MARIYA MOEVA: Hello, and welcome back to the Search Central
Lightning Talk series.
This time, we'll talk about WordPress sites
and how to make sure your website is working for you.
My name is Mariya.
And I'm a product manager in the Search Ecosystem
Team at Google.
I'll show you four steps you need
to take to make sure your site is all
set up to help your business.
And then we'll look at some real examples
of how to apply these steps.
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The first thing you need to do to have a successful site
is to translate your real life business
goals into online metrics.
You know why your business exists.
Maybe you have a shop where you want to sell Swiss cheese,
or maybe you're writing a blog where you talk about traveling
to parts of the world.
But how can you know if you're doing well in the online world?
So for example, if you have a blog,
one thing it might be worth to keep track of
is what portion of your readers are visiting only once?
And what portion come back?
As well as, how much time on average each of these groups
is spending on the site and how many pages they're looking at.
And if you have a shop, you might
want to keep track of cart completions
on the online version instead of sales in the real world.
So once you determine what type of site-related metrics
you should track exactly, you need
to define what tools provide them in a reliable way.
You need to check things like how comprehensive the data is,
what the sources are, and does it
answer all of your questions?
Because it might turn out that you
need to mix information from a few different tools
to get the full picture of how your site is doing.
And of course, usability and price factor in here as well.
Can you make this work with your site?
If it requires a significant learning curve
to just start using it, then maybe something else
would be a better option.
Or maybe it provides really interesting data,
but it's charging you every month,
whereas you could find the same data somewhere else for free.
Once you pick the right tools for your purposes
and set everything up, the data will start aggregating.
The most important thing here is to set a baseline
so you can compare and track improvements later on.
How is your site doing right now?
How many cart completions are you getting per day?
Or if you have a blog, what's the breakdown of new
versus returning readers?
You probably need to track this for a few months
to get a solid set of data and really draw any conclusions.
Be patient.
If you don't know your site's baseline,
you won't know if you're improving or not.
And of course, when you set a goal,
the other thing is to be realistic.
We very often hear things like, oh, I
want to show up for word such and such at position number
one in search results from site owners.
But depending on how competitive your industry
is, this might not be something worth chasing after.
Even if you're showing up for a specific word
in a specific place, people actually
don't visit your site from the search results.
Finally, it's important to remember that this
is an ongoing process.
It's not a one time setup.
Think about what actions you can take
to improve specific metrics that are
important to the success of your site and then
commit to following up when you see the metric change
in either direction.
Also, set a schedule to check in on your site regularly.
Soon you'll notice seasonality or weekly patterns.
And you'll get a feel for what to expect.
Now that we've seen the four principles in action,
let's look at how this would work in practice.
Taking the example of Rosemary Rocket,
who is a blogger writing about her travels
on a WordPress site.
Rosemary makes money in two ways.
The first is from recommending places to stay and things
to do in all the countries and cities she has already visited.
She places links, which give her a small commission when
people book via her site.
So one good online metric that she
needs to track to understand how well her website is working
for her is the click through rate, or CTR, on these links
in her blog posts about different destinations.
Rosemary also offers a service to help build out
an entire trip for people to a specific destination.
Online, people can sign up on her site
to get a custom itinerary for her.
So a good metric would be to track
completions of the sign up form here as well.
And now that she has defined two concrete, detailed metrics
to keep track of, it's time to track down which tools
might have that information.
In the case of click through rate, or CTR, for her booking
links, some good options might be
to set up goals in Google Analytics to track the clicks
and then compare these to page views
for each post containing a link.
Additionally, it would be a good idea
to understand which posts are most popular in search, which
is available in Search Console, and how people
find these posts, which is also in Search Console, where you
can see all the queries that your site is showing up
for in the search results.
For the other metric, how many people completed the form,
it's possible to set up a tracking goal in Analytics
as well.
And it would also help to track bounce rates from Analytics
and understand how people find the page from search
results via the search query information in Search Console.
We know all of this can be a lot.
You have to translate your goals into concrete online metrics.
You need to find the right tools.
You need to track down specific stats in each tool.
And you need to log into 17 different things every day
to check in on everything.
It's tough.
That's why we made Site Kit.
Site Kit is Google's official WordPress plugin.
And it brings the most relevant stats and functionality
from key Google products directly
in your WordPress dashboard.
