Natural Search report use case
The following use case shows how to use Natural Search report data to improve natural search performance.
The Marketing team is about to start a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) project, intending to increase traffic and revenue through Natural Search. To monitor any potential uplift, you must analyze current natural search performance and create a set of KPIs. Areas to focus on include the relative importance of brand versus long-tail keywords and key entry pages for natural search traffic, with a particular focus on product detail pages.
Using data from the Natural Search report, you create a pivot table in Excel that groups search strings by the number of words, and whether they include brand-related terms.
| Keywords | Sessions | % of Traffic | % of Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand: 01 | 242,131 | 70.71% | 67.71% |
| Brand: 02 | 67,805 | 19.96% | 18.96% |
| Brand: 03 | 32,579 | 5.81% | 9.11% |
| Brand: 04 | 9,559 | 1.87% | 2.67% |
| Brand: 05 | 3,441 | 0.96% | 0.96% |
| Brand: 06 | 1,301 | 0.36% | 0.36% |
| Brand: 07 | 450 | 0.18% | 0.13% |
| Brand: 08 | 180 | 0.05% | 0.05% |
| Brand: 09 | 83 | 0.02% | 0.02% |
| Brand: 10 | 39 | 0.01% | 0.01% |
| Keywords | Sessions | % of Traffic | % of Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other: 01 | 5,651 | 78.05% | 8.05% |
| Other: 02 | 17,373 | 22.76% | 24.76% |
| Other: 03 | 17,658 | 26.16% | 25.16% |
| Other: 04 | 13,195 | 20.80% | 18.80% |
| Other: 05 | 8,313 | 11.85% | 11.85% |
| Other: 06 | 4,174 | 5.95% | 5.95% |
| Other: 07 | 1,960 | 2.79% | 2.79% |
| Other: 08 | 1,001 | 1.43% | 1.43% |
| Other: 09 | 420 | 0.60% | 0.60% |
| Other: 10 | 240 | 0.34% | 0.34% |
The resulting table indicates that most brand searches use just a single keyword, with a sharp drop off as the number of keywords increases. In contrast, non-brand searches tend to be more descriptive and these sessions enter two and four search keywords.
You are also able to make similar comparisons between the Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate for brand and non-brand keywords. The following are your trend reports. Non-brand terms tend to have a much higher Bounce Rate, because visitors are likely to be more goal oriented and link directly to the pages for particular products or content of interest. Conversion Rates in this instance are also higher for long-tail non-brand search terms.
To understand the landing pages for Natural Search, you create segments for the major page groupings on the site. The website page naming conventions enable you to create segments for Home Page, Product, Category, Store Locator and Other.
Each segment specifies matches against a particular landing page, for example Entry Page starts with Product to group all product pages together into one segment or Entry Page starts with Category to group all category pages into one segment (Entry Page start can also be applied to Home, Store Locator, and Other). Each of these segments can then be applied to the Natural Search report to derive the following metrics.
| Segment | Entry Page Views | One Page Sessions | Bounce Rate | Conversion Rate | % Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 536,066 | 53,112 | 9.91% | 3.49% | 62.34% |
| Category | 163,550 | 18,262 | 11.17% | 2.36% | 19.02% |
| Product | 128,480 | 76,282 | 59.37% | 2.12% | 14.94% |
| Store Locator | 23,292 | 2,316 | 9.94% | 0.44% | 2.71% |
| Other | 8,472 | 2,542 | 29.12% | 1.85% | 0.99% |
The percentage of Entry Page Views can be calculated for each segment to show the volume of traffic landing on each page type. In this instance, the Home Page receives most of the traffic at 62%, with product pages receiving 15%. The conversion rates shows that visitors who land on product pages are not likely to convert, largely because 60% of them bounce immediately, having reviewed the product they were interested in. Removing one-page sessions from the equation shows that visitors who land on product pages and continue to browse the website are actually the most likely to convert, at a rate of 5%.
With these metrics available for trending, you can track a set of SEO performance KPIs, and monitor the impact of ongoing optimization efforts.