Google Analytics
National Literacy Trust
Glyn Thomas
Email: glyn@glyn-thomas.co.uk
Twitter: @glynmthomas
Outline
Compared key stats between 2017 and 2018
Internal site search
Google search results and data
Behaviour flow and user journey
Content recommendations
Technical recommendations
KPIs
Key stats
| 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pageviews | 949,748 | 730,206 |
| Unique pageviews | 732,154 | 569,140 |
| Users | 300,819 | 195,864 |
| Google - organic search users | 149,971 | 96,019 |
| Google - paid search users | 30,267 | 10,144 |
| Bing - organic search users | 22,182 | 8,239 |
1st January 2017 - 31st May 2017 (old site)
compared with
1st January 2018 - 31st May 2018 (new site)
Key stats
All these stats indicate a problem
That problem predominantly centres around traffic from search engines
The cause could be related to content, to technical aspects of the site, or a mixture of both
Red herrings
| 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|
| Bounce rate | 59.31% | 61.03% |
| Homepage views | 59,185 | 55,539 |
Red herrings / positives
These stats suggest there's nothing major wrong with the website technology. The stats for the homepage and the bounce rate are similar enough not to cause major concern in and of themselves.
Internal site search
| 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches on the site | 20,645 | 11,633 |
| Search depth | 2.78 | 2.29 |
| Search result pageviews | 57,393 | 27,639 |
On the old site, people used the search function more, and searched further through the results. So around 30,000 'missing' pageviews result from this.
Internal site search
Google search results
This comparison covers:
1st March - 31st May 2017 (old site)
1st March - 31st May 2018 (new site)
(there was no search console data in Jan/Feb 2017)
Google search results
| 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|
| Search impressions | 2,666,428 | 1,463,650 |
| Search clicks | 183,395 | 84,222 |
| Click through rate | 6.88% | 5.76% |
| Average position in search results | 14 | 27 |
Google search results
Some specific search terms (clicks)
| 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|
| National Literacy Trust | 5,076 | 5,122 |
| Literacy Trust | 1,334 | 1,255 |
Google search results
Again, this suggests there is no technical problem since for these terms, your site is being found just as much as it was before
Google search results
Some specific search terms (impressions & clicks)
| 2017 - I. | 2017 - C. | 2018 - I. | 2018 - C. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phonics | 45,039 | 2,457 | 3,263 | 199 |
| Vocabulary | 6,950 | 500 | 2,250 | 127 |
Visibility has dropped substantially
For search terms that are not directly related to your brand
Google search results
| 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pages appearing in search results | 10,249 | 2,517 |
| Clicks on .pdf from search | 90,822 | 15,278 |
| .pdf search position | 16 | 36 |
| Downloads of PDF files | 65,046 | 5,944 |
Behaviour flow
Resources: content for SEO
Some additional things to look at
Wikipedia
Canonical URL
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
Similar URLs eg.
https://literacytrust.org.uk/resources/great-books-teaching-phonics/
https://literacytrust.org.uk/account/login/?resource=true&next=/resources/great-books-teaching-phonics/
KPIs
Is office traffic excluded?
There is no exclusion filter in Google Analytics
Event tracking
There was event tracking on the old site, counting downloads of PDFs and documents, but not on the new site
Literacy Trust
By Glyn Thomas
Literacy Trust
Google Analytics analysis, July 2018
