Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

The June 16 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

What's the difference between a GREAT application of Web Data and moderate (or no) results?

Does it have to do with the stack or the tools?

Uhm, not really...

It's about understanding marketing and business!

Today I talk about Marketing and why there is a lot of work to do in the industry!

P.S. Released a new article on Keyword Clustering + free code included, go check it out!

​Read this in your browser​

📣📣 Important Announcements 📣📣

To come next:

• "Analytics for SEO" ebook v9 (I swear, this one soon 👀)
• More additions to "Analytics for SEO" course
• More content for "Think Like a Web Analyst"
• Even more articles

I will be in Vienna on October 14th talking about Ecommerce data, if you want to join, you are welcome :3

Get 20% off with my code "marco-20" on the Serp Conf. website.

The Marketing Domain

This is the quick and dirty definition I like to adopt.

Web Analytics is about marketing applications as you may have guessed.

My advice is to get some relevant marketing experience:

• build a website
• grow a social media page
• understand how to position your products

For sure, enterprises are different beasts, it's not like you can really learn your job with a personal website...

the point is different though!

Understanding the difference between a small and a big website is half of the job.

So that you can deeply understand why some tactics only work with bigger players.

Current Issues

Many in Digital Marketing and even Web Analytics don't "exactly" know Marketing.

Otherwise silos wouldn't exist and most audits wouldn't be checklists.

Yet, here we are.

This is also reflected by the lack of alignment between business and data:

Even though business and marketing are definitely NOT the same thing...

it's important to always have synergy between them.

This disconnect is even more visible once you take data into account as I see the following:

• checklists and audits that ignore the very basics
• wrong interpretation of metrics
• proposing unfeasible things (especially with content)

The other extreme is that thinking Marketing is a technical discipline... definitely not!

Analytics is a complement, an addition, it will never replace what you know.

We refer to your industry experience as "domain knowledge", i.e. the understanding of a specific field/area of interest.

Tactical Focus

Maybe someone ever called you to be too "tactical".

Well, I don't think this word is always used properly but there is some truth in it.

Being a professional who only focuses on actions and doesn't see the big picture is extremely problematic in the long term.

That's because most advice isn't relevant to your end users.

I see too much effort on the technical side and little about the business needs.

This is an example that happened to me the other day:

"We need to build a dashboard for this campaign process"

You are starting with the solution here, no one actually asked you to have one.

It's better to start from the problem and stick to the easiest option first.

Then, think how this "data product" fits into your overall processes and if it actually helps achieving a goal.

Most marketing activities are simple and don't require complexity.

If I need to monitor my personal website, I simply need to check:

• where the traffic comes from
• which pages get traffic
• where key events happen

which is the bare minimum.

What actually keeps the business afloat is a solid course of action, namely a strategy.

A simple dashboard does help me in moving forward because it assists my key marketing activities (aka publishing).

A new shiny tool? Most likely not.

Once you realize tools are just tools, you can shift your mindset and start going beyond.

Framing MKTG problems

As I often say, framing problems is important!

In most cases, understanding what is the real problem is half of the job.

Let's consider the following scenario:

• Problem: Traffic decrease by 30%
• Solution: Let's rush to recover traffic by updating our content and...

Wait a second, is the traffic decrease the problem?

Why should most companies care about traffic losses?

The actual issue you want to look for is the revenue loss.

Framing this problem differently will let you take different actions and be more effective.

If you lost that much traffic and there is no relevant revenue loss, maybe you should also consider long-term damage in terms of awareness.

Remember, I said effective, so great at achieving your goals.

Being efficient doesn't mean you will actually achieve what you want.

Churning 100 articles/month is efficient but... is it effective?

1st Hand Advice On MKTG Sense

Many mistakes could be avoided with common sense and practice.

The other day, I was discussing about measuring the "ROI" of campaigns for an enterprise use case.

In this case, we were talking about SEO + PPC + Social Media.

I paused a little bit and said: "well, we can't 1:1 compare SEO and PPC and treat them as equals".

That's because PPC gets you immediate results and you can create campaigns to get leads or sell...

SEO as an activity has other long-term benefits that aren't measurable with the same criteria as PPC.

There other examples of wrong things you see today:

• Claiming to do more email marketing due to higher conversion rates (it's a conversion channel, ofc it converts more 😂)
• Investing more in content that has "high impressions" (good for traffic, not more profitable)
• Using last-click attribution
• Thinking people in B2B buy after ONE ad and without prior exposure
• Only running ads (good luck with acquiring customers later)

Even a simple concept like the last one is better understood once you run a website and notice how precious inbound traffic is.

And this is why:

When I teach Web Analytics, I try to make YOU apply the concepts to your specific use case.

Too many people want the ready meal... but this is not how you learn.

Some advice we read online isn't even true for our situations.

It's better to learn fundamentals or abstractions rather than specific use cases.

My teaching style deeply reflects that.

If you want to learn more about Marketing and all of the topics here, you are lucky because I have my new course about this topic:

Become a Top Data Analyst Now!

Great Marketing & Analytics Are Skepticism

The reason why I mistrust most mainstream content is that it's done to attract OUR attention, not to educate.

I am talking about the following:

• Email is dead
• Links don't work
• SEO is cooked, GEO is the future
• Analysts will be replaced by this new tool

If you have working experience, you know that this is noise and you don't fall for cheap tricks.

You develop healthy skepticism that lets you focus on what truly matters for the business.

Boring can scale but entertaining? Hardly so.

Today you see it even more with AI, LLMs and the latest rumors. I recently talked about this on LinkedIn:

Most takes start from wrong assumptions on how companies and marketing work.

Habits take time to change and technology adoption requires a LOT of time.

WordPress was supposed to be replaced many years ago and here we are 💀

So, did you enjoy this dose of skepticism?

👥 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.

Join our Discord Community!

🔎 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!

Learn Analytics for SEO Now!

Also in ebook:

Unlock Powerful Insights Now!

📚 Recommended Reads - Peak Content 🗻

Read this peak:

• ​How To Fight Content Decay With Data & Prevent It​
• ​Keyword Clustering: Techniques, Processes & Sample Code​
• ​Strategy + Web Analytics: How To Tie Data To Results​
• ​A Business-Oriented Framework For Web Analytics​
• ​Changes in the BigQuery Data Transfer Service for GA4 ​

I will stop posting all of my LinkedIn content because email providers screen me for having too many links 💀

You can read my latest posts 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

Follow me on 🔽🔽🔽:

Bernerstrasse Süd 169, Zurich, Switzerland
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​