Are you ignoring your data gold mine?

Hi,

I've been doing some reading and thinking. There's been a few people who've contributed to it - this isn't all my own thinking, but mostly people who have put me on the right track... so if some of these seem familiar, we probably hang out on the same sites. These people put me on the path to coming up with this post, and I want to see if anyone else is doing this.

Basically the idea is your website is a virtual gold mine of data waiting to be exploited - but most people don't touch or even collect the data, much less act on it. Here's an example of what I mean...

1) Referrer data (for social networks) - why the heck are people displaying 15 social sharing icons, when you can make an API call in the background to see if people are logged into a network. If people are logged into facebook, why am I displaying the twitter button? Google+? Even if you don't know who's logged in or not, doesn't the fact that a person is being referred to you from a social website suggest you should automatically display the follow button from THAT particular website? If they're logged into to facebook, you could have a lightbox after 20 seconds that pops up and asks for a like. If they're not logged into facebook, they are uninterrupted.

2) Referrer data (search engines) - I think keyword, page and number of visitors per keyword is pretty relevant. I mean think about it - if you're getting 100 visits a day from one keyword, and you are on page 2 for that keyword - shouldn't you be working on that? Do you have that data coming up for you conveniently? Do you even check this? I know I sure haven't. Second (as per Bluehatseo) - you may write an article for "red widgets", but if your traffic is coming from "red widgets atlanta" and you're ranked #6 - shouldn't you be adjusting your targeting? Automatically even? While cross referencing rankings and letting you know where you need to build links to? Couldn't this all be automated and show up in a dashboard for you somewhere? Admin panel?

3) Referrer data (non social/SE) - this is traffic coming from links to your site. This is valuable - it could give you further guest posting opportunities. You could automatically make a list of referrer pages and submit them for indexing. Is this data just going to waste on your site? It sure is on mine!

4) Email subscriptions - when a person subscribes, do you collect their name and email? That's it? Shouldn't you be writing in (via javascript perhaps) fields like referrer, articles read, IP location etc - when they signup for your autoresponder? And have your autoresponder dynamically adapt - articles that you KNOW they will like, follow me on (Social network they use), specials in LOCATION - I'm missing out on a whole bunch of data here and marketing opportunities if I'm not doing this, amirite?

That's all I got off the top of my head for now... feel free to add what kind of data we could be getting from our websites to maximize performance.

I'm taking a look at this and I'm seeing a ton of data a business could use going to waste on my site. Has anyone actually used all this data and automated it to some extent? Anyone tried? Is it worthwhile to pursue this if you're looking to build something real or just a waste of time? Who want's to work with me to develop this idea fully and solve these problems? Post some ideas - let's see what we can come up with!

Cheers

XH

Great ideas! I personally wouldn't bother to mine and use all of that data on my small niche sites, but for authority sites, that would be a good way to spend your time improving your sites.

1. This is likely to increase social engagement because you are actually asking them to share your post in a popup rather than just placing the social buttons below the post where everyone places theirs. Also, it will make sharing easier for your visitors because it's easier to share a post on a social network you are already logged into.

I know because I'm always willing to share a post on, for example, G+, if I'm already logged in. However, the reverse is the case if I'm logged out.

2. This is an idea I've been implementing for a long time - determine what keywords you are ranking well for and focus on improving your rankings for them.

3. I rarely submit guest posts, so I don't use referral data for finding guest posting opportunities.

Yes you're totally right. Obviously this would only be useful for real businesses... not little 5 page micro sites.

1) I am going to try this out. If I have to write my own thing or if I can get it I don't know.. but I will get this to work. Why on earth wouldn't you use this if it increases engagement?

2) Do you mind me asking how you do this? Do you have a panel in WP for each and every post that has referrer data and you work on that? Semi automated? Totally unautomated? Trying to get a feel for the level people are using this at.

3) Fair enough. Even if you don't do guest posts, you should still be able to use this data. Any incoming URL get's automatically submitted for indexing - that's one potential use, amirite?

So do you have any of this automated in your setup? I'm thinking of building a panel that has this built in... kind of a traffic and SEO master control panel for CMS actually. Wondering if anyone already has it out there.

Cheers

XH

SEO Power said:

Great ideas! I personally wouldn't bother to mine and use all of that data on my small niche sites, but for authority sites, that would be a good way to spend your time improving your sites.

