Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

The July 24 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

One of the biggest problems many have with SEO is using data to inform their strategy.

Knowing Google Sheets formulas and Excel is not what actually makes the difference.

But then, what does?

I am telling you in this new issue of Seotistics.

[I've released v4 of my ebook, check it out on Gumroad. The next update will be massive!]

📕 Understand the Business & The Problem

SEO is a vast industry and you can't compare a SaaS to an E-commerce just because "they are still websites".

Both have different needs, KPIs and budgets.

I always recommend specializing in something rather than being a generalist... for example, only working with B2B SaaS or B2C content websites.

This makes it easier to frame down a problem and quicker when giving results.

Marco Giordano @GiordMarco96 5 long-term ideas to boost your #SEO game: 1. Learn prioritization 2. Niche down and specialize (I follow this school of thought) 3. Get real expertise in your niches 4. Focus on the value proposition 5. Learn communication 1:39 PM • Jun 17, 2022 9 Retweets 41 Likes Read 2 replies

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A simple exercise could consist in writing down some questions that can help you in detecting the problem at hand.

Some quick examples:

• What can we do to increase traffic? Why does it even matter?
• How to increase leads? Is it necessary to create more content?
• How to sell more products? Shall we improve our current structure?

Some of them aren't relevant for some websites so you can safely ignore them.

I always try to figure out what I am dealing with to see what moves the needle the most.

Sometimes, there aren't many options and the only choice is testing.

💡 The Data Processing

This is the part where there are the most errors.

You should always clean your data as I already mentioned in one of my past Seotistics issues.

It's rule number 1 of every proper analysis.

I can’t stress enough the importance of proper cleaning and understanding what to filter out.

This is the most frequent error in SEO analyses because many forget to remove all the boilerplate pages or foreign queries.

My recommendation is always the same: prepare a list with all the pages you usually filter out and improve it over time.

I can already tell you that I love removing tags and categories because it’s often pointless to include them.

💡 The SEO Insights

Insights are what we are after and the main reasons why you read this newsletter.

But getting them isn't all, you need to present them and convince people.

This is where I made the most mistakes (and I still do).

Attention is extremely limited nowadays and you should use ANY device to get it.

No ifs and buts, just do it.

If you have followed my threads and my past Seotistics issues, you’d know that there are plenty of ways to extract insights.

Anyway, once you get going, you will notice that not everything is relevant.

Technical SEO is where I see it happen the most.

I’ve never understood why we should be wasting time on titles and descriptions when we have much more important information.

To avoid following fake leads, you need clear objectives from the start AND to detect noise.

This requires some practice and training since there are no general rules to follow.

If you know what moves the needle in SEO, then this will be easier.

💡 The 3-minute Story + Big Idea

These are 2 techniques I recommend to quickly express concepts.

​Big Idea: 1-2 sentences to explain the whole concept.

​3-minute story: like the name implies, a relatively short story.

You can learn more with this masterful book: Storytelling with Data.

Bullet lists with 3 takeaways also do their job, like the one below:

• 50 pages showed significant traffic loss (>50% drop compared to last year)
• 20 pages get no internal links
• 15 pages have 0 organic traffic and low impressions (<100)

Something like this is more effective than all of the other formats you will see.

Many people will never read what you have produced so it’s important to catch their attention early on.

The table below is a great example, it's actually an embellished pivot table.

The figure before was exactly the same as this, but formatting does miracles.

Marco Giordano @GiordMarco96 You must admit my table drips 😎 This is my usual heatmap with a twist, more formatting! Presenting data is mandatory nowadays. I would only change the palette to have red as high instead. 12:0 PM • Apr 14, 2023 1 Retweets 20 Likes

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🏎 Ready...Go!!!

The next step is eliciting action, or else your effort will be in vain.

The 5 Whys is a nice technique to understand if you are going in the right direction.

Remember, if you can’t find a connection, then it’s just a nice fact.

For instance, if I claim that:

50 pages showed significant traffic loss (>50% drop compared to last year)

This may be true and all and then what? How is your audience supposed to act based on this insight?

There are many actions you can recommend, such as:

• Updating those pages
• Deleting those with extremely poor performance
• Leaving them as they are (seasonality can lead to false negatives)

You see, there are many different paths you can take after 1 simple sentence.

Of course, in practice, you would have investigated more but the idea is the same.

You are tying one of your findings to an action.

Do you even know how many times I’ve failed before realizing this “simple” fact?

If the website is a black box, you are progressively shedding light on it to uncover some aspects of reality.

See? Easy, quick, and immediate.

Another DataViz truth is about big numbers. You should have them to attract the attention of your audience.

10,000,000

Big difference, right?

Presenting your insights is half the battle to win consensus.

❌ The Most Common Mistakes

Some of the most common mistakes I noticed are as follows:

• Confusing correlation with cause-effect
• Completely wrong or misleading DataViz
• Disregarding the methodology
• Checklists of nice facts (as implied before)

Some of them are also mathematical errors. You don’t have to be perfect but it’s stuff you can learn in little time.

My advice is to document everything you can and keep track of how you extract the data for future reference.

🧵 My Selection Of Twitter Threads

A quick recap for those who haven't read them all or need a refresher:

• ​Demystifying "SEO is easy"​
• ​Content websites will tank and what to do​
• ​No more SEO noise​
• ​Traditional SEO Reporting is dead​
• ​Presenting SEO Data the Right Way​

👥 👥 Join Our Community

We have launched our Discord community and I will contact every person who hasn't joined yet.

Our goal is to encourage actual SEO testing and building meaningful connections.

🔎 Analytics For SEO Ebook (v4)

This ebook is aimed at SEOs or Business Owners who want to explore the combination of SEO and Analytics.

If you want to start building your data empire, this is the (initial) path to take.

It will teach you or your employees to:

👉 Avoid common pitfalls that cost you money 💸

👉 Create meaningful analyses that add value 💯

👉 Shorten the learning time of Analytics ⏳

This comes with monthly updates because I want to create the Ultimate Guide out there.

The v4 update includes the following new information:

✅ Generating Synthetic Data - Use Case 7

✅ Financial Estimation (Introduction with R) - Use Case 8

v5 (2 weeks) will feature:

• Update to Use Case 8
• Introducing DataViz - Use Case 9, a quick primer to visualizing your data
• Updating some of the old Use Cases
• Decision Theory and Concepts for Agencies/Portfolio Owners
• Information Analysis (maybe... to be decided)

v6 (End of August) and will feature:

• Time Series & Seasonality
• More on Frameworks and models of thinking
• More Testing

📚 Recommended Reads

These Analytics books are among the best out there. If you want to think like a true Analyst, look no further.

I know, I always recommend them, but now they are even more relevant especially the last one!

• ​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​

❗️ Feedback and Recommendations

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

Marco Giordano
​SEO Specialist & Data Analyst

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