It’s important to know how to write web content for SEO according to SEO Malaysia. But it’s just as important to know how to measure your content’s SEO impact after it has been published. In this article, I’ll explain how to use Google Analytics to make reports that look at how well articles or the people who write them are doing. First, let’s talk about what things are.
What is content for SEO?
Search engine optimized content is the process of researching and writing website copy in a way that makes it as effective as possible in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). To do this, you need to have a keyword strategy, be able to do competitive analyses, and know what ranking factors are used now.
If you’re a copywriter, your clients have probably already asked you to write content that is “written for SEO.” In practise, this means that the writer often needs to be more involved in both strategy and research. In SEO, words are important, and taking the time to get them right is a big part of making good content. Most of the time, it works well to add SEO research and analysis to the process of finding content.
So, the question is: How do I figure out how well my content team is doing?
In the Moz seminar SEO for Content Writers, we go into more detail about the research and reporting processes, but I’ll explain a few useful ideas here.
What should I be looking for?
No matter if you’re doing SEO or PPC, a good digital marketing plan is built around clear goals. Each client will have different goals, and as a digital marketer, I’ve found that part of my job is to help the client figure out how to translate business goals into actions that site visitors take that can be measured.
Goals should have a few important qualities. They ought to:
Have measurable value (revenue, leads generated, event registrations)
Be easy to find on the site (PDF downloads, button clicks, confirmation page views)
help businesses grow (part of an online campaign, useful to sales team, etc.)
After the first 3–6 months of working together, clients rarely want to invest in vague goals like “increase organic sessions on site.”
Google Analytics is one tool you can use to measure goals (GA). GA is great because almost everyone has an account, even if they don’t know how to use it, and it works well with almost all of the major SEO software.
Start your SEO research off on the right foot by trying out Moz Pro for free. After you’ve used Keyword Explorer and Open Site Explorer to learn about your content strategy and the competition, you can use Google Analytics to track the content you make.
I’ll show you how I put this together.
How to use Google Analytics to measure SEO content
Step 1: Look at how your site converts.
As I’ve already said, your SEO goals should be connected to a business goal. During the Reporting on SEO Bootcamp, we talk about setting goals and look at a worksheet that shows monthly progress.
During the launch phase of a new project, find the on-site actions that help your client’s business and think about how your content can drive traffic to those pages. Some call-to-actions (CTAs) in articles point to a whitepaper, while others may say to set up a consultation.
Ask your client how much a new customer or lead is worth when you talk to them about these possible conversion points (contact us page, white paper download, etc.). For nonprofits, the goal might be to spread the word about events or get more donations. No matter what your goal is, you need to give each conversion a value before you set up goals in Google Analytics.
Step 2: In Google Analytics, go to the Admin panel.
Once you know what your goals are and have decided on a good value for each one, open Google Analytics and go to the admin panel. At the time this was written, you could find the Admin panel by clicking on a small gear icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
Step 3: Create a goal (including dollar value)
In the Admin view, there are three columns: Account, Property, and View. Under “View,” there is a section called “Goals.”
When you’re in the Goals section, click “+New Goal.”
Most of the time, I choose “Custom” instead of one of the pre-filled templates. It depends on you. I’d give the “Custom” option a try just to get used to the drop-down menus.
Now, fill in the goal based on what you learned from the analysis in step 1. Fill out one goal for each action you’ve found that leads to a conversion. Putting in a value is the most important thing. This is how much money is needed to reach this goal.
Here is where you can find Google’s explanation of how to set goals: Make or change goals
Step 4: Make a “segment” for organic traffic and use it.
After you’ve set up your goals, you’ll need to set up and automate your reporting. Since we’re looking at traffic from search engines, we want to make sure that only traffic from the Organic Channel is looked at.
People who click on a link on a search engine results page and end up on your site are called “organic traffic.”
A segment is an easy way to separate traffic of a certain type or from a certain source.
Go to any report page in the reports section of Google Analytics. Near the top of the page, you’ll see some boxes, one of which is labelled “All Users” (if segments haven’t already been set up).
When you click the box that says “All Users,” a list of checkboxes will appear.
Scroll down until you find the box that says “Organic Traffic,” then click and use that.
Now, no matter which Google Analytics report you look at, you’ll only see traffic from search engines.
Step 5: Look at the Google Analytics Landing Page Report
Now that we’ve used a Google Analytics Segment to separate traffic from search engines, we can see how our content is doing and figure out what’s getting the best metrics. You can use different reports, but the “Landing Pages” report is my favourite. It shows you the first page a visitor sees when they come to your site. If I want to judge blog writers, I want to know whose writing brings me the most traffic. This will be made easier by the Landing Pages report.
To get to the Landing Pages report in Google Analytics, click on these subheadings on the left sidebar:
Behavior > Website Content > Landing Pages
This report will show you, for any time period, which pages get the most traffic. I think you should dig a little deeper and sort the content by “Pages per session” and “Session Duration.” Find out which articles have the most average page views and the longest average session length. Google will notice these things and know that you’re giving your visitors something of value. That helps with SEO.
Step 6: Look at how well your writers sell what they write.
Do you remember the goals we set? In the Landing Pages report, the value of each page on your site is shown in the last column on the far right. Here is where you can help answer the question, “Which article topics or writers consistently bring the most business value?”
If you want to make your team more open, you can share this report with them by going to the top of the page and clicking the “Email” link just below the name of the report.
Set up an email that sends either a a.csv file or a PDF file every month to automate your reporting. It’s very easy and will save you a lot of time.
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