Website analysis – are you throwing your money in the bin?
If you’re paying an SEO company for “website analysis” as part of your campaign, then there’s a high probability you’re wasting your money and your time. Confused…Shocked? Let’s explain…
Recently we picked up a few new clients who had been utilising the services of some “big SEO agencies” and “self proclaimed SEO experts”, however, let’s just say that these SEOs fell short on their promises of delivery. Now, whilst we’re delighted to have picked up the new work, we were equally surprised (shocked even) at the quality of what was given to the client for to absorb.
Whenever we do something for a client, we do it throroughly and explain things simply. From building links, to ranking reports, to keyword research, right through to website analysis – it is all done with the greatest attention to detail, and it’s because of this that we regularly outperform our competitors. Recently however, we’ve been left speechless at some of the reports delivered to clients and the huge fees that accompanied them.
You see, the whole point of website analysis is not understood by a considerable number of SEO companies and in far too many cases analysis is packaged in such a way to bamboozle the client, justify huge fees and the SEO company does very little work. Clients are told that fees are justified by the time taken to report on what is happening or to delve deeper into the data to pinpoint where people are clicking and what phrases they are using. Once that’s done the analysis report is sent to the client (accompanied by the huge fee) and as Gordon Ramsay would say….done!
Actually, it’s not “done” in any sense of the word and let’s explain:
Take this example of website analysis our client was sent from their previous SEO company.
Analysis report for “Client www.mywebsite.com” by Big Ticket SEO Agency
Web traffic was up 7.4%….
Top key phrases “blue widgets”…
Bounce rate remained constant at 65%…
72% of visitors came from Google….
22% of traffic generated from PPC….
Blah…graphs
Blah…more graphs
Blah…pie charts
In all 12 pages of graphs, facts and figures.
Look familiar? If it does, and this is what your SEO company is charging you for every month then STOP!!! Take a step back and look at what you’ve actually been given and more importantly, what you’re going to do with it.
You see…what you’ve just paid for is not analysis at all – it’s a report – plain and simple. It may look impressive with all the graphs, percentages, bounce rates etc. It may tell you that you’ve had 10,000 visitors and your traffic has increased by 5%, but at the end of the day it’s just a report, and unless you know what to do with it you’d be as well throwing your money in the bin!
Analysis is a not a report
Analysis is about interrogating and evaluating website data, identifying failures and successes. It’s about asking questions and suggesting methods for improvement. Analysis is all about going forward and implemeting changes, washing, rinsing and repeating. Remember – analysis is not a report.
What is website analysis?
Website analysis in it’s simplest form is looking at the data from a previous month, determining where things have went right(or wrong) and making suggestions from experience, skill etc., in order to make improvements for future month(s).
There are many reporting tools that help in analysis such as Google’s Analytics, Heatmaps, List data, Server logs, split testing and PPC control panels. These tools provide a multitude of data to take forward into analysis.
An example website analysis would look like the following:
Data Report
Web traffic up 7.4%….
Top key phrases “blue widgets”…
Bounce rate remained constant at 65%…
72% of visitors came from Google….
22% of traffic generated from PPC….
Findings from previous month
The changes made in sections x of the home pages and three landing pages had a mixed effect. Scroll lengths were improved enticing visitors to read more. Paragraphs were shortened which kept the visitor engaged. Interspersed in these were calls to action both in web copy and sidebar forms/imagery. There was a negative effect noticed in the split when the sign up form was changed from green to red.
Questions
Q. How many clicked on our special offer call to action?
Q. How many did not? Would it improve click throughs if the call to action text was changed to bold?
Q. How many arrived from
- Yahoo
Q. Does Yahoo perform better in sales than Google for the same phrase?
Q. How many visitors were from organic versus paid search and should more be spent on organic?
Q. How far did visitors scroll down the page?
Q. How do click clusters compare on visitor volume to page?
Q. Conversions are down on page x – is this seasonal influences?
Q. Which calls to action are failing/performing best?
Q. What improvements can be made to influence higher click through rates to deep pages .
Q. Did long copy pages outperform short copy pages on split tests?
Deliverables
- Set splits up to measure impact of bold versus colour font variations in calls to action
- Move forms up above fold
- Change telephone number to text from image to display as skype anchor
- Test questions in H1 tags over statements and measure effect
- etc……
The above gives you some idea of what true website analysis really is and becomes useful to the client. This is much more useful because;
- The client can see progress and ways forward
- The client can make sense of the graphs and terminology
- The client/SEO can learn from successes and failures
- The SEO company demosntrates their expertise
- The SEO company can improve the performance of the site
Conclusion
Your website analysis report should contain recommendations, questions, deliverables and explanations of previous actions in addition to statistics data.
If it contains only data, graphs and statistics etc., then we’d strongly recommend you question your SEO Company. Analytics packages can produce these reports in seconds so don’t be fooled if you’re charged large fees for this type of service.
