keywordFor quite some time already, Google shows website operators no longer which search terms brought visitors to the page, so the question is what methods can nevertheless ensure getting these important insights.

Well, one good solution is to focus on the landing page.

However, make sure to have clean subpages that focus on specific topics to learn and evaluate with what intention visitors have come to your page. Then, based on the URL, the ranking keywords can be retrieved with the help of SEO tools, such as Xovi or Searchmetrics.

Though important in times of the search algorithm Hummingbird, individual keywords are increasingly losing relevance. Instead, it is about a coherent set of keywords since the semantic search is on its way. As I already pointed out many times, you can expect that search engines will be able to provide concrete answers to complex questions in the future.

The more it is advisable to analyze continuously:

  • Why visitors leave a page;
  • What kind of pages lead to conversions: So, track and consider in this case not only the purchase of a product as a conversion;
  • What paragraphs users really read and where they stop reading: This can be insightful, especially since the scroll behavior can be measured, which allows finding out how long visitors stay on various sections of a page and can even track the consumption of videos.
  • The length of stay of single-page visits may give further indications: If a visitor, for instance, is only interested in one page, this indicates that the user most probably found what he was looking for.
  • What kind of products are bought at what specific time can identify very different types of users: So, it may be that users, who are traveling in the morning, have other priorities than site visitors who are active in the evening. If you know that, you can react appropriately and provide different content, depending on the time of the day or the week.
  • Which pages have the best click-through rates (CTRs) in the search results: That is worth to know to investigate whether some special characters or formatting errors hold visitors back from clicking, or if a call to action is missing.
  • How many conversions come via branded or non-branded landing pages or how often your own brand is searched directly as opposed to generic keywords.

I am just kick starting some thoughts you should consider. For sure you can come up with more. Just be creative and know the technical finesses in order not to fall by the wayside of the top search engines.

By Daniela La Marca