Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

The September 15 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

Growth is one of the main focus for many SEOs/Marketers and you may think this is a great thing.

But is it?

I am here today to show you why consistency is preferable in some cases.

Some counter-arguments will be covered in my future issues...

of course growth is also important and you don't grow a business with retention and/or pure stagnation.

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New services will be launched for the companies that are reading this issue 👀

Why More Isn't Always Better

Getting more traffic or organic growth is sold as the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, many businesses don't need crazy growth.

AI has been recently used to push informational articles and generate low-value content.

All of this must be maintained, as you may already know from my past Seotistics issues.

And the problem lies here, costs go up and content slowly decays...

Growth Isn't As You Think

One of the most common mistakes made by non-technical people is to think that everything in nature follows predefined patterns.

If I study more, I will get a higher grade. The more articles I publish, the more traffic I will get...

Not really, growth can take on many forms and it's rarely linear.

Additive relationships aren't that common in Marketing.

Some of you may consider exponential then.

First, you write 200 posts, wait for them to get indexed and then rank.

That's more credible and you may see exponential growth at first, especially if you start with 0 traffic.

But this doesn't tell you the whole story.

Sometimes, growth follows a logarithmic pattern, meaning that the game gets harder and harder:

Learning a new skill usually falls under log growth. It's harder for an experienced professional to get better but easier for a novice.

This is also the case for some websites that are already dominant.

A more realistic growth could look like this:

Exponential at first, then plateau, then growing again and slowing down.

Nature doesn't follow exact patterns, accept this.

Plateauing traffic is also another reality of SEO (and Marketing), not everything can always grow!

N.B. Don't take this section as the absolute truth. It's just an exemplification.

The LLM Panic

You may have recently noticed that everyone talks about the "great decoupling" and impressions spiking.

In reality, this pattern is not common across all websites... and I also think like many others do that it was tools scraping Google.

Before you jump to conclusions, remember to actually check reality.

Recently, Google disabled the “&num=100” parameter, the one that was used by SERP tools to retrieve 100 search results, as covered by my friend Katarina.

The foundations of Marketing didn't change suddenly! More on this in my next issue 👀

The Role Of Data In Growth

One of my biggest pet peeves is reading most of the Growth Marketing articles.

Data skills are stated to be among the skills of many growth professionals but I tend to disagree.

Just because data is available to anyone, it doesn't mean you have to use it by yourself.

While A/B testing and aggregating data is fairly easy, the Mathematics behind some choices isn't that straightforward.

The most common mistakes I've seen involve other factors though:

• Data Cleaning
• Interpreting Results
• Validity of Assumptions/Biases

You should already know why picking the right data is crucial.

Assumptions/Biases

This is a problem for any professional as our brain is affected by several biases.

We humans tend to assume a lot of things but the reality tells the opposite.

One of the most common mistakes is thinking that traffic growth is always positive.

Traffic may be affected by seasonality or sudden demand shifts and it may not lead to more money.

Learning basic testing and exploring algorithms helps a lot in dealing with biases and assumptions.

My friend Giulia Panozzo showed an example of CausalImpact in one of her past presentations:

And her presentation on testing is also top-notch, one of the best intelligible resources out there.

I've also been exploring the crazy field of Anomaly Detection...

In plain English finding those pages that look abnormal, or even specific days.

Monitoring a website and keeping its quality is much more important than growing for big players.

But remember that...

Data is NOT objective because it's altered by our assumptions:

A Comparison To Social & Content

Social media work in the same way... you need consistency.

Growing in terms of followers is useless if you can't convert that into money.

Viral posts may get you likes but won't make you rich.

If you are handling big social accounts, your goal isn't to get more likes but to increase engagement and conversions.

The issue with social is that the best part of it is not trackable, dark social is a thing...

and it can't be tracked properly.

Success isn't always noticeable from the outside.
​
1st-party data is such an advantage in the right hands...​

3rd-party data is often about estimates and anyone can get it.

The same goes for Organic, how many websites are terrible according to Semrush and Ahrefs but are actually making a lot of money?

Never ever judge a book by its cover.

The Case For Enterprise

Enterprise SEO is a different game.

I am not very fond of it in terms of SEO because it can be quite boring...

but it's completely different from an Analytics standpoint.

Bigger projects have more data to offer and much more opportunities.

Many Enterprise websites need monitoring and protection against future problems.

This is also referenced in site migrations and when applying big changes.

You create processes and document them.

I am a big fan of Loom/suchlike to create documentation and explain things.

Passing knowledge in an organization is the most underrated part of Marketing...

because no one wants to do it.

Dissecting Actions

The role of your data can be represented through the stages I usually share in my content:

Data can't be used for predictions if you have barely analyzed it descriptively first.

Another key difference that may be completely ignored is the one between explaining and predicting.

I've never seen anyone discussing it in Marketing...

If you want to predict something, your goal is different from understanding and description.

The important thing is to formulate the right questions and elicit action later on.

Growth can be supported by the data you have, given that you are able to drive meaningful decisions.

So ML/AI usually never come or become viable solutions much later.

You can survive and thrive with solid Analytics foundations.

And if you are looking for the perfect resource to learn all of this, I got you covered:

Think Like A Web Analyst

Become a Top Data Analyst Now!

🛡 Keeping Rankings & Momentum

You want your website to survive, not to grow and bye-bye!

Growth and consistency aren't always related, I'd even daresay they have no relationship by default.

Big players want to keep their rankings and increase profit instead.

Consistency helps them protect their kingdom.

Data is the perfect ally in your neverending journey to preserving momentum.

This is the exact opposite of small websites or those looking for quick profit.

You can flip many websites but fail to create a strong brand or keep rankings.

Web data is your raw material to preserve this advantage.

It's not only about Google but also about all the other channels.

Having a low frequency of posting on social media or NOT listening to your audience are great ways to lose momentum.

The best advice I can give in this case is to ask for GSC, GA4 + others and ask someone to analyze data (cough cough like me).

The Answer Is Already There (?)

One of the advantages of being omnichannel is that you have a broader view.

Being limited to one channel has its advantages but I can mostly think of cons in 2024.

Many say they use more than 1 channel but they don't.

Posting an article on 4 channels doesn't mean you create synergy.

This is what I explained some time ago while describing my personal workflow.

The channels should interact, otherwise you are just churning content and destroying your status quo.

👥 Join Our Community

Our Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and web data.

If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.

I will start posting more there as we have a forum channel now.

This is the best way to stay updated in real time on Seotistics:

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🔎 Analytics For SEO Ebook - Course / Ebook

You will:

✅ Use GSC and GA4 Data to their fullest potential

✅ Learn Python/SQL for your needs

✅ Get a complete blueprint for auditing websites

✅ Learn how to 10x your productivity

✅ Learn BigQuery to work on large websites

I teach you what's needed to go from 0 to a professional Data Analyst.

Even if you leave SEO, the foundations are the same for other jobs!

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Also in ebook:

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📚 Recommended Reads - Peak Content 🗻

The good ol' stuff for now:

• ​A Business-Oriented Framework For Web Analytics​
• ​How To Fight Content Decay With Data & Prevent It​
• ​Analytical Skills for AI and Data Science : Building Skills for an AI-Driven enterprise​
• ​Data Literacy In Practice​
• ​Becoming a Data Head​
• ​Storytelling with Data​

As usual, my most recent LinkedIn content is here.

❗️ Feedback and Recommendations

If you have ideas/recommendations for the next issues of Seotistics, you can simply reply to this email.

Marco Giordano
​Data/Web Analyst

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Bernerstrasse Süd 169, Zurich, Switzerland
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