SEO for large sites and ExcelChee Ho Wan@cheehowan

Table of contents

• Why do this?• What challenges are there between small and large

websites?• Where does Excel come in?• How do we do data analysis?• What data classifications are important?• Coding• How to structure data in Excel• Outputs• Excel tips

Why do this? It looks hard and I have a data analyst

• Inform strategy - Take a data driven approach is important for organisational buy-in and informing your SEO strategy.

• Forecasting – breaking data into bite size pieces

Informing strategy- Head vs tail analysis

• Understanding which verticals should take head or tail strategies

Tail centric strategy

Head centric strategy

Number of keywords

Why do this? It looks hard and I have a data analyst

• Data latency – SEO has large enough delays without data visibility being an issue – Breaking problems into tangible chunks enables

you to act faster• Look awesome in front of your work

collegues!– Spot opportunities others can’t see

What challenges are there between large and small websites?

• Analysis– Too much data

and keywords!

Implementation• Require large

scale changes to see traffic growth

Need to break data into workable chunks

Tasks need automation

Changes to site architectureContent mashups

Large scale content writing / UGC

Modified search - automatedDomain authority building to win long tail

Time and resource constraint become an increasing factor in large website SEO

Where does EXCEL come in?

• Everywhere!– Keyword analysis• Head vs tail• Trend analysis – customer search patterns

– Back link analysis• Classifying websites, using filtering to spot

opportunities

– Traffic to rankings to links correlation– Internal link analysis

Important to turn daily and weekly task into automated process

How do we do analysis – love the drill down!

• Start wide, then narrow your analysis (don’t get sucked into detailed analysis too quick)

• The only way to do this kind of analysis is to classify your data into smaller chunks

Total SEO traffic

HeadType of page

ProductTail traffic

Brand SEO

Non- brand SEO

Site Depth

Date

What data classifications are important for SEO?

– Page type – Page duration– Brand– Product– % of unique content per

page– Length of content per page– Date – week, monthly,

yearly– Site depth

Actionable insights rather than just data for data sake!

Example - MAYDAY

Symptoms

Drop in traffic on ‘transient pages’

Pages with inbound links do not lose rank

Pages with poor internal linking suffer

What inbound link strategies can we apply to stop drop off

Can we create more permanent pages?

Pages with unique content do not lose traffic

Actions

Can we add more “mashup” content to pages to make them more unique

What internal linking structures can we apply to the website

Analysis of trade vs private ads, page length, market data

Page type analysis - listing vs item pages

Data analysis

How do I code this into my site?

• Add some JAVASCRIPT to every entry page which classifies pages into different types– var funtionality_is_enabled=1;function engine_match()

{if(funtionality_is_enabled!=1){return 0}var engines=new Array("google","aolsearch.aol.com","search.aol.com","search.yahoo.com","bing");for(var i=0;i<engines.length;i++){if(document.referrer.length>0&&document.referrer.indexOf(engines[i])!=-1){return 1}}return 0};

• Store the information in a custom variables available in Omniture, Webtrends, Mediaplex, Google analytics

Coding…. cont

s.eVar45="Op:UK:Promo:Flights-morocco-marrakech-“

pageTracker._setCustomVar(1, "visit type", "prospect", 2)

DCSext.SEOvariable

var mpcl = 'h-london---l1-------http://www.gumtree.com/london';

How to structure data in Excel

• Excel becomes powerful when you can cross- correlate multiple sets of data– The key is to get a single view of your data (merge them all

on one view

– To do this you will need a combination of VLOOKUP’s, SUMIFS, PIVOTS

Analytics Traffic

Rankings

Date

Single data set – cross correlate data

Historic link data

Clear understanding of cause and effect

Key tip

Keep all classifying dimensions as columns

As opposed to

Allows you to merge data across multiple data sets and pivot data in any dimension

Tip 2: Understand SUMIFS

• SUMIFs must be used when merging data as you have two or more lookup values

• VLOOKUP only allow you to merge one set of data

Multiple lookup values to merge ranking with traffic data

Pivots – what you end up with

Typical data outputs

Understand YoY trends to predict future behaviour and see opportunities

What went up and why?Can we repeat this trend elsewhere?

Head vs Tail Traffic & Conversions

• Does your head deliver against conversion?

15%

85%

SEO Traffic

Head Tail

39%

61%

SEO Conversions

Head Tail

Informing strategy- Head vs tail analysis

• Understanding which verticals should take head or tail strategies

Tail centric strategy

Head centric strategy

Tail opportunities

• What are the tail keywords you should focus on – does this correlate to traffic?

x dea

lsx u

k

x pay

as yo

u gox p

rice

x contra

ct

x sim

free

best x

deals

buy xx p

ayg

x contra

ctsx b

uyx d

eal

chea

p x

x pay

monthly

pay as

you go

x

chea

pest x

x for s

ale x0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

Average Search Volumes

Keywords (where x = [Make][Model])

Example output

• What is the impact on your activities

Link back analysis – Majestic data

Excel tips

Common excel functions

• URL extraction– Left, mid, right, search

• Errors (#Value,#NA)– ISNA (), ISERROR() and IF function

• Classification of data– Sumifs(), VLOOKUP,

At some point when data sets are too large or formulas are too complex, you will need to use MACROS or ACCESS!

Excel ninja shortcuts

• Paste Values - ALT ‘E’ ‘S’ ‘V’• Paste Formats - ALT ‘E’ ‘S’ ‘T’• Freeze panes = ALT WF

Missing cells in PIVOTS

• Control G– Click Special, select

blanks– =, UP, CTRL, enter,

Questions