Crossing Analytics & SEO data

Any SEO strategy must keep the long-term in mind and should be based on reliable data. To achieve this, the person in charge of SEO (search engine optimisation) must monitor the latest developments with the Google algorithm and with search engines in general, define performance indicators based on business goals and the industry, and maintain a short-, medium- and long-term view of this strategy.

No matter what these goals are – to increase rankings or boost traffic and conversion – they should be based on reliable and exhaustive data. Combining analytics data and SEO data is an effective way to cover a wide spectrum of a website’s digital ecosystem and its opportunities.

In this article, we’ll share three benefits of combining analytics data with SEO data.

Identify your inactive pages

One of the main objectives of a website is to generate traffic from the natural (or organic) search engine results, with a view to increase the chance of conversion. Certain pages attract more traffic than others, and it can be tricky to precisely determine which pages do. An active page refers to a page that generates organic traffic from a search result, as opposed to an inactive page, which doesn’t generate any visits from the search results. These inactive pages don’t add any value and waste your “crawl budget” – the resources that Google allocates to your website during its crawl. As this crawl budget is limited, it’s in your best interest for Google to scan and index the pages which are most important to your business and which generate the most value.

Identifying your active pages is not simply a question of knowing where they are. You must also understand what type of page is generating traffic from the search results. SEO crawler tools like OnCrawl let you identify all your pages, categorise them by group according to your goals, and measure their SEO performance. From there, you can combine this information with a multitude of other data, including your analytics data (like number of visits, traffic source, bounces, pages viewed, pages viewed per visit, time spent per visit, time spent per page, etc.) and understand which segments generate the most organic traffic, and if these results reflect your goals and expectations.

By identifying which pages are active or inactive, you can:

  • Keep and optimise them, using the right keywords to improve their ranking
  • Keep them and send link juice to less active pages
  • Delete them and use 301 redirects toward pages that contain similar information

Depending on your groups of pages, your strategy will not be the same. Inactive pages in competing groups should be your top priority.

Active pages by groups
Ratio of active pages per group

Measure the influence of your content quality on SEO traffic

Using AT Internet’s solution in combination with an SEO crawler can also reveal the impact of your content on your SEO traffic. To optimise your content strategy, it’s useful to understand if your content’s length has an impact on your bounce rate. Of course, bounce rate depends on a variety of factors, such as the specificity of your industry, the popularity of your subject, and on-page SEO elements. Nonetheless, the density of your content can have an even more important impact on your bounce rate and your rankings. In most cases, pages with fewer than 300 words have a higher bounce rate and a lower time spent on the site.

Additionally, consider that your meta tags impact search rankings. When dealing with active pages, meta tags are particularly important: They can improve the ranking of your active pages in the SERPs, thereby improving your traffic and conversions. By combining your AT Internet digital analytics data with crawl data, you can measure your meta tags and identify whether they are duplicates, unique or undefined. Technically speaking, this involves using an API query to send your analytics data to the crawl solution. The data combination is done using the page URL, which is the common element between both measurement technologies (crawl and analytics). Your page titles should also be unique, as having too many duplicate titles can hinder your SEO performance, and therefore reduce the reach of your active SEO pages.

Active pages by words
Active pages by word count

Detect your SEO active orphan pages

Combining your analytics data with your crawl data can help you detect your active orphan pages. These pages generate SEO traffic from SERPs, but they are not attached to your website’s structure. This means that the crawler might not find them, even though AT Internet can track data from these pages. (Any pages you declare in the AT Internet interface can be tracked, whether they receive traffic from SEA, display, or emails.) Whereas orphan pages have no SEO value and only waste your crawl budget, active orphan pages are precious, because they generate qualified traffic. You should precisely identify these pages so that you can attach them to your website’s structure and maximise their potential.

Orphan pages

It’s also a good idea to segment your website with groups of pages. In doing so, it will be much easier to identify where your ratio of active orphan pages is highest. If you find that many active orphan pages are also the ones that convert best, you’re missing out on chances to maximise conversions. Identify your top active orphan pages and see which ones generate the most SEO traffic. These pages can then be integrated into your website structure to increase conversions.

In sum, combining digital analytics data with a SEO crawler to audit the SEO performance of your website is a relevant and profitable strategy in the long-term. It’s essential to have a comprehensive view of your performance to meet your business objectives and surpass the competition.

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Author

Emma Labrador is head of marketing and communication at OnCrawl, an SEO crawler and log analyser. Passionate about content marketing and SEO, she writes regularly for both French and English search marketing blogs.

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