Data Visualization for Improving SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) encapsulates various data-driven tasks that require attention to detail. These range from updating content on a blog article to compressing images on the website to improve load times.

More often than not, marketers running the relevant SEO workflows use multiple tools to check off the corresponding action items. This also means spending time analyzing different tables and spreadsheets to get insights.

The data in these tables and spreadsheets come from different sources (tools in the SEO tech stack) such as Google Analytics, crawlers, log analyzers, and social media monitoring tools.

Collating data from all these sources to collaborate on campaigns and iterate strategies based on insights can get tedious. Teams may find it difficult to maintain productivity when they have to go through tables and spreadsheets in various tools.

Data visualization mitigates these challenges by pulling relevant data points from various sources and displaying them in a clear, scannable format. This breaks down complex information and empowers SEO and marketing teams to extract actionable insights quickly.

In this article, let’s look at how businesses can enhance their SEO efforts by leveraging data visualization in their analytics workflow.

What is Data Visualization in SEO?

Data visualization in SEO involves putting metrics that reflect website organic ranking and search performance in a graphical format. The metrics can include site speed, search rankings, and bounce rates. (We dived deeper into the metrics further in the article.)

The format of data visualizations varies based on the nature of the insights needed, the data available, and the preferences of the team. Some popular data visualization formats that marketing and SEO teams can consider include:

1. Line graphs: Ideal for tracking changes over time for a particular key performance indicator (KPI) such as website traffic and dwell time.
2. Bar charts: Useful for comparing different categories such as the performance of two different landing pages or the purchase readiness of two segments of the audience.
3. Pie charts: Effective for showing proportions like the distribution of traffic sources by device or countries of visitors.
4. Heatmaps: This directly shows what a visitor or a user does on a platform to discover areas of engagement and refine the user experience.
5. Scatter plots: Illustrates the relationship between two variables such as the correlation between page load time and bounce rate.

Reading SEO data in the above visual formats can speed up the analytics process and reduce the time to insights. Team members can quickly realize where the trends are going to determine their next site optimization action items.

SEO data graphics are also useful for communicating with external stakeholders, enhancing internal collaboration, and encouraging team members to participate in decision-making.

How to Visualize SEO Data Effectively

Thanks to APIs, integrations, and automation, pulling data from different sources has never been easier. However, it takes more than populating the data graphics with the SEO metrics relevant to the organizational goals.

Here are five best practices that will help SEO teams create impactful data visualizations that can provide actionable insights at a glance:

1. Choose the Right Visualization

Line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, heatmaps, and scatter plots are five powerful data visualization formats for SEO and marketing teams. Each of them has its own advantages making them suitable for certain specific use cases.

Marketing and SEO teams can keep the following table handy to make a quick and effective selection of the graphics format:

2. Adopt a Comprehensive Tool

As we briefly mentioned earlier in the introduction, SEO workflows require multiple tools for completing the relevant action items, and juggling through them can get challenging for teams.

Teams can consider building a single source of truth that consolidates campaign and website performance data. Customer data platforms (CDPs) like Segment and mParticle can come in handy. Businesses can set up pipelines from a single source of truth to visualization tools for analytics.

This strategy may be difficult for SEO and marketing teams to implement cost-effectively considering the technical nuances. Businesses have to list the different tools that collect SEO data and connect them with CDPs and then to visualization dashboards.

A simpler alternative would be adopting a high-performance SEO tool that integrates well with other, popular SEO tools that a typical business might need to maintain organic search competitiveness.

JetOctopus, for instance, is a high-speed SEO crawler and log analyzer that integrates well with Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics. The tool also supports third-party extensions via APIs.

Similarly, widely used all-in-one SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush allow teams to customize their workflows further with APIs and visualize data as quickly as it is logged in.

With comprehensive tools, teams can streamline their workflows significantly. They can use the tool itself to get all the relevant data in a familiar interface. This will enhance collaboration as analytics and action items can be completed simultaneously.

3. Adhere to Design Principles

Design principles are fundamental guidelines that help SEO teams create effective visualizations of their data. The key principles include:

• Keep it Simple: Avoid clutter. Focus on the essential data to convey your message clearly. Too much information can overwhelm and obscure insights.
• Use Colors Aesthetically: Colors should enhance the visual appeal and highlight key data points. Consistent color schemes help in maintaining readability and focus.
• Ensure Clarity and Readability: Choose fonts and sizes that are easy to read. Ensure that labels, legends, and data points are clear and not overcrowded.
• Maintain Contextual Relevance: Ensure your visualizations provide the necessary context. Annotations and clear titles help viewers understand the data’s significance and relation to SEO goals.

Being mindful of the above design principles will help create functional, user-friendly, and aesthetic graphics for SEO analytics.

4. Tell a Story

Visualizing data in a storytelling format highlights key insights, making it easier to communicate complex information. Marketing and SEO reports containing graphical representations of data and their analyses can be a powerful storytelling method.

This approach ensures that the team can grasp the narrative behind the numbers, facilitating more informed decisions and strategies.

To tell a compelling story with SEO data, follow these tips:

1. Define Your Narrative: Focus on the main message or insight. Whether it’s about traffic growth, user engagement, or competitive positioning, have a clear narrative.
2. Highlight Key Data Points: Use annotations, markers, and callouts to emphasize critical data points that support the story.
3. Sequence Your Visuals: Arrange visualizations in a logical sequence that builds the narrative step-by-step, leading to a clear conclusion.

