site Explorer can help identify existing links and
linking opportunities.
 Social shares.
 Less important (but not irrelevant):
 Blog appearances for domain.
 Links in directories.
 News releases.
 Social presence (FB, Twitter, YouTube).
 The Ultimate Guide to Off-Page SEO
Bernard Landgraf

#musedata#musedata
Discredited Practices
 On-page:
 Keyword stuffing
 Meta keyword tag
 Spammy comments
 Off-page:
 Paid links
 Poor-quality links
 Content farms
 Guest blogging
 Exact match domains:
 “cheapairlinetickets.com”
 SEO “gateway” pages
 Flash (doesn’t get indexed)
 Google Penalties are usually applied by algorithm
76
Behaving badly means real penalties!

#musedata#musedata
How are SE’s getting better and better?
 Machine-learning / artificial intelligence.
 Microsoft Bing’s RankNet was first (2005).
 Google’s RankBrain algorithm (2015).
 RankBrain:
 Used to process search results and rank web pages.
 The third most important part of Google’s so-called Hummingbird
ranking algorithm!
 Google: RankBrain (Search Engine Land)
 FAQ: All About The New Google RankBrain Algorithm (Search
Engine Land)
 How Machine Learning Works (Martech)
 Machine Learning: Making Sense of a Messy World (Google)
77
HAL 9000

#musedata#musedata
Hummingbirds, Pandas, Penguins – what?!
 Hummingbird – Google’s algorithm changes OFTEN -
weekly.
 Panda (2011/2015) – Boosted high-quality sites and
demoted lower quality (spammy) sites.
 Penguin (2012/2016) – Penalized sites that use
“unnatural” backlinks.
 Moz blogs to help you plunder the Google-Algo
depths:
 Google Algorithm Change History
 Penguin 4.0: Was It Worth the Wait?
 Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet
78

Measuring SEO
 Percent of visits referred from
search engines.
 Manually tracked (or via API
tool).
 Shows your progress with
engines in a context-neutral
way, independent of ancillary
traffic spikes. Paid-search (orange) is boosting traffic, but
as the year progresses, organic share
(blue) is on the increase as well.

Measuring SEO (cont’d)
 Number of keywords referring traffic.
 Manually teased out of the GA interface.
 Navigate:
 Acquisition 
 All Traffic 
 Channels 
 Organic Search
 Primary dimension = Keyword
 Then… look to the bottom-right of chart,
for “Show rows:”
 1-10 of X,XXX
 X,XXX (8,319) is your metric.

Measuring SEO (cont’d)
 Number of pages receiving at least one visit
from a search engine.
 Manually teased out of the GA interface.
 Navigate:
 Acquisition 
 All Traffic 
 Channels 
 Organic Search
 Primary dimension = Landing page
 Then… look to the bottom-right of chart, for
“Show rows:”
 1-10 of X,XXX
 X,XXX (3,324) is your metric.

‘Organic Search’ metrics under ‘Acquisition’
 Shown in GA’s “Acquisition /
Behavior / Conversions” parlance.
 Navigate:
 Acquisition 
 All Traffic 
 Channels 
 Organic Search
Acquisition
• Sessions
• % New Sessions
• New Users
Behavior
• Bounce Rate
• Pages / Session
• Avg. Session Duration
Conversions
• Goal Conversion Rate
• Goal Completions
• Goal Value

Google Analytics Search Console
 Linking with Google Search
Console is required.
 Clicks / Impressions / CTR from
search engines
 Number of landing pages referred
from search engines
 Navigate:
 Acquisition 
 Search Console 
 Landing Pages
Acquisition
• Impressions
• Clicks
• CTR
• Average position
• Sessions
Behavior
• Bounce Rate
• Pages / Session
Conversions
• Goal Completions
• Goal Value
• Goal Conversion Rate

Structured Data
 Schema.org metadata provides info SE’s
need to understand content, provide
better results.
 Tells the engines what your data means,
not just what it says.
 Moz rates schema.org tags as a low-
influence ranking factor, but…
 Meta tags improve CTR in search results
by displaying enhanced content.
 Authorship
 "In-depth articles" feature (Article markup)
 Other “Rich Snippets”