So when you log into your site, you
can have a look at how you're doing
right there in your dashboard without needing
to visit multiple other places or download
stats somewhere to compare them in a spreadsheet or something.
A simple, easy to understand dashboard will save you time.
And it will help you get insights
instead of just numbers because everything is together
in one place.
We made Site Kit extremely easy to set up.
It places all the necessary verification and product
snippets in the right places of your site on your behalf,
so you can complete the setup with just a few clicks
without having to figure out how to modify the source
code of your site or do anything else complicated technically.
You can literally set it up in a couple of minutes.
And in the process, we'll also help you define your goals
and translate them into online metrics
by asking you a few simple questions.
For example, what's the goal of your site?
Is it to write a blog?
Is it to publish news, or something else?
And what you need most help with.
For example, do you want to grow your audience?
Do you want to expand to a new market?
Or do you want to make your site faster?
Once you figure out what your goals are,
Site Kit will give you tips, what metrics
to put on your dashboard to customize it,
so you can track the most relevant things
for you and your site.
It will also give you updates on how you're doing related
to your goals over time.
If you've done the setup, but your site
is new to Search Console, it might
take a day or two before you begin
seeing stats in your dashboard.
So take a break and come back in a bit
to check out the first stats.
Or set up some of the other Google products,
like Analytics or AdSense.
If you're already using them for your site,
you'll see data right away.
With some data available over time,
now it's time to set a baseline.
How many people visited the site per day, 20?
2,000?
More?
Is it different on the weekend?
And what about where they visit from?
All of this is available in Site Kit's all traffic section,
where you can filter by location, device, and traffic
source, and also see trends over time.
Set the expectations right.
Especially if your site is new, it
might take a while to find your audience.
It's the same like opening a new store in town.
It's not enough to just open.
You have to think about attracting shoppers as well.
Here are some useful questions you
can ask yourself to get orientated in how
people experience your site.
Which are my most popular posts?
What do they show up for in search?
How do people find the site in general, in search
or via other channels?
Does that match my expectations?
How would I like people to find me?
And what can I do to change that?
Site Kit provides you a neat funnel
using a combination of stats from both Search Console
and Google Analytics, where you can
trace how many times your site appeared in search, out
of those people, how many actually visited your site,
out of them, how many were on the page,
and if they actually completed the goal
that you wanted them to, in case you set up
goals in Google Analytics.
There's also information about your most popular pages,
and also the top search queries, how
people find you in search, available
on the main dashboard.
You can get a detailed view for a specific page
by using the search field on the dashboard
or simply by accessing the stats directly from the Admin bar
at the top when you're looking at the live page
and you're logged into your site.
There's many useful things to check here.
For example, you can see how people found this specific page
in search because all the search queries are listed.
Or you could check the bounce rate,
which is available from Google Analytics.
And if you run out of ideas what to write about,
Site Kit has a really neat feature,
which will show you unanswered questions directly
from search that are related to your site's content.
So you can use these topic suggestions as inspiration
to create new posts for your site
and give even more useful information, potentially
get some new visitors.
Of course, all of this information
is only useful if you take action on it.
So how to do that?
Here is are a few examples.
If Rosemary's top queries are about restaurants in Singapore,
but the pages with highest click through rate on her site
are about hotels in Bangkok, it might be a good idea
to consider readjusting what she writes about,
adding more of the content that attracts
more people to her site.
Similarly, if one of the main services she offers
is planning trip itineraries to Japan,
but she's seeing that the top viewed pages on her site
are about trips to Indonesia, maybe that's
a new business opportunity to expand her service offering.
You need to continuously track what's going on
and adjust your strategy depending on what
the metrics are telling you.
This is an ongoing process.
Take into account factors like seasonality
and how competitive your industry is to put your site's
performance into perspective.
Site Kit will help you by showing you
regular summaries of how you're doing,
as well as by celebrating milestones
you've reached, like your first 1,000
visitors or the first $100 that you earn in AdSense.
So let's recap.
Here is how to make sure your site is working for you.
Step one, translate your offline goals into online metrics.
Step two, find the right tools for each metric.
Step three, establish baseline and analyze continuously.
Step four, take action on the metrics, profit,
and go back to one.
And if you have a WordPress site, give Site Kit a try.
We made it to support you grow and help
you evolve your online presence with an easy to understand
dashboard and helpful tips to guide you along the way.
You can find out more at sitekit.withgoogle.com.
Thanks for watching and goodbye.
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