Which metrics does your SEO agency follow?

Introduction

So, you’ve just launched your new business here in Cardiff, South Wales, you’ve had your brand-new WordPress website built, and now you’re looking for a local SEO company to implement white hat work.

However, you may have friends in business that have hired various seo companies in the past, and they may have been less than happy with the results that they have received from their agencies.

So you decide that you want to hire a local marketing agency, but you want to make sure that their reporting is up to scratch.

This means that the marketing company your going to hire must be able to offer reports which clearly show how well the businesses SEO is doing.

Now, if your in a bit of a rush, and you just want an answer to what our agency reports on each month, then take a look at the bullet points below, as we report on most of these for our clients:

·        Number of organic visitors (Google Analytics data)

·        Number of backlinks

·        Bounce rate

·        Time on site

·        What work we have implemented

·        Number or organic visitors compared with previous months to show improvement

·        A comment from the SEO consultant that’s managing that account

So as you can see our agency offers transparent reporting, this is why many businesses here in Cardiff hire us, that’s because we don’t send reports with hundreds of pages, and the data means nothing.

Instead we take our data from leading SEO tools, we only extract the data that really matters, so for example, if a business is paying us to improve the company’s to improve the companies SEO.

So after Google has used Googlebot to crawl and index our site, so by that we mean we try and implement our work well before month end, at least a few days, this is so Googlebot has a chance to crawl and index the website.

Once Googlebot has had a chance to crawl and index the website, we can start to get very accurate data in our Google Analytics account, our AHrefs account and our Google Search Console account as well.

This data is normally very up to date, normally there’s only a day’s lag, so as soon as the month ends we are able to send out an seo report to the businesses in Cardiff, South Wales that we work with, and they will be able to know how the website has improved in terms of organic visitors, bounce rate and number of backlinks, and quality of the backlinks.

Yet for a lot of businesses here in Wales, they will not have invested in SEO before, that’s to say they may not know what all these various terms mean, that’s to say they may not know what organic visitor numbers means, or bounce rate or even what quality backlinks mean.

So in order to help you to figure out what all of this means, our SEO agency has written a description for what each SEO metric means.

Organic traffic

If you hire an agency like Top Space, which specialise in “organic seo”, then your business is going to want to know how many organic visitors your website is getting.

Now let’s say your in Cardiff and you want to find a dog walking service, so you simply type “local dog walking service”- now normally at the top you will have PPC adds, which are at the top of the screen, this means businesses have paid Google to advertise their business there.

Then, because you are looking for a local business, you may see a map of where you live, often this will be as close as it can be to your house, so say if you live in Cardiff Bay, you may see more businesses that are located nearer Cardiff Bay, then you will see the map, and sometimes two or three businesses are listed there.

For businesses to appear there, sometimes they will have paid a digital marketing company to help them to rank there, for example the marketing agency may:

·        Build backlinks

·        Build business citations

·        Make sure the website has NAP information on the website

·        Make sure that the businesses don’t have any conflicting NAP information

·        Make sure that the onsite seo is improved

·        Adding meta titles

·        Adding meta descriptions

·        Adding alt tags

·        Obtaining business reviews

·        Optimising the businesses Google My Business listing

Yet, as most Cardiff SEO company will tell you, the map listings, sometimes referred to as local seo is quite different from organic SEO.

And why do we say that?

Well that’s because with local SEO sometimes there’s only two or three businesses that are shown next to the map.

Plus, which businesses get displayed can be dependent on where you are, so for example, lets say you live in Cardiff Bay, and you use an Android smartphone, and you want Google to know your location, so your location data is switched on, well Google will personalise your results, so that the businesses you want are local, that’s to say the businesses that will get shown are businesses that are based in Cardiff Bay.

But what if your business what’s to be displayed in the bulk of the results, that’s to say the organic business results?

Well, this is when an SEO agency like Top Space is needed that specialises in organic seo, we can do the following work:

·        Build high-quality backlinks

·        Disavow low-quality backlinks

·        Add content marketing

·        Add meta titles

·        Add meta descriptions

·        Remove duplicated content marketing

·        Improve thin pages

·        Build business citations

Then the digital marketing agency can start to improve the businesses organic SEO.

So, for example, let’s say your business is paying a digital marketing agency to improve your online marketing, so you may well be paying for PPC, organic seo and social media advertisements.

