SEO Data Analytics: Build Up Your Data Reporting For Your SEO Campaigns

Let’s examine the qualities which are expected from an SEO expert in Hong Kong when laying out the overall search engine optimization plan for a locally based website (such as a website whose target audience is in Hong Kong). One of the qualities is similar to what an SEO analyst can do i.e. It involves data analytics for SEO campaigns.

Set up very clear goals for the SEO campaign of the website, and track the numbers (i.e. performance) with some reliable data reporting tools. The reporting tool must be able to retrieve the local SEO data. For example, if your target market is Hong Kong with a local HK audience, then your tool must be able to track the keyword ranking and traffic based on Hong Kong’s local IP addresses.

For your SEO specialist (or manager) role, it doesn’t matter whether you are simply tracking keyword positions per keyword, organic traffic, or non-bounced organic traffic. For example, when you are collecting the data of keyword positions, make sure you are measuring through a reliable keyword tracking tool such as SEMRush, etc.

When capturing such data, make sure you record your SEO campaign’s initial state (i.e. where your sites are ranking, what the traffic volume is, etc), and determine where you want it to be (i.e. the goals). Specify the amount of time that is required to achieve such goals. For monitoring the traffic volume for the initial stage and the “goals”, have Google Analytics (GA) properly installed and set up on your site, and track it through GA.

You would also build up the comparison data. One form of comparison data is the year to year traffic. An example is that for the traffic your site has received in March 2018 (which is last year), have it compared to the traffic your website has received in March 2019. Subtract the expected growth of traffic in 2019 (i.e. your goal’s expected growth), and evaluate whether you have achieved your targets (i.e. goals).

To do further data analysis, let’s build up the competitor analysis data. It is important to know how your major competitor is doing with its SEO campaign. What you need to observe includes:

• The major keywords your competitor’s website is ranking high up on Google HK.
• The major keywords your competitor’s site is ranking high up on Google HK (but your site isn’t ranking well with these keywords.) In this case, the difference is the gap analysis data.
• The sites (and web pages) where your competitor’s website are getting backlinks from.
• The sites (and web pages) where your competitor’s website are getting backlinks from (but your site is missing these backlinks.) This is the gap.

When you are done with this for the first major competitor, start doing the same for the second, third, and so on competitors. Keep a good record of all these competitor analysis data for your future reference. Make sure the data you are capturing can reflect local SEO i.e. the local Hong Kong market.