This is a dialogical essay between Robert and Ashenafi (Ashe) about the IS2020 project and the role of tracking and measuring SEO. This discussion is primarily focused on IS2020 and based on concepts laid out in chapter eleven of the book The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer and Jessie C. Stricchiola.
In this essay, we covered a range of topics starting from business needs all the way to the mechanics of SEO tracking, measurement and adaptation.
Ashenafi: Let’s start from the beginning, I guess. The first thing we as well as IS2020 need to do is define why the site exists and from there we can go to other points we need to discuss. So, Robert, please get us started with your understanding of why the IS2020 site exist?
Robert: Great question, as we have heard time and time again from both Dr. Babb and Dr. Gardner, the IS2020 site will be site to host the living document for promoting the Information Systems curriculum for undergraduate degree programs. As Information technology keeps evolving, thus the need for having a curriculum that is to update and relevant to our time is very critical in today's world. In summary, “The field of Information Systems is dynamic in nature and is confronted with a seemingly continuous stream of technological developments, opportunities, and trends.” We hope that the site can help address anything that can address the changes in the world of information technology. So now that we have defined the need, Ashe will help us understand the next vital question; why do you think it is important for IS2020 to establish quantifiable goals and demonstrate results?
Ashenafi: Thanks Robert. As with anything in life, the ability to identify where one is, where one wants to go and how one knows when they arrive at the destination is important. It’s no different for IS2020 and the site it is attempting to build. Without such clearly defined goals, the IS2020 wouldn’t be able to tell if it is falling short, meeting or exceeding its goals. Defining clear goals that are easy to measure and demonstrate will allow the IS2020 to know when objectives are met or to what extent these objectives are met. With this information in hand, the IS2020 taskforce can then modify its strategies and adapt. And there are a lot of ways to measure results for the IS2020 site. What do you think are some of the mechanics of measuring results the IS2020 should put in place?
Robert: As you mentioned, there are plenty of ways to measure results and adapt. I agree with that comment. However, the challenge for most projects like IS2020 is finding the right measuring tools to use since there are plenty of tools. Therefore, understanding the purpose of metrics and having well defined goals can help eliminate the confusion and focus on the projects results. Even from our reading in chapter eleven, we learn that “The mechanics of measuring results in terms of the main business goal should always be the first set of measurements you put in place.”
For the IS2020 project, there are plenty of measuring tools that we can use to measure the results. Some common measuring tools include Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Adobe analytic, just to mention a few. Such vehicles can help track key outcomes for the site such as, how much traffic the site is receiving, comments of discussion forums, and visitors who share. Another point to consider about the mechanics of measuring results that should be in place for this project is understanding how people first react to the initial rollout. To make all this effort meaningful, thus the need to have established baselines. With that Ashe, please discuss how the IS2020 can establish baseline data points.
Ashenafi: Before the IS2020 make any SEO efforts, it is really necessary to establish what the initial state of the site looks like. For this stage, the best thing to do is to focus on simple assessment of the newly built website’s condition. Some of the baseline measurements that the IS2020 should make are the number of hits it is getting via search engine and keywords, a breakdown of which keywords are driving traffic and by how much, and identify which pages are poorly performing.
In addition to these, the IS2020 task force should have its conversion criteria ready and be able to quantify them by search engine and keyword. It is really important to be detailed at this point and envision the whole lifecycle of the website. Tracking crawler activity and determining the number of indexed pages is also something that should be clearly baselined. Because what drives any implementation, including the IS2020 site, are goals and goals can change over time, the IS2020 must remain adaptive if goals transform or shift. Robert, can you talk a little bit about how you think the IS2020 can ensure it remains adaptive?
Robert: Change in any industry or business can bring both opportunities and challenges. So, the best way to address change concerning the IS2020 project and ensure that the SEO approach remains adaptive if its goals change over time is by making sure that the change is communicated effectively and on time. Having the right channels of communication in place will enhance the customers experience or site visitors. At the same time, making changes to the goals and be more transparent within the organization will be easy for the staff to act upon and not lose sight of its goals. Additionally, as technology continues to change daily, it would be wise for any business or organization to evaluate its goals and try to adapt without making enormous changes to the overall structure.
Ultimately, the answer is to make sure the changes in our goals are done with the accurate data because it will help measure your progress against your goals as outlined in our plan. With that in mind, we are ready to talk about KPI’s, Ashe will address the question on KPI’s.
Ashenafi: Thanks Robert. I appreciate the way you weaved the need with communication, change and focus. The question of actionable KPIs is is highly linked to the points you touched on just now. Actionable KPIs are what will enable the IS2020 to make sure the data captured informs its
decisions for how to adapt and what actions to take in pursuit of the goals you clearly explained a short while ago about why the site exists in the first place. I also think this process is highly embedded in the whole SEO lifecycle for the site. Please talk about what SEO lifecycle is and what components it has.