Which means as the business owner, or the manager of the marketing department, your going to want to know how well your agency is doing.

So, for example, let’s say you are an online clothing retailer, your going to want to know how many visitors are coming to your website via PPC, how many via organic business listings, how many through your social media adverts.

So, a marketing agency like Top Space, will often use SEO tools, such as Google Analytics, that’s to see how are visitors getting to your company’s website.

We will use AHrefs and Google Analytics to monitor exactly how many organic visitors your website is getting every month.

We will then compare this with previous months in our SEO reports so that our clients can see the improvement that has been made.

This is why many businesses choose us to be their Cardiff SEO agency, that’s because our SEO reports are easy to understand, and we only report on the really important metrics such as organic visitor numbers, bounce rate, backlinks and how long the average shopper is spending on your website.

Bounce rate

How high is your businesses bounce rate?

Not sure what the term “bounce rate” means?

Well, quite simply put your websites bounce rate, or the bounce rate for a page on your website is calculated by how many visitors landed on that page, then left your website without visiting another page.

So, let’s say that your business sells bikes, and you have spent a lot of money on making sure that you offer really good advice on your blog, for example helping people to pick the right electric bike.

So, as the business owner your going to want to know whether people are bouncing off the blog, or are they then using an internal link, by clicking on the anchor text within the article, and then looking at the products that you sell.

If your website has a high bounce rate, then your web developer and your SEO agency should be working together to try and reduce your businesses bounce rate.

Rankings

Now this is the most obvious one that you would expect a marketing agency to monitor that is your businesses rankings.

So, for example, if you run a local construction business here in Cardiff, how high does your business rank for “builders + Cardiff”?

Now, here’s where you as the business owner have to be a bit careful, as sometimes some marketing agencies will try and pull the wool over your eyes, that’s by saying we got you on the first page for this term, but what you have to ask is how many people are looking for businesses using that term.

We call this the “search volume” for a term, so for example, there will be terms that many thousands if not millions of people type to find a business like yours, so for example a very competitive term is likely to be “bed retailers”, or “mattress retailers”- now this may have over 10,000 searches a month, so a high search volume.

So your SEO agency should then target that term, but some may not, that’s because there will be a mass of other businesses doing that, so the SEO company knows it will take years to rank for that term.

So what does the seo company do instead?

Well some may try and get the business to rank for say “luxurious mattresses which can be delivered the next day”- and the SEO business may succeed in getting that business onto the first page of Google for that term- but what’s the point if it has no search volume, meaning no one is searching for it, so that’s right it’s a waste of time, yet some agencies may say they have succeeded in getting your business onto the first page, but its an empty success.

So for example, lets say you run a hairdressing saloon, and you want your business to be on the first page for “hairdressers + name of city”- but your seo consultant comes back and says, well we got you on the first page for “local hairdressers that offer affordable prices”- well that’s probably not going to be much use at all, that’s because no one is likely to be searching that neither.

So, your marketing company should concentrate on getting your business on the first page for keywords that will result in more clicks, and more customers that are likely to call your company.

How fast the website loads (Page Speed)

Is your website fast?

If your company’s website is not fast, and instead the customer is left waiting for your website to load, well your businesses seo is likely to suffer.

So, your marketing agency should work with you to make sure that the website loads quickly.

How long is the average customer spending on your website?

Let’s say that you sell men’s shoes, and you sell many hundreds of different types of men’s shoes.

You as the business owner will want to keep the shopper shopping for as long as possible, as if the shopper only looks at one pair of shoes, then leaves, well this could be an indication that the website has not offered a good service.

For example, perhaps its not easy to sort by colour of shoe, style of shoe, or perhaps there’s not enough information, such as whether or not the item is in stock, and well be delivered let’s say within 5 days.

So, your business should work with your website designer and your seo company to reduce the businesses bounce rate, plus keep your shoppers shopping for as long as possible, to increase the chances of your company making a sale.

It’s widely thought by many digital marketing agencies that if your website has a very high bounce rate, and low time on site well this could indicate that your business is not answering the question of someone looking for say “brown leather shoes”- so this is when your business could move down the ranks.

A business that has a lower bounce rate, and is able to keep shoppers shopping for longer, well this website may move up the ranks.

How we can help

If your business requires a new website or organic seo then why not call us?