SEO Guides, Tips & More!

Most every accounting marketing professional understands the importance of campaign metrics. They are not only essential to understanding a campaign’s performance, but also for identifying areas of success and where improvement can be made. The same is true with websites. In fact, every CPA firm we work with has a Google Analytics account and is tracking performance data. Unfortunately, not all firms or marketing professionals are running reports and leveraging data to make needed changes in their search engine optimization (SEO) and other digital marketing efforts. In my experience, this happens for one of two reasons. Either the accounting marketing professionals don’t know which reports to run, or they are unsure how to take the data and deduce actionable steps from it. Therefore, to help clients, prospects, and others, we have provided a brief summary of the most common reports our firm runs to understand how sites are performing.

Top Google Analytics Reports

• Mobile Traffic – This is an essential report for accounting marketing professionals because it provides insights into how well a website is performing with mobile (non-desktop) users. How the site performs on this platform will be closely related to whether or not the firm’s site is responsive. If a site is not responsive, the numbers won’t be very revealing. However, if it is responsive, you can use this information to understand how well the site is attracting mobile users. In either case, because mobile is quickly becoming the platform through which an increasing number of searches are made, it’s important to understand how the site is currently performing. If the verdict is not good, it may be time to make changes in your approach.
• Landing Pages Report – It’s a common mistake made by marketing professionals to think that visitors to their site only enter through the homepage. While this is true for a majority of site visitors, it’s not true for all. For example, most accounting firms have a blog or article repository where content is regularly published on issues and challenges their clients face. If a site visitor has conducted a search based on a particular issue, it’s more likely they would be directed to the actual article/blog versus the homepage. Therefore, firm’s need to carefully consider this and make strategic decisions based on how often such pages are being accessed. The landing page report will provide this information and provide insight into how well non-homepage content is performing.
• Traffic by Social Channel – This report provides insight into how a firm’s social media presence is performing in terms of trefoil generation. If a firm doesn’t have a well-defined social media strategy it’s likely the report will reveal what is already known. However, if a firm is using social media as part of a digital marketing strategy, the report is essential. Not only does it provide information on the amount of traffic coming in from primary social media sources, it also reveals what secondary networks are providing traffic. The report is very useful for firms actively engaged in social media marketing.

Getting it Right

It’s important to note that the above reports are just some that our team uses to analyze website performance for various clients. There are numerous other reports available that provide important information depending on a firm’s digital marketing approach. If you have questions about your specific situation, or would like to suggest other reports which have been useful to your firm, please leave a comment below.