Data Tells Your SEO Story

Categorized in: SEO

When it comes to SEO, it is so important to balance the use of data with the human touch. You need have a big picture perspective, while also understanding that data tells a story. You just need to have the experience to understand and interpret the numbers that you see. When everything is going well, you need the numbers so you can see why it’s going well. The same is true for when something is amiss. The data can lead you in the right direction. Here’s more information:

If You Notice Something Strange, Data Can Tell You Why

We have a client who experienced a dip in their organic traffic numbers. At first glance, you might think that this has purely to do with their SEO. But, the data actually told a different story. There was evidence in the numbers that they had been running a boosting campaign on one of the social networks the month prior, but they had stopped it.

On the surface, this may seem like something that had nothing to do with SEO, but they started the campaign up again the next month and their numbers were back up. While they only indirectly impact each other, this indirect relationship is what caused the dip in organic traffic. The data told this whole story!

Looking at Keyword Data Can Help Uncover Patterns

Another place where data can tell a story is through keyword reports that you can find in Google Search Console and other places. This is a prime spot to see how the search engines perceive your website and is a valuable data set to gauge how they view their website. If you are being returned in searches that are completely off the mark for your business, you will know that you need to make some changes.

The thing is, keyword aren’t just about being found by the search engines. What you really want to happen is that keywords can tell you whether or not your target market is finding your website properly. The keywords offer clues as to whether or not that’s really happening.

Use Data to Figure Out What Needs to Change

Let’s say you already performed an onsite optimization and you have been implementing an ongoing SEO strategy that involves regularly posting content, checking data, disavowing bad backlinks, and more. After a few months, you aren’t noticing any improvement. Well, first of all, it can take up to six months to see any improvements, so you need to make sure you’re waiting long enough.

However, it could very well be that you do need to make some changes. The data will tell you either way what needs to be improved, and maybe even how it needs to be improved. This is a crucial step that people don’t realize is so important until it’s too late. Sometimes people don’t notice performance issues until the window of opportunity to make fast changes has ended.

When it comes to data, you can absolutely use it to improve SEO. You just need to be smart about it.