The solution you think is reworking your website with SEO in mind or maybe a good online marketing campaign. But you don't know how to justify it? This article is the first of several which will give some suggestions about how to go about justifying the work.
Prove Your Point
If you want to get a budget for reworking your website you are going to need to convince whoever allocates budgets. To do this you need do the following:- Demonstrate that there is a problem.
- Provide a solution to the problem
- Explain expected benefits the fix.
- Prove that the benefits can be measured.
Houston We Have a Problem
Showing that there is a problem is easy. You can show how your site compares to the competition.
Site Traffic
While you can not find out the exact traffic for competitors you can find out how their traffic compares to yours using Alexa.com. This service allows searches by entering a website addresses or entering search terms to see traffic rankings of websites. You can even compare up to four other sites to yours. For example search for nbc.com then click on the link for NBC and you should see a screen like this.
Fill out the form with other domains, such as abc.com, cbs.com then click on the "Compare" button. You will see a graph that shows how the other sites traffic compares to NBC's.
Using Alexa, you can demonstrate that your site's traffic is not as high as competitor.
Search Results
Unfortunately there is no similar free service for comparing how your site ranks with others for keyword search result pages. Keyrow.com tries, but they only let you compare two domains against one keyword at a time.And they don't explain where they are getting their data from. I think it is from Google search results.
That leaves you with using a paid service or program, such as WebPosition to monitor your and competitor's sites.Or doing it the old fashion way by spending time searching Google yourself and tracking results on a spreadsheet.
Keywords
If you are using Google Analytics they you can look at your site's keywords and bounce rate. I like looking at the Top Landing Pages report, in the Content section. You can view the bounce rate for keywords of individual landing pages. Pay attention to keywords relevant to your business with high bounce rates (IMHO those over 30%).
Social Media
You can spend a few minutes a day or so checking out social media and seeing how you are doing versus your competition.
Profits / Sales
These can be the easiest to measure, if your company has the systems in place to track where sales came from. But attributing sales to websites can also be the hard. For example, the call to your 1-800 phone number, is it someone who is looking at your website but doesn't like to shop online? Or maybe they had a question that wasn't answered on the site. Does that revenue get assigned to the website?
Site Traffic
While you can not find out the exact traffic for competitors you can find out how their traffic compares to yours using Alexa.com. This service allows searches by entering a website addresses or entering search terms to see traffic rankings of websites. You can even compare up to four other sites to yours. For example search for nbc.com then click on the link for NBC and you should see a screen like this.
Fill out the form with other domains, such as abc.com, cbs.com then click on the "Compare" button. You will see a graph that shows how the other sites traffic compares to NBC's.
Using Alexa, you can demonstrate that your site's traffic is not as high as competitor.
Search Results
Unfortunately there is no similar free service for comparing how your site ranks with others for keyword search result pages. Keyrow.com tries, but they only let you compare two domains against one keyword at a time.And they don't explain where they are getting their data from. I think it is from Google search results.
That leaves you with using a paid service or program, such as WebPosition to monitor your and competitor's sites.Or doing it the old fashion way by spending time searching Google yourself and tracking results on a spreadsheet.
Keywords
If you are using Google Analytics they you can look at your site's keywords and bounce rate. I like looking at the Top Landing Pages report, in the Content section. You can view the bounce rate for keywords of individual landing pages. Pay attention to keywords relevant to your business with high bounce rates (IMHO those over 30%).
Social Media
You can spend a few minutes a day or so checking out social media and seeing how you are doing versus your competition.
- Use TweetDeck or Twitter Search to monitor what people are saying about your company's and competitor's products.
- Set up Google Alerts for products, brand terms and even your company executives names.
- Check for Facebook fan pages.
Profits / Sales
These can be the easiest to measure, if your company has the systems in place to track where sales came from. But attributing sales to websites can also be the hard. For example, the call to your 1-800 phone number, is it someone who is looking at your website but doesn't like to shop online? Or maybe they had a question that wasn't answered on the site. Does that revenue get assigned to the website?
Baseline Data
The key is to get good baseline data. That way you have something to compare to after you update your website. If you have the time try to get or track information over 2 - 3 months, especially social media.
Next week we will talk about solutions and benefits.
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