Robert: The four SEO tracking cycles are; produce, launch, measure, and refine. Each cycle does have its challenges and benefits, and every one of them should be analyzed in-depth because each cycle will contribute to the advancement of the project. For example, you cannot refine the process without understanding the other cycles. We can conclude that each cycle cannot stand by itself, we need to understand all the four cycles before we can conclude if our site is successful or not. Therefore, the concern should be not understanding all the four cycles and making sure they are the accurate metrics in place to measure all the cycles. Understanding the tracking cycles, will help with understanding the specific metrics for the IS2020 project, Ashe will cover this in the next question.
Ashenafi: I think to define its metrics, the IS2020 needs to go back to the roots of what its business case is. The main idea is to capture as much participation and feedback from concerned stakeholders and to ensure the continuity of a living document that gets updated regularly just like software. Therefore, metrics such as reach, sign-ups, contact requests, comments, posts, invitations to events, and conferences are key to keep in touch with. These metrics can be measured through web analytics tools. Can you talk a bit about some of the tools available for web analytics in general and why the IS2020 should choose one over another?
Robert: Definitely agree with your comments on the subject of the specific metrics that the IS2020 zoom in.
They’re plenty of web analytic tools this includes Google Analytics, Omniture, Core Metrics, Unica Affinium NetInsight, Webtrends, Yahoo! Web Analytics. Again, these are just a few tools that come to mind and that I am familiar with personally.
It is very hard to decide which web analytics tool to use because each tool has its benefits and obstacles. However, Google Analytics seems to be a very common and useful friendly tool to use, also if you are using Google resources to manage your site or track certain key performance indicator, then it will make more sense to use Google Analytics. As an Information Systems student, I have used a number of these tools and I have found Google Analytics not only very useful but much easier to work with, also they’re plenty of resources on the internet compared to the other tools. Would you like to add on web analytics?
Ashenafi: Very insightful comments Robert and I agree with your comment that selection of tools is challenging. And yes, as we get deeper into the practical deployment and usage of web analytics tools, there are a couple of other factors the IS2020 will need to include in its process. Should the IS2020 use logfile tracking or JavaScript tracking or both? I think the answer to this is not as straightforward as it seems because each has its pros and cons.
First of all, logfile tracking relies on analyzing logfiles on the web server after traffic has occurred. If the IS2020 chooses to use logfile tracking, it gives itself the advantage of tracking search engine crawler activity which is not possible with the JavaScript method. The IS2020 gets additional security in that the logfiles are its own and will not need to be shared with any third-party. This is to mean that all the analysis performed can be done by running software in-house. I’m not sure if the IS2020 has specific industry compliance requirements it needs to meet. If it does, logfile tracking is one critical consideration to make.
On the other hand, if the objective is flexibility, then JavaScript tracking is a better way to go. The IS2020 wouldn’t need to be tied with logfiles and traffic that has already occurred for its analysis. It can define rules to trigger and track metrics in real-time. For example, with JavaScript tracking it is possible to track the actions of web crawlers as they happen and act accordingly. Robert can you please address what web crawlers the IS2020s approach to web crawlers should be and to ensure it can control the actions of web crawlers?
Robert: Thanks for your answer Ashe. The subject of Web crawlers is a very popular subject on the internet and they’re lots of resources that can be used to address this issue. Since Google search engine is the most leading search on the web, and most of the people searching for the IS2020 site will be using Google as my guess. My recommendation will be that IS2020 deploy GoogleBot since it is the most popular web crawler on the web. Other web crawlers can include DuckDuckBot, Yandex Bot, and BingBot. Ashe, do you have anything to add on this topic and please also explain about what valuable data points can the IS2020 acquire from the use of web analytics tools.
Ashenafi: You addressed it very well Robert. There’s only one thing I’d like to add before I move on to the benefits to ge gained from web analytics. Many web developers forget to deploy robots.txt files on their websites and expose their entire website to crawlers. This is not a good practice. Using robots.txt files will help IS2020 to control which pages on its website are web crawlable and which ones are not. IS2020 cannot afford to make security a secondary consideration. Planning for security needs to be integrated to site development efforts.
Now back to the web analytics aspects. I think this also links back to the points we have raised so far. By using web analytics tools, the IS2020 can determine traffic per search engine and per keyword. Among other things, it gives the taskforce the opportunity to identify the long tail which it can utilize to improve its SEO. The IS2020 can also segment traffic with various parameters such as which sites it was referred from. There’s obviously more depth to this but these are the main umbrellas the IS2020 should be concerned with. Using these it can observe the actions of visitors on its site and analyze them. I think at this point it might be good to say a little bit about what “actions tracking” is and what relevant actions the IS2020 should track?
