This is a basically DIY eStore put together by the owners. We helped them optimize their content and meta tags, spruced up the look a bit, and added a blog to their site. We also did some linkbuilding, spread out over a couple of weeks for maximum effectiveness.
We tracked this site with Google Analytics since for a month: two weeks before the change and two weeks after. When we divide the time in half and compare the first half to the second half, we don’t immediately see much change in traffic.
The traffic to this site fluctuates quite a bit, with spikes double the average on some days and very few visits on other days. So far, we’re not seeing a pattern.
Looking at the traffic from different sources tells a different story. Direct traffic has fallen — possibly because the owner and her advisors were visiting a lot while we worked on it. Search traffic is up 119% during the second half of the time we’re measuring, compared with the first half. That’s too big a change to be random chance.
Add to that the fact that the site is now getting search traffic with 64 different keywords, instead of just the name of the business as it was before optimization, and we see that the SEO is having an effect.
Referral traffic showed a 9% increase. On-page optimization makes a difference faster than linkbuilding. They should see improvements because of the linkbuilding in the future, though.
So don’t look only at your overall traffic, especially if you’re trying to see the early results of changes. Sort out the different types of traffic and you may get a bit of an advance notice of the trends.
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