How Analytics Can Help You Debunk a Perceived Failure (or Not)
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Problem: Client says that site traffic and sales have decreased since starting SEO campaign. You know that since taking over SEO you have eliminated hundreds of pages of duplicate content and increased search spidering of important pages. Site usability has improved significantly and rankings for key terms are also improving. Many site architectural issues have been uncovered but remain unresolved and can only be fixed by the client. What do you do?
I was posed this problem recently and my first thought was, let’s look at the analytics. Unfortunately, the client refuses to give us access to their analytical data, which means everything I’m about to say here falls under the category What-Could-Have-Been-Though-We-Won’t-Know-For-Sure.
They compile a gigantic list of keywords because they sell hundreds of products. They create one campaign with one ad group to sell everything in their inventory. Their ad lists the company name and points everyone to the home page. Thousands of impressions, hundreds of clicks and dollars later, few conversions are the result.
