How do you know what needs to be optimized on your web site ?

If you have a web site that has a decent amount of content and you want to start improving it by using  search engine optimization and to also improve the user experience then you’ll have to develop a way to determine from where to start. What I mean is that you could start optimizing your content page by page but I think that having a strategy and also some reasons for optimizing a certain page could make a lot more sense to your business. So, in this article I will talk about some key points in deciding what page you should optimize, why and how to do it.

You have to use an analytics software

This is something that is not a choice like “to use it or not” – this is something that you definitely need in order to understand how your web site is presenting itself on the Internet, how users get to you, what keywords generate the most traffic, what is the bounce rate and so many other metrics that will help you improve your web site. Without an analytics software you are blind and you will not know if your web site is doing ok or not. There are many options for an analytic software, some of them payed and some free. I choose to use Google Analytics mainly because it’s a free tool that can also be customized by the use of filters and that is offering me all the informations I need to check the status of my web site. In case you don’t know how to use Google Analytics or how to set it up you can contact me and I’ll try to answer your questions ( bonciutoma@yahoo.com ).

Content and metrics

When we decide to optimize a certain page we will have to base our decision on certain metrics. These metrics will tell us how much benefit that page brings to our site. In order to make a good decision you’ll have to analyze more then one metric and also make your own judgments based on the results from the analytics software. I will try to summarize the way I take my decisions on what page needs optimization, why and how I can resolve the problem.

The main metrics that I look for are the bounce rate and the number of views for a specific page. That is why I start by looking at content. If the pages that delivers me the most traffic have low bounce rate (under 40%) then I move on to the next page. The idea is to start improving the pages that already bring you the most traffic. Why ? Because these pages already target the keywords pretty well – otherwise it wouldn’t attract traffic. A page that has a low number of views and a high bounce rate will need more work because first you’ll have to improve the targeting techniques and after that, after the page is re-indexed by search engines and starts to receive traffic you’ll be able to improve other metrics as well.

So lets get back to pages that already brig you traffic but have a high bounce rate. What I mean by high bounce rates : over 60% (between 40% and 60% the problem is average and sometimes could result due to getting traffic from keywords you did not plan to target).

What do you need to look at, are navigation summary, the keywords that brought you traffic and site clicking patterns.

What keywords deliver you traffic. Many times you’ll be surprised to see how many keywords deliver you traffic. What you need to look here is the bounce rate for each keyword. Some of them will have even 0% bounce rate but those are not the ones you need to analyze. Move down to those that have bounce rates over 50%. When you see a keyword that has a high bounce rate you’ll have to ask yourself a few questions :

1. Is that keyword relevant to my page ? – many times you’ll see keywords that are not related to your page because of the meaning. Advice : don’t try to not rank well for those keywords even if the bounce rate is 100% because you’ll most likely loose the traffic to that page.
2. If it’s relevant then my content contains some information on that ?

• there are cases when your content doesn’t contain information relevant to that keyword 100% (if this is the case then you’ll have to decide if you can add the information into this page or build another page that will present the info there in much more detail)
• many times your content presents the information very well and still the bounce rate is high; there are a few reasons for that :
• you don’t have subheadings and the user doesn’t want to read all your article just to find out if you present the information he’s searching or not
• the user finds your information useful but he wants more : more related articles, more information

Navigation Summary. This kind of information can be very useful in improving the overall user experience on your web site. What it shows you are the pages the user visited before the analyzed page and what pages the user visited after. Also you can see how many users, as a percent, bounced right away. What you can learn from this information is what the user is really interested in and maybe try to figure out what else might be important to a reader.

Site clicking patterns. Just like in the case of navigation summary this information is useful to determine what really interests the reader. This feature in Google Analytics shows you your site and if you hover your mouse over a link you’ll see how many clicks were given when the readers viewed that page. You can use this information to also improve the bounce rate by trying to understand what other related pages the user might be interested in and present them into that page.

In the end I would like to invite you to place your comments here below and tell me your opinion, if you find this information useful or not or if you have something else that you want to add.