Overcoming Not provided keywords in Google Analytics
The advent of attribution models and multi channels funnels in my career was a turning point. I soon realized that everyone (I am no exception) is doing analytics all wrong and I should take analytics tips floating across the net with a pinch of salt mainly because they never really take multi touch attributions into account. Since then all standard analytics reports have started looking substandard to me and I have been looking for radically new ways to use analytics data to optimize my campaigns. First step was coming up with my own attribution model: Proportional Multi touch Attribution Modeling which is a daring attempt to assign values to multiple touches. Please share your views on this attribution model in the comments below.
Today I am taking the second big step by daring to optimize Organic Search campaigns without keyword referral data from Google Analytics or any other analytics software.
Post Apocalyptic (Not Provided) World
There has been a lot of uproar since October of 2011 when Google first announced that it will hide keyword referral data from searches made by logged in Google users. To make this matter worst, Firefox announced in March of this year that it will use Google secure search by default. Then we started getting reports from webmasters around the globe that ‘not provided’ data is increasing month and by month (which is still increasing to this day).
I have been thinking for quite some time (few months to be frank) whether we can optimize SEO campaigns without keyword referral data from Google or any other analytics software. After a lot of thinking and analyzing the way, I use analytics data today for optimizing my campaigns for ‘not provided’ keywords, I have come to the conclusion that we can survive without keyword referral data in a post apocalyptic not provided world. Here is how:
Introducing ‘Not Provided SEO Model’
Step-1: Do keyword research the way you have been doing. However now I would strongly suggest you to use tools like SEMRush because you no longer have access to keyword referral data and tools like SEMRush can be used to determine the keywords which are generating revenue for your competitors. In a post apocalyptic not provided world you can longer take great risks while selecting keywords.
Step-2: Develop contents to target the keywords you have determined through keyword research. Optimize your product landing pages for targeted keywords.
Step-3-: Do your regular link building
Step-4: Monitor your organic search rankings for targeted keywords through tools like Authority Labs.
Step-5: Monitor your conversions at the page/product level instead of the keyword level. Here comes the twist. Up to now you have been monitoring conversions at the keywords level. But in a post apocalyptic not provided world you no longer have access to any keywords referral data. So instead of determining the performance of individual keywords you need to determine and optimize the performance of individual pages or better individual products.
Step-6: If your landing pages/products are not performing well then optimize them for conversions.
Repeat steps 1 to 6.
Example:
Through keyword research you determined that the keywords:’ KW-1’ and ‘KW-2’ can be most profitable for your product say ‘PRD-A’. So you optimized the product landing page for the keywords. You tracked the organic search ranking for these keywords to measure your SEO efforts. Then you monitored your conversions at the page/product level. If you don’t see any improvement in your conversions/sales despite of being in top 10 of organic search results for your targeted keywords then you need to do following:
1. Determine the performance of the product landing page through following metrics:
I. Per visit value
II. Total Transactions
III. Per visit Goal Value
IV. Total Goal completions
Through these metrics you can determine whether the content of the page is adding any value to your business goals and bottom line. A landing page with a high per visit value or high per visit goal value is performing well.
2. Improve your organic search rankings for the targeted keywords.
3. Re-valuate the primary keywords for which you optimized your product landing page if ranking is not an issue. Target new keyword variations or completely new keywords.
4. Develop contents to target new keyword variations or keywords which are relevant to your product.
5. Improve the conversion rate of your product landing page through A/B or multivariate testing.
6. If you are marketing your product through multiple channels (PPC, Email, Social Media, Display etc) then assess the contribution of other channels and invest accordingly.
What else you should be doing in a post Apocalyptic Not Provided World
Up to now I was talking about optimizing organic search campaigns without the help of any keyword referral data. But even in a post apocalyptic not provided world there will be tools out there which can help us in getting lot of (if not all) keyword referral data.
PPC Data
It is highly unlikely that Google or Microsoft will ever hide the keyword referral data from searches made by logged in users for advertisers. So if you run Adwords/Bing campaigns, you can always find the keywords which are profitable for your products through ‘keywords’ and ‘search terms’ reports and then target those keywords for your organic search campaigns.
SEM Rush Keyword Referral Data
You may not know but SEMRush also provides keyword referral data. SEMRush update its database once a month and returns those organic keywords for a web page which are in its database and for which your website/webpage ranks in Google top 20. According to SEMRush, they analyze the rankings of 95+ million most profitable and popular keywords. SEMRush can be used to determine (not provided) data even today. Follow the steps below to get the ‘not provided’ keywords for a particular landing page:
Step-1: Go to the ‘landing pages’ report in your Google Analytics Account.
