When evaluating web analytics packages for your business, there are a lot of great tools and options out there, regardless of the size of the website or company budget. Even though search engine marketing has become an integral part of most analytics packages, it’s important to make sure specific search engine related needs will be addressed in your selection.

Here is a checklist of valuable questions and details to look for in a web analytics package related to your search engine marketing efforts.

Screenshot from IndexTools for search engine referral data

Basic Search Engine Statistics
In the quest for the holy grail of web analytics packages, don’t forget to look for your basic search engine marketing needs.

• What search engines are referring traffic?
• What keywords send visitors to your website?
• What keywords by search engine send visitors to your website?
• Differentiation between paid and organic search engine referrals
• What percentage of traffic come from search engines?

Being able to easily access and report on this information should be a fundamental feature of any web analytics tool.

General Visitor Behavior Related to Search Engine Traffic
As search engines become more involved in web analytics, opting website owners into shared data and industry benchmarking, you can be certain that they are looking at how effective your website is/will be in comparison. Business owners who take into account the effectiveness of their website with search engine visitors and act to make ongoing improvements should win out in the long run, even beyond the effectiveness of their SEM programs.

What you want to know and evaluate:

• What pages do visitors enter on from keyword referrals?
• What are the average pages per visit from search engine referrals?
• How quickly do visitors from search engines leave the website?
• What keywords do people tend to stay longer on or leave quicker with?

At the least, pay attention to how visitors from search engines interact with your website, in comparison to other channels and direct visits. Use web analytics reports to set benchmarks for improving site performance going forward and evaluating your efforts down the road.

Conversion Goals and Search Engine Marketing
Your site has to perform. If you’re interested in successful search engine marketing performance, the website brochure of the past is no longer a viable option. More importantly, web analytics should help you to make the right business decisions on what keywords you need to focus on and what keywords and search engines drive conversions for your company.

Questions you will want answers to:

• What keywords tend to drive conversions for the website?
• What search engines drive conversion goals for the website?
• How do organic search engine referrals compare to PPC campaign traffic?
• What’s the cost per conversion for both paid and organic search referrals?
• How do search engine programs (paid and organic) compare with other marketing channels?

PPC platforms can make cost/conversion analysis a bit easier for paid search, but don’t neglect the evaluation of organic search engine rankings, keyword referrals and conversion percentages as well.

Sample conversion and cost/conversion chart

Online Promotion and Design
Link building is not always just about an SEO benefit. In many cases, real traffic and conversion opportunities should be realized as well. If you’re spending time building online relationships, make sure to go the next step in looking at what value these relationships bring to your website overall as well.

Beyond keywords and search engines directly

• Are the links that created also driving traffic (third party referrals) to my website?
• What third party referrals are creating conversions in addition to traffic?
• What browsers are people using to view the website?

We’ve had to show browser reports for the sole reason of supporting specific, browser related design issues (and the need to make design changes). If a website breaks in a different web browser, can you really expect visitors to want to link to that site?

Beyond The Basic Reporting Package
Web analytics is becoming more than just a tool for information within your website. Instead of manually matching up data within different applications, consider looking for tools which tie search engine marketing details with your paid advertising platforms and existing sales data.

Add-ons and features that provide additional value

• Can you manage my PPC campaigns directly through the analytics package?
• Will you be able to connect web analytics information with a CRM and lead generation tools or software?
• What about customized dashboards and reports?

Dashboards and the ability to create customized reports are underrated. Being able to present a clear picture of the value of an SEM program easily and effectively may be just as important as the program itself.

Web analytics is more than just a nice set of traffic reports
Business managers who are able to use their web analytics tools for more than just monthly traffic reports are better equipped with the knowledge to make strategic search engine marketing decisions going forward.

Some of the web analytics tools we’ve used and had success with:

• IndexTools - Low cost (free now, since Yahoo acquired them) and offers nice information on visitor details and demographics
• Omniture - For the enterprise level business, you can spend hours each day on the reports presented. Unfortunately, the high price tag means Omniture will not make sense for small budget website owners.
• Google Analytics - For the budget conscious, you can’t really argue with this free tool and Google Analytics easily ties into your AdWords campaign management as well.

Some of the web analytics tools we’ve found lacking.

• AWStats and Webalizer - One of these tools is usually found with traditional shared hosting packages, and while they provide basic search engine information, they do not provide the depth of analysis required to target conversion data or PPC information effectively.
• ClickTracks - While I haven’t been back to check out ClickTracks recently, the last client we had using ClickTracks was not able to separate out paid and organic search engine referrals and keyword information. Note that is may have changed since last check.

This list is far from exhaustive and I am sure there are other tools, reports and trends you may find valuable for your particular search engine marketing campaigns as well.

Please feel free to share and discuss what things you’ve found of value in choosing the right web analytics package for both your SEM and online marketing strategies. Just don’t forget how important web analytics is to your overall search engine marketing efforts.

Update - 6/26/2008
Jim Spencer of JBS Partners forwarded me a good resource for tracking file download information in Google Analytics, without manually reviewing and assuming visitor behavior through traditional page requests. If you’re using Google Analytics, it’s worth taking the time to review this material and bookmarking the Google Analytics Help Center as a reference for the future.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm and is filed under B2B, Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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