Additionally, these visual reports can be complemented with conclusions and suggestions for the next steps. This provides a proactive ending to SEO reports and audits where teams immediately move from analytics to action.

5. Report Regularly

Effective SEO demands continuous monitoring of site and campaign performance metrics and iterations based on them. This is primarily because the digital marketplace, customer needs, trends, and guidelines of search engines constantly evolve.

Teams can include data visualization steps and processes within their SEO workflows to get a steady flow of insights through graphics without disrupting their operations. When representing SEO data visually becomes a part of the analytics process itself, the relevant action items become greatly streamlined.

To improve productivity and efficiency further, run audits at predefined intervals and generate graphics and reports in user-friendly templates. Discuss with the SEO team to determine what data visualizations are essential to speed up the process, or even set up automations.

Continuous monitoring of SEO metrics through data visualizations helps compare the performance of different campaigns. This can be crucial for teams to set more meaningful goals and make data-driven decisions to improve their site’s rankings.

Key SEO Metrics for Data Visualization

The metrics a team needs to look at depend on the objective of their SEO efforts, such as improving site speed, updating content, or enhancing user experience. 

We have segmented the KPIs into four categories based on the nature of the optimizations they help guide:

Technical SEO

These metrics tell your site’s health in terms of load speed, indexability, and responsiveness in its design. Data visualizations for technical SEO can include data points related to:

1. Crawl errors: These errors prevent search engine bots to go through website content effectively and index them appropriately. Broken links (404 errors), server errors (5xx errors), robots.txt issues, and redirect errors are some of the key data points.
2. Page speed: Improved load times often lead to higher engagement and lower bounce rates as they provide a better user experience. Metrics can include time to first byte (TTFB) and full page load time.
3. Mobile-friendliness: Businesses should aim to deliver a consistent and familiar experience across all devices. It checks various aspects such as responsiveness to user interactions and load speed on mobile browsers.

Modern SEO crawlers can generate detailed reports to isolate technical issues quickly and effectively. For instance, the dashboard may show the number of broken links and server errors, with options to click through to find the URLs where the issues exist.

Such interactive visualizations can be great for proactively resolving seo issues.

On-Page SEO

The visualizations of on-page SEO metrics help with improving individual pages’ content to boost their rankings on the search engine results page (SERP) for their corresponding keywords. Relevant metrics include:

1. Keyword rankings: This shows where a page ranks for a particular keyword. Monitoring rankings can reveal areas of content improvement and meta-detail optimization opportunities.
2. Content quality: Performance indicators such as readability scores, keyword density, and scroll depth can reflect how useful the content is on a particular page.
3. Meta details: The absence of meta details can make it difficult for search engines to index web pages accurately. Visualizations can make it easy to spot pages that have unoptimized or none of the meta details.

It is crucial to recognize that a lot of the evaluation criteria are qualitative and subjective to the goals of a business and the needs of the audience. For instance, appropriate readability scores depend on the comprehension level of the audience and the nuances of the industry.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO metrics reflect the authority and credibility of a website. It can be essential for influencing an audience. The KPIs that SEO and marketing teams can be categorized into:

1. Backlink profile: When a website is mentioned in trustworthy domains, its search engine rankings improve. Parallely, when it’s mentioned on sketchy and fraudulent websites, the SERP rankings deteriorate. 
2. Social signals: The likes, comments, and shares an article or a blog gets on social media tell search engines about the value it brings to the audience. 

Teams can create dedicated dashboards that continuously monitor the backlink profile and track how their audience is engaging with their latest content.

User Experience

Like the content quality metrics, user experience metrics can also be contextual but they are usually more tangible. A few numbers SEO and marketing teams can visualize for insights include:

1. Bounce rate: It is the percentage of visitors that leave a site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate may indicate that your content and site’s usability need to be improved to cater to your audience.
2. Average session duration: This is how long a visitor spends on a website. Higher session durations can indicate that the website is adding value to the visitors and delivering them a delightful experience.
3. Click-through rate (CTR): CTR is the percentage of users that click on a site’s link on the SERPs. Teams need to optimize the meta tags and search snippets to boost these numbers.

All the four categories of key SEO metrics we discussed above are, to some degree, interrelated. For instance, a website with a longer session duration could also reflect quality content and faster load speed.

Similarly, a website with a large number of broken links and internal redirects can also mean poor user experience which could reflect an increased bounce rate.

To keep the SEO analytics and reporting processes streamlined, teams need to focus on a handful of core metrics at a time. This also means fewer data visualizations which allows for a deeper dive into specific issues.

Wrapping Up

Data visualization simplifies SEO processes by reducing time to insights, enhancing collaboration, and bringing clarity among stakeholders. This plays a crucial role in identifying the areas of improvement and determining action items.

Teams can start by choosing the right data visualization method based on the nature of the insights they are looking for. Adopting a comprehensive tool that integrates well with other SEO software can streamline the analytics workflow and reduce costs.

While creating data visualizations, it is essential to adhere to basic design principles to ensure clarity, consistency, and conciseness in the seo graphics. Additionally, it can also help to create detailed reports where the graphics are analyzed to tell a story around the data collected.

As the digital market continuously evolves, teams need to generate relevant data visualizations with important data points at regular intervals. This proactive approach will allow businesses to fix issues before they affect user experience and search rankings.

There are plenty of metrics that SEO and marketing teams can track to discover misconfigurations and growth opportunities related to technical issues, on-page content, backlinks, and user experience.

It can be beneficial for teams to monitor a few at a time based on the goal at hand to stay focused on the objectives and complete the relevant action items cost-effectively.