Step-2: Select ‘keyword’ as secondary dimension
Step-3: Apply the advanced segment ‘Non –Paid Search Traffic’ if you also run PPC campaigns. This advanced segment will filter out paid search keywords.
Step-4: Download the report into MS Excel. You now have the list of all the organic keywords (including ‘not provided’)
Step-5: Plug in your web page URL on SEMRush tool, download the organic keywords and compare it with the keywords you downloaded from Google Analytics. The keywords which are missing in your Google Analytics reports are the ‘not provided’ keywords.
Note: You won’t get all the (not provided) data through this method. SEMRush analyzes the rankings of only those keywords which are in its database. Check this post to learn more about how SEMRush can be used to scale keyword research to new heights.
Google Webmaster Tools Data
For the sake of including, I have included this tool too. You can get a lot of ‘not provided’ data for a landing page by comparing Google webmaster tools’ queries report with your Google Analytics report in a similar way you got the data from SEMRush. I am not really sure how long Google will provide the keyword referral data in Google webmaster tools account. But it is providing at present, so use whatever you have got.
Keyword Referral Data through Mystery Tool
There is a high probability that someone someday will come up with a tool which can provide almost all the ‘not provided’ data. So I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Related Post: Google Analytics Not Provided Keywords Analysis – Ultimate Guide
If you like this post then you should subscribe to my blog and follow me on twitter.
Other Posts you may find useful:
- 6 things you can learn from PostRank about Social Engagement Metrics
- What you should know about historical data in Web Analytics
- What is fundamentally wrong with your Conversion Rate
- You are doing Google Analytics all wrong. Here is why
- Google Analytics Shortcuts: Tricks, Tools, keyboard & APIs
- How to use Web Analytics 2.0 to improve your conversions
- Ultimate Data Visualization Guide for SEO
- How to Automate Event Tracking in Google Analytics
- Social interactions tracking through Google Analytics
- Google Analytics Account Setup Tool
- Event Tracking – Google Analytics (Simplified Version)
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The advent of attribution models and multi channels funnels in my career was a turning point. I soon realized that everyone (I am no exception) is doing analytics all wrong and I should take analytics tips floating across the net with a pinch of salt mainly because they never really take multi touch attributions into account. Since then all standard analytics reports have started looking substandard to me and I have been looking for radically new ways to use analytics data to optimize my campaigns. First step was coming up with my own attribution model: Proportional Multi touch Attribution Modeling which is a daring attempt to assign values to multiple touches. Please share your views on this attribution model in the comments below.
Today I am taking the second big step by daring to optimize Organic Search campaigns without keyword referral data from Google Analytics or any other analytics software.
Post Apocalyptic (Not Provided) World
There has been a lot of uproar since October of 2011 when Google first announced that it will hide keyword referral data from searches made by logged in Google users. To make this matter worst, Firefox announced in March of this year that it will use Google secure search by default. Then we started getting reports from webmasters around the globe that ‘not provided’ data is increasing month and by month (which is still increasing to this day).
I have been thinking for quite some time (few months to be frank) whether we can optimize SEO campaigns without keyword referral data from Google or any other analytics software. After a lot of thinking and analyzing the way, I use analytics data today for optimizing my campaigns for ‘not provided’ keywords, I have come to the conclusion that we can survive without keyword referral data in a post apocalyptic not provided world. Here is how:
Introducing ‘Not Provided SEO Model’
Step-1: Do keyword research the way you have been doing. However now I would strongly suggest you to use tools like SEMRush because you no longer have access to keyword referral data and tools like SEMRush can be used to determine the keywords which are generating revenue for your competitors. In a post apocalyptic not provided world you can longer take great risks while selecting keywords.
Step-2: Develop contents to target the keywords you have determined through keyword research. Optimize your product landing pages for targeted keywords.
Step-3-: Do your regular link building
Step-4: Monitor your organic search rankings for targeted keywords through tools like Authority Labs.
Step-5: Monitor your conversions at the page/product level instead of the keyword level. Here comes the twist. Up to now you have been monitoring conversions at the keywords level. But in a post apocalyptic not provided world you no longer have access to any keywords referral data. So instead of determining the performance of individual keywords you need to determine and optimize the performance of individual pages or better individual products.
Step-6: If your landing pages/products are not performing well then optimize them for conversions.
Repeat steps 1 to 6.
