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Until recently, web analytics and search engine optimisation (SEO) have operated in relatively distinct spheres. You churned out web analytics data to see how users behaved on your site; and you used all the tricks in the SEO book to improve your ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and drive more traffic to your website.

These days, however, search is becoming more complex. What with the rise of behavioural targeting, blended search and local search combined with the sheer volumes of search engine traffic, you will need to become more strategic in your approach.

Hence, SEO and web analytics are merging like a classic Venn diagram.

When you get the merger right, you’ll reap the benefits of increased volumes of search traffic - and more welcome, targeted traffic.

Get your website optimised for search engines first

Before the merge, you need to make sure you’ve got the right strategies in place for both SEO and web analytics.

We spoke to local SEO specialist Jeremy Bolt, from Bruce Clay, to get the low-down on what every good website needs from an SEO perspective.

“We like to use the three-legged stool approach, meaning there are three key areas of focus required. Firstly, get the technical side of your site right. Make sure your IP is clean, and that you are serving up content fast.

“Secondly, you need great copywriting and unique content, incorporating relevant keywords and keyword phrases for your target market. Finally, linking is important - inbound, outbound and internal link structures will all contribute to your ranking in the search engines,” said Bolt.

“But it’s no good spending all your time just on one of these aspects. You need to work across these three areas consistently - otherwise you may end up with a wobbly stool and fall off.”

Find out more about the Bruce Clay SEO Approach.

Using analytics with search engine optimisation

With local, blended and behavioural search, monitoring search engine rankings for specific search terms will become increasingly difficult, as different search engine users will get different search results.

Web masters need to become more reliant on web analytics to assess the quality of organic search results - whether they are targeted, how well they span across the website and how much they contribute to the site’s goals or conversions.

If you are new to web analytics, Starting out in web analytics provides some simple steps to get started. (further resources can be found at www.hurolinan.com).

Once you’ve got your web analytics systems in place, start looking at inbound traffic in conjunction with search engine ranking reports.

As a simple example, a client of ours used search engine ranking reports and web analytics to run diagnostics on why they were getting such large volumes of untargeted web traffic.

Analytics revealed that the site was getting high volumes of traffic from the search term “telephone icon”. Why? It turned out that every image of a telephone (which appeared whenever they listed a phone number on a page) was tagged with “telephone icon”.

Such unwanted traffic can wreck havoc with your KPIs and the overall assessment of the site’s performance.

Increasingly, customers - even known ones - use Google to research and get to a page in your website. You need to make sure your content is indexed in the search engines to ensure customers get to the pages they want, when they want them.

Through web analytics, you can ascertain how well each section of your site is exposed to search engine traffic and develop strategies for increasing the “findability” of your content using SEO.

In addition to frequently used search terms, keyword analysis is essential to understand the search context. For large dynamic websites with huge volumes of search traffic, this can be a tricky process.

You’ve no doubt heard of the Long Tail - which refers to the traffic demographic that doesn’t fall into the “mass”. In search, you can get additional success with the long tail (or the 80% of less popular search terms) because these search terms are often more specific.

When people are more specific about what they’re looking for, there’s a greater chance of conversion - as long as the product’s good and the price is right.

At Bienalto, we use a tool to decompose keywords into single words, and then create content categories or themes to tap the long tail phenomenon.

The future of search

Bolt believes that SEO will play an increasing role as paid search or PPC becomes more expensive.

“Yet, as search engines replace organic results with behavioural, blended or local results, it’s going to become harder to use ranking monitors to assess the ranking of your keywords, but on the flipside more opportunities will arise for other SEO strategies,” he argued.

“Web analytics will be critical moving forward. You’ll need web analytics to test keywords, assess traffic and build content as required.”

Web analytics will also play an increasingly important role in analysing SEO KPI’s and answering questions such as: What percentage of your traffic is from organic search? How much traffic comes from non-brand related search terms? Which are converting website visitors?

In the meantime, you need to think about how well your web analytics tool “merges” with your search strategy.

Learn more about Bienalto’s web analytics services.