Search engine optimizers have access to large amounts of data and information, most of which remain underutilized. Though not all that data benefits the SEO work, some can certainly grant good leverage. However, it also presents a different challenge for the optimizer – information overload.
Data has always been at the core of good SEO, and for search engine optimization, trackability is key. Though many SEOs measure this data and track their efforts, many others tend to get overwhelmed while some others mostly don’t measure at all and make do with best practices to get through the day.
The focus here should be on what we want to track and why we should track it. This is where it gets confusing.
Knowledge & Information
Marketers often confuse information with knowledge. The more information they collect, the more knowledge they uncover. Though this is true to an extent, a 2017 report from CMO Council paints a different picture. A good amount of marketers, according to the report, collect great amounts of information but not all of them find the knowledge they seek.
Information is the raw data they are collecting. Knowledge is something derived from the data after thorough analysis that gives insights on about what’s happening on and around a specific SEO account(s). Information on its own isn’t valuable. It’s what the information holds that’s off value. The point is that utilizing a lot of resources to collect information for SEO benefits isn’t what a marketer should be focusing on. Collecting the right data to unearth valuable knowledge is the key.
The Wiser Way
Every SEO campaign comes with its own share of challenges. For companies relying on a reputed SEO consultant, there aren’t a lot to be concerned about. But for those in-house marketers who try to make sense of a plethora of data to boost the success rate of a campaign, the focus should be on something else.
To improve a campaign’s effectiveness, the marketer should have a clear goal. This goal dictates what they should track, why they should track it, and how they should track it. This way they would be able to figure out how to extract actionable insights (knowledge) that matter from all that data. There’s still a chance for them to go off-course and dive head-first into information overload.
But there are ways to keep yourself in check; search engine marketing hacks from a number of experts in the industry.
- Collect and analyze data that are on a need-to-know basis i.e. only the most relevant data should matter.
- Make sure the data collected and about to be analyzed are high quality. The quantity doesn’t matter. You are not doing big data analysis here.
- Focus only on the task at hand, be it analysis, technical optimization, off-page SEO etc.
Conclusion
Marketers, back in the day, never had the means to extract such insights from the data. Data wasn’t as important then as it is now. Many of them found the data overwhelming, and found it easier to just stick to the best SEO practices to get results. Now things are more efficient, but demands a different approach to SEO. The data-driven approach can give results, if the marketer doesn’t let himself get overwhelmed by the data and focus on just what’s important.
