Analytics and Reporting

Tracks user behavior through the use of:

• Accounts/Properties/Views
• Customization (dashboards, reports, alerts)
• Segmentation
• Event tracking
• Funnel implementation
• Date comparisons
• Audience information (IE: demographics, interests, geo, tech, etc.)
• Where are they coming from (IE: campaign tracking)
• Conversions (macro, micro)

• Google Trends lets us type in different keywords and see all kinds of information about how that keyword is being typed into Google searches over time.
• Offers suggestions around new target phrases based on our chosen keyword(s) and helps us understand exactly how people are searching for things on the web.
• Lets us type in different keywords and see all kinds of information about how that keyword is being typed into Google searches over time. At the top of the page, you can filter this data by geography and time period, category, and even the type of search.
• Allows us to see seasonal trends and leverage keywords in campaigns prior to uptick of those keywords.
• In Google Trends we can look at time periods going all the way back to 2004.

• Google AdWords is a pay-per-click online advertising platform that allows advertisers to display their ads on Google's search engine results pages. Based on the keywords that they want to target, businesses pay to get their advertisements ranked at the top of the search results page.
• In AdWords we can also see which words, related to keywords we are interested in, that have a high, medium, and low traffic volume and competitive values. Ideally, we would want a related keyword with high traffic volume and low competitive value.
• Looking at keywords purchased by SAIT or other organizations, we can collect the data (high/medium/low) that helps us understand whether or not these keywords are going to provide value for us. While paid search clicks do tend to behave a little differently than clicks on organic search results, they can be a good proxy and potentially save us work and lost opportunity.

• Google Search Console offers insights into exactly how people are finding our site today. And it's a great place to start.
• Once we have a solid seed list of keywords, we’ll need to expand on it.
• GSC can see search volumes to show demand for those phrases.
• Some keywords get typed in thousands and thousands of times everyday (“Diplomas”), there are a whole lot more that don't get typed in nearly as often (“Online two year business administration diploma”). These are known as long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords in SEO are incredibly useful. They let us go after a much larger amount of less competitive keywords and attract more conversion-driven audiences.
• “Diplomas” (for example) is extremely competitive and it's probably going to be very difficult for SAIT to rank for. For a more long-tail keyword like “Online two year business administration diploma”, it's going to be extremely relevant, less competitive, and easier to rank for, at the expense of raw search volume. By finding hundreds or thousands of these long-tail keywords that together have the potential to get us more traffic than ranking for “Diplomas” would have from the start.

Algolia Search Console captures what keywords people are using internally to find content on sait.ca within a (limited) defined period. Also can be used to capture what search terms are resulting in 404 errors on the site. Similar in utility to Google Search Console but much more limited.

Hotjar is a behavior analytics and user feedback service that helps you understand the behavior of your website users and get their feedback through tools such as heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys.

Hotjar complements the data and insights you get from traditional web analytics tools like Google Analytics.

HotJar accomplished this through:

• Heatmaps
• Session Recordings
• Incoming Polls and Surveys

Heatmaps (desktop and mobile):

• Tracks clicks, cursor movement and scroll across devices.
• Can use filters to get more specific data.
• Unlike Google can not do historical comparisons, only tracks date of heatmap creation forward.

Session recordings:

• Session recordings are renderings of real actions taken by our visitors as they browse sait.ca or any website the tracking code is on. Recordings capture mouse movement (laptop), clicks, taps (mobile), and scrolling across multiple pages on desktop and mobile devices. These recordings help us to:

1. Understand and empathize with our visitors’ experience
2. See how users interact with specific website elements
3. Discover bugs, issues, and obstacles
4. Find out why people are leaving your website
5. Help pods, clients, and stakeholders make decisions

Contact us to let us moderate a 1-2 hour video session review to take notes and identify improvements

Polls:

• Is a way to immediately gather qualitative information directly from the audience visiting that page​
• Can be structured in a way to make it actionable for the submitter (“Would you like to receive a…”), create urgency (“Sign up now to receive…”), gather more information on the audience (“Are you a parent or guardian…”), provide overall satisfaction ranking (Net Promoter Score or scale ranking)
• ​Provides information to tweak page content and make it optimized to user experience and conversion (post-it notes against a wall)

• Search engines have a hard time understanding what a user is after, unless it's really spelled out (IE: “Cooking”).
• It's important for us to understand what they type in so that we can optimize our pages to be in the search results for those terms.
• Formal keyword research is the foundational piece in SEO.
• An effective keyword research plan involves having a sound, structured approach, that will lead to the discovery of keywords that we can use in the content of our website.
• Use keyword analysis to guide new course, program, department, or school names.

How to research keywords:

• Organizations, including SAIT, generally develop their own approach and process for doing keyword research (what works for them).
• The most important part of keyword research is to forget about SAIT and put yourself in the shoes of our potential customers.
• Start with answering a basic question, what services do we offer? Make sure that we do it from the customers perspective.
• As we work in education day in and day out, we might have a very different way of explaining our products and services (“SAIT speak”).
• Understanding the intent of our customer (seed list of keywords).
• Google Trends and AnswerThePublic platforms both offer suggestions around new target phrases based on our chosen keyword and both help us understand exactly how people are searching for things on the live web.

Ahrefs is a “hybrid tool” in that it offers,

• Keyword Research
• Content Marketing
• Rank Tracking
• Site Auditing
• Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Analysis

Its real strength is in helping find those low competition keywords we struggle with.