The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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πΉ Small VS Goliath Websites: Analytics Stack + Strategy Guide
Published 6 days agoΒ β’Β 7 min read
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Use Data Or Be Used By Data!
The May 5 issue of Seotistics is here for you!
The majority of you own a small website or probably want to invest in a side hustle or personal brand.
Maybe you often work with small businesses and not gigantic corporations...
this is for you!
P.S. My new course is launching next Monday, so the next issue will be published on Tuesday.
Please move this email to your Primary inbox or reply to it. This is to prevent Seotistics goes into spam by accident. Gmail users can read this tutorial to do it.
BigQuery Handbook v2 (subscribe! Check the welcome email if already subscribed)
I've talked at Search AfriCon last week and expanded my previous talk about Content Auditing with some Product Auditing.
I will publish the slides later, maybe π
Small Websites Today
Small websites have it hard because has raised the threshold again.
Gone are the times when you could write 300 articles and flip the website for 40x its monthly revenue. πͺ
So this means you have to try harder now!
Omnichannel is the way to go and especially social media...
Yes, now it takes more time...
N.B. Small is hard to define, you can even make 500K Users/month and be "small" in your niche.
So take the expression small with a grain of salt!
OK So... How Small?
As said before, it's a vague term.
In this case, I refer to actually small websites:
your lawyer
Seotistics
most niche B2B websites
a local shop
You won't have access to a lot of data and resources so you have to play it simple.
It's fine, data is to be used for making decisions.
A Small (& Cheap) Data Stack
Working with data is expensive... but you don't have to spend a fortune as a small business.
Be sure to have this:
Search Console (free)
Google Analytics 4 (mostly free)
Google Tag Manager (just the events you need, free)
Bing Webmasters Tools (free)
BigQuery (also cheap)
Dataform (free)
Looker Studio (also free)
The plan is to use GSC/Bing for measuring organic traffic and get juicy audience data (i.e. keywords).
GA4 is your reference for all the traffic and for tracking what happens inside your website.
Tracking is handled via GTM.
Finally, storage is assigned to BigQuery and its powerful native connectors to both GSC and GA4.
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Small websites are affected by heavy anonymization and thresholding and BigQuery gets you more data.
To process data and make them more usable, Dataform is a free solution by Google.
(I prefer DBT but it adds even more complexity).
This step isn't mandatory, many small websites wouldn't even need processing.
N.B. If you are small small you just need to have GSC and GA4, eventually some events for GTM.
Growth first, technicalities later but store your data as soon as possible!
The (Data) Difference With Big Players
Other than complexity and costs, Web Analytics is the same:
get data
find insights (if any and if they apply to you)
take action
If you are focusing too much on the tech stack, it means you are losing sight of the goal.
I recommend approaching data as an extension of business/marketing so it fits naturally.
If you approach marketing as a standalone activity, it will fail too.
Data professionals reading this may wonder why I didn't draw a complete data stack...
that's because as someone with 7 years of struggles with small websites, I know no one cares.
Building complex automation or governance doesn't have ROI for small players.
How To Overpower Bigger Opponents
Being small has its perks, you don't need to view yourself as inferior.
Big websites are slow and often lack the same passion that you have...
in most cases, their content quality is also less than optimal.
All of these reasons open up new spaces for you to creep in.
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Small websites give you more flexibility and simplicity at the cost of lacking most resources and (often) a solid brand.
This isn't always true though... you can be small and have a niche brand.
P.S. This time my resources section is quite big, don't forget to scroll down and check it out!
Flanking
As seen last time, you can attack one topic/cluster instead of going for a frontal attack.
You stand no chance against a big website...
Think about Semrush/Ahrefs' blogs.
They are high quality and it's hard to match the level of their infographics and visual content.
If you ever happen to cover the same topics... just don't think of SEO as your primary channel!
Having more and diverse information won't make you rank because they have a stronger backlink profile and are actual brands.
You can do the following though:
select a topic where they are weak
expand on that and go beyond the nice visuals
go all in on that
use DIFFERENT channels
Content audits are where many websites offer vague and generic info that doesn't help businesses.
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You would never use 3rd-party data when you have access to your own...
see? You can do a lot of debunking and education.
Most content is generic and you can simply position yourself as a contrarian, as long as what you say can be proven.
For content auditing, you see that my article is clearly flanking what others do:
I don't talk about the usual simple but wrong approach
It covers much more than SEO
There are no generic definitions
This tactic requires you actually know what to do and your topic/audience.
Bypass
This is the best scenario.
Instead of looking for fights, you go your way.
β
In SEO, I think it's impossible to target new markets or opportunities due to how Google is saturated and also because Reddit/Quora would rank now π.
(Mind you, US/EN markets, if you want to rank in Myanmar, go ahead)
For other channels, this strategy is always reliable as there actually are untapped markets.
This is what Seotistics also does, as the (mainstream) Web Analytics industry follows different rules:
mostly interested in tech over insights
weak domain knowledge
extreme focus on Google tools (although I still talk about them all time lol)
Seotistics bypasses the current players and focuses on the analytical side with a bit of insider knowledge.
It's a new mix and didn't actually copy anyone, although I could try to apply flanking when competing on specific topics, e.g. content audits.
Some people would define this as content arbitrage:
Content arbitrage happens when we take this existing content from one place andβwith minimal effortβleverage it for higher value somewhere else.ββ Ryan Law (from this article)
This is the best way to compete in B2B spaces in my very personal experience.
The Seotistics newsletter is written by Marco Giordano, a Data/Web Analyst with the goal of combining business and web data. Tired of the usual boring Analytics content without any business impact? Seotistics teaches you how to use Analytics, web data and even content in your workflow while helping you with Strategy.
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