Structured Data (cont’d)
 Structured data can be used to mark up:
 Creative work
 Event
 Organization
 Person
 Place
 Product
 Recipes
 Structured data may help:
 Enhance CTR from search engine results.
 Search engines understand your content.
 Your content to appear in specialized search
results like “in-depth Articles.”
 Google Structured Data Testing Tool
Museum content can be relevant to “in-depth articles”

Social Media’s Role
 Google’s Matt Cutts stated there is no causation of high
social metrics and Google rank (2013).
 I.e., authoritative “social signals" (Facebook likes, Twitter
followers) do not affect rank.
 Do you believe that? Not sure I do.
 Social media matters:
 It encourages links to your content.
 These links may influence rank by helping engines understand a
site’s credibility.
 Bing: “We take into consideration how often a link has been
tweeted or retweeted, as well as the authority of the Twitter users
that shared the link.”
 Social media profiles rank in search engines.
 Google+ does influence search results, but its influence
is believed to be shrinking.
5 Things You Need to Know About
Social Media & SEO (kissmetrics)

Open Graph meta tags are essential
 Open Graph (OG) tags (2010) promote
integration between social sites and
your website.
 Allows you to control how site content
appears in social media posts.
 OG tags can significantly affect click-
through rates and conversions from
social sites.
 The Open Graph Protocol
What You Need to Know About Open Graph Meta Tags
for Total Facebook and Twitter Mastery (kissmetrics)

The next chapter: app indexing
 Google and Apple are now “deep-indexing” content
within apps:
 Perform a search on a mobile device.
 Results will include web pages and relevant content from within an app.
 Google: indexed app links influence rank for associated Web pages.
 SEO is suddenly an important part of the app
development process.
 App Indexing: Why It Matters For The Future Of Search
 Searchengineland: App Indexing (topic page)
 Google’s Firebase app indexing
 Apple’s Deep Linking in iOS

As search evolves, so does our perspective
 From Bruce Clay’s How to Optimize for
Google Home NOW
 “The … thing to keep in mind here is that less
traffic isn’t always a bad thing. A broad trend (in
SEO) is that many sites aren’t ranking for as many
queries as they used to, which at first seems like
terrible news. But many of those same sites are
actually seeing better rankings for more specific
queries, and a concurrent increase in conversions.
As the search engines get better at understanding
user intent, and as search becomes more and more
personalized, rankings will be harder to track, and
(in many instances) harder to get. But if your visits
drop while your conversion rate improves, then
that’s a net gain.”
“As the search engines get better at
understanding user intent … rankings
will be harder to track, and (in many
instances) harder to get.”
Gizmodo

#musedata#musedata
OK, so what do I DO?!
 Use your time for things you can control!
 Improve your “old” site’s “on-page” findability:
 Add unique Title and Meta-Description tags.
 Delete the old “meta keywords” tag!
 Improve your text content.
 Add internal links using keywords.
 Switch to https.
 Reduce your site’s load time.
 Off-page: try and get backlinks!
 When someone is going to link to you, use keywords for the link – unless
your institutional name NEEDS the exposure.
 Off-page: social content that stimulates shares, user reviews.
 Register with “Google My Business”
 Make sure your existing info is correct
90
Vampyre Fangs

#musedata#musedata
OK, so then what do I do?!
 If redesigning your site, go to the mat for:
 Mobile-friendly (responsive) design.
 Quick load-time and AMP compatibility.
 Unique Title and Meta-description tags.
 Open graph (OG) tags for social.
 Search-friendly nav structure and URLs.
 Text content! Sometimes sites are surprisingly
devoid of this, esp. if the design mantra was a
“clean look.”
 Work the steps, benchmark and measure!
91
Vampyre Fangs

#musedata#musedata
Search Engine Marketing References
 Search Engine Land
 Search Engine Watch
 Danny Sullivan (twitter)
 Matt Cutts (twitter)
 Moz (free/paid)
 Woorank (free/paid SEO checker)
 SEMrush (paid)
 Bruce Clay
 SEO Smarty - Ann Smarty
 SEOBook - Aaron Wall (paid)
92

Questions?

Thanks!
@balpert

Web Analytics and SEO: Learn the Ropes, Work a Plan, Measure the Right Stuff... Declare Victory!

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