If you have ever spoken the acronym “SEO” aloud, or if you have ever laid eyes on an SEO report, this article is for you.

I recently helped a local Pittsburgh company launch a new website.  Through the process, we revamped the whole SEO structure.  Now, there was another SEO company that had been on this job for about two years prior to my involvement.  Every couple of months they would send the company a high-level website traffic overview.

THE PROBLEM WITH HIGH-LEVEL WEBSITE TRAFFIC OVERVIEWS IS THEY ARE COMPLETE GARBAGE AND THEY DON’T SHOW YOU ANY REAL INFORMATION. 

I could take a “high-level overview” of Ben Roethlisberger and conclude that he is overweight and not fit for competition because he is 241 lbs – but that would undermine everything he has accomplished in his career.  It discounts every ounce of muscle on his body.  It ignores the important factors that contribute to his success such as pass accuracy or quick decision making.

The same goes for SEO and web traffic.  If you only look at the top numbers you are missing the big picture.  You must dive deep into the metrics to really understand what is happening with your website and SEO.

Back to my story on this particular website revamp…

The company on the job before me would send monthly reports showing about 5000 monthly visitors.  There was about a 2% increase in website traffic each month which they were excited about.

However, their enthusiasm smelled fishy.  Two percent bumps are nothing to feel giddy about.

After a deep dive into the SEO structure of the website we realized that there were big problems.  Many of the standard SEO procedures had been ignored.  In fact, nothing had been updated in a year.  This SEO company had been raking in a year’s worth of retainer fees without really making any difference.

That had to change.

We submitted a proposal to revamp the website and infuse the SEO with meaningful items to make the website more valuable to the market that the company was trying to target.

Can you guess what happened after the new website released?  The monthly visitors dropped from 5000 per month down to 4500 per month!

OH NO!  CALL THE FIRING SQUAD!  WE’VE BEEN DUPED!

You would only think you were duped if you looked at a high-level website traffic overview – and in that case you would be duping yourself.

LET’S DIG DOWN INTO THE ACTUAL NUMBERS DEEP INTO THE ANALYTICS OF THIS WEBSITE THAT I’M TALKING ABOUT:

Old website: 5000 Monthly Visitors
New website: 4500 Monthly Visitors

Old website: 2000 Visitors from USA and 3000 Visitors from the rest of the world
New website: 4000 Visitors from USA (3500 from the company’s region of business) and 500 Visitors from the rest of the world.

WHICH IS BETTER, TO HAVE A HIGHER NUMBER OF VISITORS OR TO HAVE A HIGHER NUMBER OF VISITORS FROM YOUR TARGET MARKET?

Old website: 1 blog post bringing in 90% of the web traffic from everywhere in the world.
New website: All blog posts bringing in the same quantity of traffic, distributed evenly among blog posts, and 80% of the traffic coming from the company’s region of business.

WHICH IS BETTER, TO HAVE A TON OF PEOPLE FROM ASIA READ YOUR BLOGS, OR TO HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF PEOPLE IN YOUR OWN CITY READING YOUR BLOGS?

Old website: 92% of all traffic exits the website after 5 seconds.
New website: 40% of all traffic stays on the website for at least 2 minutes and views multiple pages.

WHICH IS BETTER, TO BRING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE TO YOUR SITE THAT DON’T EVEN WANT TO BE THERE, OR TO BRING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO ARE HIGHLY ENGAGED WITH YOUR CONTENT?

These are real examples that I am sharing with you – and these three examples only scratch the surface.  In the old website there were 200 visitors per month coming as referral traffic from triple-X websites.  After the new SEO and website restructuring these bogus visitors disappeared completely.

The previous SEO company tried to defend their work by showing that their version of the site brought in 500 more visitors per month than our version.  But what does it matter if most of your website traffic is junk anyway?  You be the judge.

My challenge to you

• Don’t put up with high-level website traffic reports.  You should demand deeper insight into the analytics of your site.
• You should demand periodic updates to the SEO structure (because Google is always changing their algorithm!).
• That SEO report better be 20 slides.  Anything less and somebody is hiding something.
• If you have doubts, get a second opinion.  Sometimes website agencies give you sugar pills.  They come in packaging that looks like a high-level website traffic report.  Consult another physician.
• If your site is stale, get a new one.  Nobody looked at Lady Gaga until she started dressing like a sci-fi character.  Adding some spice your website can help you draw the right audience.

Inflayt Marketing

Inflayt Marketing is a growth marketing group with 10 years of experience creating value for companies like yours.  Inflayt understands SEO, what makes a website valuable to visitors, and how to bring in quality traffic.

Learn more about Growth Driven Design

It’s the only way to gather website data and implement continual improvements in a cost effective and timely way.  …that was a mouthful…  Read more at the link below to see what we mean!