SEO strategies, how and why to set goals for the site

Google’s communication with webmasters and SEO professionals travels a lot through their YouTube channel, that we often quote in our articles; right after Martin Splitt ‘s videos, John Mueller’s hangouts or Google Search News ‘s show, here it comes a whole new series dedicated to SEO fundamentals and beginners, simply called “Search for Beginners“.

To set a target for our website

In the last updated episode, the Googlers give us precious info on “strategies” value, answering the question “why should I set some goals for my site” and, most of all, providing clear indications on the importance of working with this perspective, how to actually reach these targets and which tools to use in order to measure our work’s impacts.

An eCommerce example: how to strategically work

“If you decide to create a presence for your business on the Web like a shop on a platform such as Amazon or Etsy, or your standalone site”, says the video’s guiding voice, “you’ll be investing money and time to get this done” and a return income on these investments. The video then proceeds with a practical example to better reach the core of the topic question.

You might own a clothing shop wanting to sell your products to clients living outside your base city, other than your fellow citizens: this is a kind of target you can actually assess with your website. To do that, you have to understand what kind of path people are following to become your clients, and this similarly works both for a physical shop and for an eCommerce.

Find out the site’s impressions and results

First of all, your shop must be noticed by people; then, these people must decide to come inside and take a look at your products; queste persone devono decidere di entrare e dare un’occhiata ai prodotti proposti; and eventually, the client actually choose something and pays for it. On an online shop it is possible to measure these steps with a certain precision: for instance, if an user searches for “t-shirt” and a page of your site appears on the search engine, that is called impression. In other words, the online equivalent of the real-life discovery of a specific shop’s existence.

If that person will decide to visit your website he will click on the ranked link among all other results: by counting these clicks from inbounding search results it is possible to actually measure visits. When someone is on your website he will be able to look at your products: it is possible to track down their path on your site and subsequently find out how much time they spent to buy something or if they eventually left the site right after clicking on a few pages.

All the tools to acquire info on the site’s performances

To monitor and analyze all those queries that are bringing traffic, impressions, clicks and the actual path that leads to the user’s checkout there are different tools: in the majority of cases, the platforms that host eCommerces supply them with integrated dashboards for these kinds of info, while Google provides two free tools, a.k.a Google