Reflections on Metrics

What are metrics and how can we use them to drive traffic?

The internet has been evolving, and so are the practices around it. But what are metrics and how do they work?

Metrics are not only numbers about who and when visits your page, or where do they come from. It is true that some of the metrics monitor your website performance, but there is a gap between the users (people) and the search engines (robots).

To close the gap so we know that what you want to find and what you actually find is the main goal of marketing, to reach the audience, or in better words, to match the audience with the good, that is both a science and an art.

Effective Search Engine Optimization requires more effort than money, it requires work and dedication, it requires patience and fresh and creative content.

Content is key

The internet is a huge marketplace, millions and millions visit the web everyday, but be careful, if you think that is enough for your site to be found, you are in the wrong idea. It is about exposure, it is about letting them know you are there and you know your business.

Keywords are like a magic key that opens many doors, for instance if you are selling denim jackets, the keywords in your site shall provide a more specific idea of your type of business, like "embellished denim jackets" will narrow the search for your audience and help them to reach you.

Be an expert, whatever you do, be the expert. Share your knowledge, write reviews or products you use, techniques that can help the audience. For instance, if you own a boutique, write blogs and posts on social media about the trends, new styles, give fashion advice, convert your visitors into sales or followers. SEO takes time, but at the long run it pays off.

 

Types of Search Engine Marketing

There are basically two types of Search Engine Marketing (SEM): paid and non-paid. Now, please be careful, if you think that non-paid means free.

So we can understand the difference we are going to first explain the paid SEM. Pay per click, advertisements and banners are part of a the paid strategies used by many marketers and companies to drive traffic to their sites.

Now, non paid option includes driving traffic to your site by directing them, using a diversity of multimedia channels, such as social media, videos, blogs and file sharing. If you create good content based on interesting and well written subjects, you will increase the chances of exposure.

Google and Metrics

Google is at the moment the top engine search engine and it provides tools to understand how your website is performing according to the visitors experience. In someway, it does not only grade why the visitor is at your page, but the general experience.

According to the Google website, the traffic sources to your site may be measured by:

Queries - what did the users typed to reach your site

Number of impressions of your website's URLs in search results pages

The number of clicks on your website's URLs from search results pages

The ratio of clicks to impressions for your website's URLs

The average position of your website's URLs in search listings

The pages users landed on when clicking on search results listing your site

But that is not enough to know how the user experience is graded.

 

How does Google grade the user experience?

Is your site running smoothly? Speed is one of the key factors of a visitor leaving or staying in your site. Pretty simple, if a page takes a long time to download, your visitor (and potential customer) may leave the page and go to the competition's site (You just lost a lead!).

Did the visitor stay for a while? Bouncing rate- The fact that the visitor did leave the page in few seconds means that maybe the content was not good enough, maybe the content was not relevant or written poorly.

Visitor Behavior

New and returning customers, pretty simple, if your site peaked the interest of a visitor, you will have a returning customer. How many times do the customers come back? For how long? How frequently?

There are many other types of metrics, like location, age, gender, freshness of content, keywords, etc. It is important to get familiar with the metric data so you can take the best decisions according to your goals.