Example:
Through keyword research you determined that the keywords:’ KW-1’ and ‘KW-2’ can be most profitable for your product say ‘PRD-A’. So you optimized the product landing page for the keywords. You tracked the organic search ranking for these keywords to measure your SEO efforts. Then you monitored your conversions at the page/product level. If you don’t see any improvement in your conversions/sales despite of being in top 10 of organic search results for your targeted keywords then you need to do following:
1. Determine the performance of the product landing page through following metrics:
I. Per visit value
II. Total Transactions
III. Per visit Goal Value
IV. Total Goal completions
Through these metrics you can determine whether the content of the page is adding any value to your business goals and bottom line. A landing page with a high per visit value or high per visit goal value is performing well.
2. Improve your organic search rankings for the targeted keywords.
3. Re-valuate the primary keywords for which you optimized your product landing page if ranking is not an issue. Target new keyword variations or completely new keywords.
4. Develop contents to target new keyword variations or keywords which are relevant to your product.
5. Improve the conversion rate of your product landing page through A/B or multivariate testing.
6. If you are marketing your product through multiple channels (PPC, Email, Social Media, Display etc) then assess the contribution of other channels and invest accordingly.
What else you should be doing in a post Apocalyptic Not Provided World
Up to now I was talking about optimizing organic search campaigns without the help of any keyword referral data. But even in a post apocalyptic not provided world there will be tools out there which can help us in getting lot of (if not all) keyword referral data.
PPC Data
It is highly unlikely that Google or Microsoft will ever hide the keyword referral data from searches made by logged in users for advertisers. So if you run Adwords/Bing campaigns, you can always find the keywords which are profitable for your products through ‘keywords’ and ‘search terms’ reports and then target those keywords for your organic search campaigns.
SEM Rush Keyword Referral Data
You may not know but SEMRush also provides keyword referral data. SEMRush update its database once a month and returns those organic keywords for a web page which are in its database and for which your website/webpage ranks in Google top 20. According to SEMRush, they analyze the rankings of 95+ million most profitable and popular keywords. SEMRush can be used to determine (not provided) data even today. Follow the steps below to get the ‘not provided’ keywords for a particular landing page:
Step-1: Go to the ‘landing pages’ report in your Google Analytics Account.
Step-2: Select ‘keyword’ as secondary dimension
Step-3: Apply the advanced segment ‘Non –Paid Search Traffic’ if you also run PPC campaigns. This advanced segment will filter out paid search keywords.
Step-4: Download the report into MS Excel. You now have the list of all the organic keywords (including ‘not provided’)
Step-5: Plug in your web page URL on SEMRush tool, download the organic keywords and compare it with the keywords you downloaded from Google Analytics. The keywords which are missing in your Google Analytics reports are the ‘not provided’ keywords.
Note: You won’t get all the (not provided) data through this method. SEMRush analyzes the rankings of only those keywords which are in its database. Check this post to learn more about how SEMRush can be used to scale keyword research to new heights.
Google Webmaster Tools Data
For the sake of including, I have included this tool too. You can get a lot of ‘not provided’ data for a landing page by comparing Google webmaster tools’ queries report with your Google Analytics report in a similar way you got the data from SEMRush. I am not really sure how long Google will provide the keyword referral data in Google webmaster tools account. But it is providing at present, so use whatever you have got.
Keyword Referral Data through Mystery Tool
There is a high probability that someone someday will come up with a tool which can provide almost all the ‘not provided’ data. So I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Related Post: Google Analytics Not Provided Keywords Analysis – Ultimate Guide
If you like this post then you should subscribe to my blog and follow me on twitter.
Other Posts you may find useful:
- 6 things you can learn from PostRank about Social Engagement Metrics
- What you should know about historical data in Web Analytics
- What is fundamentally wrong with your Conversion Rate
- You are doing Google Analytics all wrong. Here is why
- Google Analytics Shortcuts: Tricks, Tools, keyboard & APIs
- How to use Web Analytics 2.0 to improve your conversions
- Ultimate Data Visualization Guide for SEO
- How to Automate Event Tracking in Google Analytics
- Social interactions tracking through Google Analytics
- Google Analytics Account Setup Tool
- Event Tracking – Google Analytics (Simplified Version)
About the Author: Himanshu Sharma is the founder of seotakeaways.com which provides SEO Consulting, PPC Management and Analytics Consulting services to medium and large size businesses. He holds a bachelors degree in ‘Internet Science’, is a member of 'Digital Analytics Association', a Google Analytics Certified Individual and a Certified Web Analyst. He is also the founder of EventEducation.com and EventPlanningForum.net.
My business thrives on referrals, so I really appreciate recommendations to people who would benefit from my help. Please feel free to endorse/forward my LinkedIn Profile to your clients, colleagues, friends and others you feel would benefit from SEO, PPC or Web Analytics.
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