Robert: We all know how valuable action tracking is to the success of the site. For instance, data gathering can help measure the success of the site by using analyzing the data using analytics tools. Some of the actions can include; PDF downloads, comments on content, subscription buttons, and links to social media. Ashe, can you talk more about the tools that can be used in performing actions tracking.
Ashenafi: Actions tracking goes deeper than analytics and there are many tools out there for this purpose. Some of them are SEOmoz, Google Analytics, SheerSEO, and many others. The most important thing for IS2020 in this selection aspect is to first develop clarity on what actions it intends to track as you mentioned earlier and balance free versus paid tools. In some cases actions tracking might not be straightforward. Site visitors may not finish all they wanted to do in one visit. They may return on a different day and continue where they left off. I think this is the perfect moment to say some things about attribution. Robert, please go ahead.
Robert: In simple terms, attribution is identifying the user action that led to a specific outcome. For example, an individual downloading some content from the site, from chapter eleven, one of the solutions to tackle the difficult task of attribution is count the different types of conversion , such as tracking a larger number of events that indicate progress your end goal that can help identify at which stage in the research and conversion process organic search comes into play for users.
The IS2020 can accomplish the difficult task of attribution by making sure that the end goals are well defined at the beginning of the process and track the progress that can be used to measure success. We have now reached one of the most important points in our discussion which is centered around what conversion means in the first place, conversion strategy, and how the IS2020 should value each conversion. Ashe, please briefly lay out what these are and about their implications to the IS2020.
Ashenafi: You raised so many excellent points just now. We both have repeatedly insisted on clarity of goals at every step and the approach to conversions is no different, The IS2020 should clearly define what it considers as conversions. For example, sign-ups to the IS2020 discussion forums, visitors who share, link and publicize the website, visitors who download documents from the site, and subscribers to updates on the site make up some of the conversion types.
Beyond definition, the IS2020 must have a simple, direct and periodic review strategy for which conversion types to value more based on data collected from continuous SEO measurements. The IS2020 should be able to measure and tell how many updates to the living document were made because of initiations from an individual, institution, consultant and so on.
In the end, I think what the IS2020 is going to experience in this regard will be similar to the famous 80/20 rule if you like. Most of the contributions may tend to come from a segment of the community or through specific keywords. Making preparations to understand who the top contributors are and how they get to the site will enable the IS2020 to streamline its efforts properly.
In the long-term, just valuing the conversions is not enough. It is important to have strategies to increase conversion rates.
Robert: Exactly! Increasing conversion is the key to every success on the internet. For the IS2020 organization to increase conversion, it must understand the four cycles (produce, launch, measure, refine) mentioned earlier in our discussion. At the same time, we need to make sure we understand the measuring tools we have in place to measure our success. Personally, having the right data and tools in place can help address the conversion success. Therefore, to increase success, the IS2022 site should offer services or information that is relevant to the current trends in the industry.
The IS2020 organization can use advertising platforms to connect with its target users, as a result, that can help increase the chances of the site been accessible to many web users. In summary, managing the content and refining the site can help with that increase in conversion. Alright Ashe, we’re getting to the end of our discussion. Please tell us about what elements are involved in SEO ROI and I’ll close our dialog with a brief allusion to key performance indicators (KPIs).
Ashenafi: Sounds good, Robert. To determine SEO ROI, the IS2020 needs to keep a close watch on the number of people who search for keywords, expected click-through rates from searches, average conversion rates, and average transaction amounts. Again, in these instances some apply more to IS2020 than others. For example, if the IS2020 hasn’t clearly defined what “transaction amount” means for itself, then this element will not be quite as useful as it can be. So, the IS2020 task force will need to come together and develop clarity on what transaction means. Since the IS2020 site is not for e-commerce and doesn’t have donation requests as far as I can tell, this clearly cannot be money. Is transaction measured by the document update suggestions that eventually trigger a reiteration of the living document? These are the types of questions IS2020 should investigate.
Earlier we touched on the concept of long tail in SEO briefly. But I’d like to clarify on what it means before we proceed to our final discussion about Key Performance Indicators. What we call long tail are keywords or phrases that are typically longer than normal, more specific, tend to get less traffic but can provide high conversion rates and value. Please briefly explain your views about what KPIs the IS2020 should focus on for long tail SEO?
Robert: The Key Performance Indicators for long tail SEO; Branded-to-nonbrand ratio, Unique crawled URLs, Search visitors per contributing page, Keywords per page, Search visitors per keyword, Index-to-crawl ratio, Search visitors per crawled page.
The IS2020 should focus on the following Key Performance Indicators for long-tail SEO; Branded-to-nonbrand ratio, Search visitors per contributing page, Search visitors per crawled page and Unique crawled URLs. The three Key performance indicators should help with the metrics for diagnosing the health of you the long-tail search traffic. However, I think it will be beneficial if the IS2020 project can consider all seven and see how each KPI contributes to meeting its end goal.