You’re wasting your money on SEO and what you can do about it, Part 4
Search Engine Marketing
In part 3 of our series, we talked about how Search Engine Optimization fits into your Search Engine Marketing strategy and what you should expect from an SEO.
In our final part of this series, we’re going to talk about the importance of Analytics and what you should expect an SEO to do for you in this area.
Analytics
Like SEO and Link Building, Analytics is essential to a Search Engine Marketing strategy.
Bluntly, without an analytics or measurement plan, you don’t have a Search Engine Marketing strategy.
So, what is an analytics or measurement plan?
Simply, an analytics or measurement plan lays out how you are going to track whether your Search Engine Marketing plan is working.
In most cases there are two main analytics tools that will help you track your goals: Google Analytics and Omniture.
Before some of you get up in arms, yes, we know that there are wonderful more niche and real-time statistical and analytics tools out there there provide useful, if not crucial information, but we don’t recommend such tools until the basics are in place.
Comparing Omniture and Google Analytics would require an entirely new series, so we’ll just say that Google Analytics is free and much more widely used by small to mid sized companies.
These analytical tools provide you an overwhelming amount of data, including demographics, time-of-day, repeat vs new users, referral sources (how a visitor got to your site) and can be customized to track specific goals.
Suffice to say, learning how to use a tool can be quite a chore.
This is where an SEO comes in.
An SEO can show you how to install such software on your site and create custom dashboards, using the software that will allow you to see only the data relevant to your goals.
An example is probably in order.
Let’s say you have decided that “discounted software” is a keyword of yours, and that your goal is to generate 10 sales a month from people searching for that keyword.
An SEO will tell you how to configure your website to feed the sales data into the software tool. The SEO will then be able to create a special report (generated via email or viewable in your browser) that shows exactly how many people are arriving to your site by searching for the keyword “discounted software” and how many of these people actually purchase something once they arrive.
An SEO will also help you interpret the graphs and answer your questions about what the software can and can not do.
Summary
We hope you enjoyed this series on what to expect from an SEO. More importantly, we hoped you learned something from it.
The important thing to realize is that SEO is not Search Engine Marketing and that there are many tentacles of both.
Additionally, both are like fashion. You can’t just “do them.” Just like a company can’t just “do Marketing” and then stop.
Search Engine Marketing is an ongoing process; an ongoing, rapidly evolving, process that requires someone who can stay on top of the latest trends and best practices.
Please, if you have any questions, drop us an email or contact us. We’re more than happy to help you.
About Cody Swann
Cody Swann is an entrepreneur, developer, strategist, banged up ex-football walk-on, retired body builder and former journalist born and raised in South Florida. He currently splits his time between his hometown of Stuart, FL and Los Angeles, CA. Cody founded Gunner Technology, a highly sought after digital agency, specializing in helping companies maximize profits through custom web development, technology efficiencies, social media strategy and search engine marketing.
As a manager and developer at ESPN for nearly six years, Cody led development and vision for two of ESPN’s most popular online features: Sports Scoreboards and GameCasts. Additionally Cody oversaw all aspects of MyESPN and ESPN’s social network, ESPN Fan Profiles. Cody worked with Technology, Editorial, Sales, Marketing and relevant business stakeholders to mold ESPN’s social media strategy, develop custom applications for it and execute it. Under his direction, ESPN successfully ported large portions of its core product from a proprietary Java stack to an open source Ruby on Rails stack, capable of standing up and performing under the tremendous load world's most popular sports site delivers.
Cody began forging his technological knowledge more than 10 years ago, developing and designing websites in college. His development work has included web development, web design, content writing, digital photography and digital video production for award-winning sites like Gainesville.com, GatorSports.com and ESPN.com. He has helped set digital strategy and direction for companies in the New York Times Regional Newspaper group, ESPN, ABC and Disney.
He is a recognized expert in web development, social media strategy, search engine optimization, conversion optimization, analytics tracking and business planning. He has worked with large interactive media companies to small and medium sized businesses. Cody motivates and inspires creative teams to deliver superb, polished work under tight deadlines.