How to use data to develop SEO strategies

While research and data may well drive your web design process, as it does ours, you should also use data as big part of your SEO strategy. After all, how will you know what to improve, or what to focus on, without the evidence? But knowing what to monitor, and then how to use this data can be a minefield. Here at Pumpkin Web Design, we are Preston’s leading web marketing and web design experts. We work across the region, from Southport to Blackburn, to provide innovative and effective digital solutions. This includes SEO, and developing an SEO strategy. As a result, this we have produced this guide to how to use data to develop SEO strategies.

Developing an SEO strategy

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, involves making subtle changes to your website, and content, to make sure that your website can be indexed by leading search engines, and will appear as a result, high on the search engines results page (SERP).

In addition, SEO strategies will help draw in traffic from the SERP, to make sure that your website is chosen, instead of your competitors.
As a result, developing an SEO strategy is an important part of succeeding online. And data can help to achieve this.

What can the data show?

You can collect data about just about anything on your website. This can include, but is not limited to:

⦁ amount of visitors
⦁ search engine ranking
⦁ referrers
⦁ most popular pages
⦁ time spent on each page
⦁ user interaction with pages
⦁ congestion areas
⦁ conversion ratios (how many viewers turned into customers)
⦁ social media responses
⦁ video engagement

The data you should be watching

With the full range of information available, it can be a little overwhelming to know which data to use. In general, the visitor numbers will no doubt catch your eye, but this isn’t an indicator of your website success. In fact, the conversion ratio may well show that lots of these visitors simply leave your website, without signing up or purchasing. So to develop an effective SEO strategy, you should pay special attention to:

• The referral data– this can indicate how well your page is ranking on search engines, and for which search terms. If your visitor numbers from search engines are not very high, why not? Are you ranking on the first page of Google, for your main search term? If not, how can you get there? If so, how can you get to the number one spot?
• The popular pages-Using the information about the referral data and search terms, and comparing this to the most popular pages, will help you understand why people are landing on these pages, and what you can do to make them better. If people are not signing up after landing on this page, why not?

How to use data to develop SEO strategies

Answering the questions, like those posed above, should help you to take steps to develop an effective SEO strategy, using the data given. Some examples of action to take can include:

⦁ Make changes to the schema markup of the website itself, to make it easier for search engines to understand the website content, and to rank it accordingly. This can increase the websites position on the SERP and increase referrals from search engines.

⦁ The use of a weekly blog to target the company specific keyword and move further up the SERP- this should have a knock on effect on the amount of referrals from search engines, while more content can encourage site visitors to spend more time on your website

⦁ Improving the content of the most popular pages to try and convert more customers. This could be through the addition of video content, or simply layout changes and image optimisation. Call to action buttons and clear navigation through the conversion journey can really improve the amount of sales or sign ups.

⦁ Looking at the user interaction on different pages to establish which strategies are effective, and then mirroring these across the whole website.

In summary

There are many ways to use data to develop SEO strategies and this is essential for your business to progress. After all, how will you know what to change, without the data to indicate areas of weakness. At Pumpkin Web Design we are web marketing and SEO experts. Why not contact us today?