Google analytics is the most popular tool in today’s market for tracking and reporting on web property metrics. However, as an integrated marketing and communication professional it is important to keep up with other tools that can supplement and compliment relevant metrics within Google Analytics.
Why? A couple of reasons.
It is very important to note that at the end of the day Google is a for profit business and there analytics, while very valuable for understanding web traffic and providing key insights, is ultimately pushing a Google AdWords campaign as an actionable response to the data displayed. The information provided by Google Analytics will help a business understand where traffic is coming from and if they are receiving a proper ROI within their channels, but the underlying message is to either begin or increase an AdWords budget. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is important to note and recognize that marketers should always have a more agnostic approach to data retrieval so they are looking at what is relevant and important to their web property versus having a tool tell them what is relevant.
A second reason is that other tools have different features and functionalities that Google Analytics does not. Throughout the remainder of this post I will walk you through an analytics tool called SEM rush. A huge competitive advantage that SEM rush offers is simply keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Through SEM Rush you have the ability to analyze competitor’s web pages while on Google Analytics you can only see the metrics through a personal login account when a web property is owned. This is incredibly valuable as it allows an organization to analyze what the competition is doing right that they are not capitalizing on. It gives the smaller organizations the ability to look over the shoulder of the industry goliaths to see what methodologies they focus on for optimum organic ranking.
SEM Rush offers a free version that gives pretty minimal results because they want users to subscribe their service, but luckily I have access to a paid subscription through my company. Here is the look at the home page overview for Dell.com on SEM Rush:
This page is extremely insightful as an overview because it shows a snap shot of where the site traffic is being generated from. It highlights organic search, paid search, backlinks and the breakdown of geography representing percentages of traffic.
This snapshot highlights the competition and which organic keywords have the highest traffic results. This would allow the Dell marketing team to closely monitor HP and Lenovo to see who is receiving more volume to the site and where to geographically invest more into organic or paid ranking strategies. In the organic keywords section it even highlights the cost per click associated with those particular keywords.
Additionally SEM Rush notes branded vs non-branded searches, total backlinks, referring domains, and follow vs non-follow links pointing back to their site. At a high level, follow links allows for the juice of the referring domain to flow through, while no follow does not. For example, if forbes.com writes a story on you and gives you a link to your site it will likely be a follow link and it will do wonders for your site as their trust flow and citation flow is through the roof, while if someone posts a link on Facebook to your site it would be no follow because Facebook is not going to pass that juice of their site through. It is also very telling that Dell does not have a very high percentage of non-branded searches. This is basically meaning they aren’t ranking well when people type in general thinks like laptop or software. Most of their traffic is generated from people searching things like Dell laptop or Dell software. This could be a strategy for them because they know their brand is powerful and well known and they may not want buyers looking for the best price point searching general terms like laptop. 5 million backlinks is also an insane amount, but it is largely because they have so many channel and ecommerce partners who carry their products and they are discussed on many different tech forums.
This page will look the most familiar as it most closely represents what Google Analytics offers. In my opinion Google Analytics offers substantially better insight and depth into things like conversion rates, bounce rates, page visits, etc.
Another example of SEM Rush’s unique advantage is on-page analysis. Through the tool you can analyze an overall score of your on-page optimization and what needs improvement. Things like Meta-tags, H1-H6 tags, XML site map, text to html ratio etc, is a very important step one to a successful organic search engine optimization strategy. Through tools like SEM rush it is easy to look at inefficiencies of your web properties as well what the competitions score looks like. Really on-page optimization is only about 10% or less of the battle in SEO. While it is important to have the sites code optimized for search engines, solely focusing on that will not usually be enough to put you ahead of the competition. For example, if two ice cream shops both have perfect on-page optimization, and their keywords and content are similarly focused…which one will rank higher organically? The answer is whichever one has implemented a solid off page-strategy. This is what made Google who they are today. The site with local directory submissions, referring links from relevant sites with good trust and citation flow, and the many other things that play into a successful off page strategy will play a role in which ice cream store ranks higher.
In conclusion, there are a lot of competitive advantages that SEM Rush offers to compliment and supplement Google Analytics.
References:
Noff, A. (September, 2016) Why Google Analytics Isn't The Tool To Measure The Value of PR. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2016/09/12/why-google-analytics-isnt-the-tool-to-measure-the-value-of-pr/#2979eb38351a
Dell Official Site. Accessed November 7th, 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.dell.com/en-us/
SEMrush. SEMrush Competitive Data. Accessed November 6th, 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.semrush.com/
Hi Jake,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing about SEM Rush. I had never heard of the tool, but I can see how it could be indispensable in competitive markets or for new organizations trying to tap into a market or demographic of consumers. It seems to me that SEM Rush might be a strong complimentary / supplementary tool to Google Analytics or another more traditional analytics tool.
Anastasia looked at Piwik this week and brought up the issue of consumer privacy invasion possibilities with services like Google Analytics. Do you think SEM Rush infringes upon consumer or organization privacy, or is web traffic public domain?
Best,
Kaleb M.