SEO Analytics

In theory, you could do SEO without measuring and reporting, but a solid grasp of analytics is essential to success. SEO analytics covers a wide range of topics, but often focuses on performance metrics around traffic, keywords, URLs, page speed, conversion rates, and more.

Beyond performance metrics, research metrics present another focal point of SEO analytics. This includes topics like keyword analysis, backlink research, and other areas to inform your SEO strategy.

Here, you can browse our top resources on SEO analytics, as well as find the most recent blog posts on the subject below.

SEO Analytics and Reporting : Check out our free SEO Learning Center where we've collected the top resources on analytics and reporting.

The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics : The most popular website analytics platform in the world, Google Analytics is a must-know platform for all SEOs.

A Beginner's Guide to Google Search Console : A companion to any web analytics platform, Google Search Console offers a wealth of SEO information to webmasters.

When and How to Use Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Link Count Metrics : SEO metrics have a special place in analytics. Rand Fishkin shows you how to use these popular metrics correctly.

The Complete Guide to Direct Traffic in Google Analytics : This article covers a very specific niche topic, but also an important one! Learn why that direct traffic in your analytics platform isn't what you think it is.

Variation on Type-In Traffic
SEO Analytics

Variation on Type-In Traffic

I recently had the opportunity to renew 1000 of my spam domains.Since the domains only cost me 99 cents each when I bought them and renewal was nearly $6 at the time, I decided it wasn't worth it.In fact, my evil plan was that I was going to simply let these sites expire and then buy them back once they expired and went into the domain pool...Imagine my surprise...
Open Call for SERPs that Need Explaining
SEO Analytics

Open Call for SERPs that Need Explaining

Have you ever looked at a set of search results and scratched your head in disbelief? If so, you're like me - occasionally, I'll at some search results at Google and have no comprehension of why one site is ranking in front of another, or why it would rank in the top 10, period. This blog post is an open call - feel free to list keywords and search results in the comments that simply make no se...
Long Term Visitor Tracking
SEO Analytics

Long Term Visitor Tracking

At nearly every SES conference, I hear it mentioned that analytics must track 60-90 days out in order to maintain a close watch on latent visits and conversions. In a meeting I had today with a large non-profit based website, the issue of latent tracking over the longer term came up... My question is - is it valuable to track via IP address over the long haul (100-300 days) or are the changing ...
All Eyes on You
SEO Analytics

All Eyes on You

You may already be familiar with eye tracking, a technology used to conduct marketing and usability tests for websites by examining the vision patterns of users as they view a page... but have you seen it in use? Etre, a company specializing in usability, offers an eye tracking service for clients, and feat...
What Does a Slashdotting Look Like?
SEO Analytics

What Does a Slashdotting Look Like?

It's been 24 hours (almost exactly) since SEOmoz was linked to from Slashdot, and our current traffic is still exceptionally high. The "effect" itself was fairly mild, affecting us negatively for only 30 minutes or so while we removed database connections from the guide and upped the MySQL simultaneous connections limit (warning to others: the default is 100, so raising that in expectation of t...
Smiley Faces Earn Their Keep
SEO Analytics

Smiley Faces Earn Their Keep

I am running blogger on a couple of my sites and decided to try an experiment as an attempt to increase the frequency of my posts being emailed. By default Blogger adds a little email icon at the bottom of each post. I kicked it up a notch by placing a smiley beside it with so...
Bug Me Not
SEO Analytics

Bug Me Not

BugMeNot is a nifty tool that acts either as a one-time viewer for content sites or a plug-in that lets you surf through without entering a username or password. It reminds me most of the grocery store checkers who simply swipe the store copy of the "...

Get Moz Blog email updates in your inbox