After Google’s “Mayday” update last year, it became apparent once again that content is still king. This was a huge update that Google brought about in their algorithm which caused thousands, maybe even millions, of sites to suffer as a result of their rankings dropping off the radar. This was not an index change, i.e. Google did not remove sites from their index, but rather they changed where they ranked certain sites. Google makes around 500 algorithmic changes a year but this was definitely the one which made the most impact. In basic terms, the change involved Google re-evaluating which sites were ranked highly for long tail keywords, as they wanted to ensure that only very high quality sites are ranked for these long tail terms. This, without a doubt, involved the algorithm sniffing around sites searching for high quality content and another huge factor was, of course, evaluating inbound links.
This is done now and will not be rolled back and long tail searches are now serving higher quality sites in the SERP’s. But, this post isn’t just about the Mayday occurrence, I simply wanted to illustrate that, if Google is still making such huge changes to its algorithm (which involve content evaluation) you should always be analysing your content reports within Google Analytics. Your content might be screaming out for help and you would not even know it. You need to go and actually “listen” to what it is trying to tell you. I will be touching on a few helpful elements, which I always look out for in these content reports.
Top Content Report
The Top Content report is based on PageViews (PV) and basically showcases which of your pages are the most popular. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a PV is registered every time a browser / user loads a page. One user can therefore register multiple PV’s on any given page. This actually says it all. If a user decides to view a single page multiple times, you can be assured that they are finding the page quite interesting. Sometimes we think a particular page we worked on really hard will be extremely popular, but then it is not and a page which you put little effort into outperforms this page. This is vital feedback which you should be analysing to ensure you are focusing your content efforts in an area which will bring about tangible rewards.
Top Exit Pages Report
In this report I will always check whether the ‘contact us’ page and ‘thank you’ pages are within the top five (ideal) or top 10. If they are not, you should be highly concerned. The reasoning behind this is that if a very low number of people exit from these pages, you can be assured that your content pages are not enticing enough for users to be satisfied. Users will generally scan through your site and see what you have to offer by reading your content, and if they like what they see (conversion elements obviously also play a part) and read they will most likely want to contact you through your ‘contact us’ mediums. They will go off a satisfied user and it’ll be up to you to entice them some more.
Top Landing Pages Report
If you would like users to find you through search, which I sincerely hope you do, you should be very interested in this report. This report will mostly show which users landed directly on any given page on your website from Search Engines. Here, in most cases, you will find your homepage as the most dominant landing page but, if you are seeing a substantial amount of visitors landing on your homepage alone the you could have a problem. It’s likely that you either have very few pages on your site, your site structure might be at fault or your online marketing efforts are not gaining momentum. You need to see a good spread of pages here, and the pages which you are focusing on the most (or your main services / products) in your online marketing efforts should be your top performing pages. If they are not then you need to relook your strategies, or you will need to raise some serious questions with your online marketing firm.
I believe unique, well written copy will always form a massive part I.T.O – Google’s ranking factors. You should, therefore, analyse your content reports on a regular basis and continue to place a great deal of your resources into creating outstanding content.