1. This is likely to increase social engagement because you are actually asking them to share your post in a popup rather than just placing the social buttons below the post where everyone places theirs. Also, it will make sharing easier for your visitors because it's easier to share a post on a social network you are already logged into.

I know because I'm always willing to share a post on, for example, G+, if I'm already logged in. However, the reverse is the case if I'm logged out.

2. This is an idea I've been implementing for a long time - determine what keywords you are ranking well for and focus on improving your rankings for them.

3. I rarely submit guest posts, so I don't use referral data for finding guest posting opportunities.

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Implementation will be difficult depending on what platform people are using, and their level of expertise but thanks to OP for thinking outside the box and sharing it here. Interesting thread.

I totally hear what you're saying. We need some more thinking outside the box and automation if we're going to outlast Google, and outbuild our competitors. Expertise level is definitely an issue here as well as platform. While I appreciate wordpress for ease of use and extendability, I honestly find it a horrible platform to develop for. I'm thinking I'm going to use a more customizable CMS for a project like this. If you're going to build a Cadillac there's no point in starting with a dodge chasis.

Anyone else got any out of the box data usage ideas? Help me out here folks.

ThopHayt said:

Implementation will be difficult depending on what platform people are using, and their level of expertise but thanks to OP for thinking outside the box and sharing it here. Interesting thread.

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Writing IP location as a field in your autoresponder is a very cool and practical idea

I'm not totally sure how to do this. I'm guessing we could use Google Maps API and a jquery call and then fill in the field if we get a response in time. Also we would just want city, state and country I think. Anything else is redundant. Doing some thinking... companies like Facebook and Google have a couple things in common (among others).

#1 - They have huge market valuations. The companies are worth a ton. Like more than most of the third world put together.
#2 - They have huge amounts of data. That's where I keep coming back to - your business is only worth the data you have/control.

So it seems that if I ever plan on selling my business, I should start collecting as much data as I can now relevant to it, in every way, as automated as I can. Anyone else seeing this?

dragon5 said:

Writing IP location as a field in your autoresponder is a very cool and practical idea

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Thank you XH

This is one of the reason, I never ever rely third party analytics and logging systems. we have our one system to take care of this. Since 2011 what I have collected is huge and once in a while we analyse the data and do the improvement to the system and target the users accordingly.
What you have suggested is absolutely a great way to implement. Two developers are dedicated for our system maintenance and improvements. We still struggle to make the system reacts dynamically based on the referrer data. But what we have done so far is to adjust the system to perform better for keywords which are close to achievable.

Your social media suggestion is great. especially the below one. We will be working on it soon and get back to you how good it is.

xha44a said:

Even if you don't know who's logged in or not, doesn't the fact that a person is being referred to you from a social website suggest you should automatically display the follow button from THAT particular website?
Cheers

XH

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Do you care to share what system you are talking about?

sarav said:

Thank you XH

This is one of the reason, I never ever rely third party analytics and logging systems. we have our one system to take care of this. Since 2011 what I have collected is huge and once in a while we analyse the data and do the improvement to the system and target the users accordingly.
What you have suggested is absolutely a great way to implement. Two developers are dedicated for our system maintenance and improvements. We still struggle to make the system reacts dynamically based on the referrer data. But what we have done so far is to adjust the system to perform better for keywords which are close to achievable.

Your social media suggestion is great. especially the below one. We will be working on it soon and get back to you how good it is.

Click to expand...

xha44a said:

Do you care to share what system you are talking about?

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Yes sure, We developed our own logging based on our needs. Our In house developers build it using Microsoft ASP.Net. I passed your social media suggestion already to the developers they are brainstorming how to go about it.

@dragon5 100% Agree! Would be kinda cool!

What other data can we collect and use from our websites? This obviously isn't for some crappy 2 page CPA website, but anyone who's seriously building an asset that they can sell should be collecting data.

Number two is probably my favorite. It's so simple, yet something a lot of people will look past. This is why I think analytics data is so important. I was lucky and learned this pretty quickly. For my first website (well, not my first.. but the first I built intentionally to monetize, everything else what anime fan sites for fun etc..) I put analytics on it, and started noticing certain posts/topics were getting a lot more traffic. Namely, a celebrity name keyword. What I then did was post about this certain person/topic more, and it ended up bringing in a lot of traffic.

So yes.. do more of what's working for you.. and work on your strengths, rather than trying to make something you WANT to work, work. The best advice in IM... take something that is working for you and scale, scale, scale.

#2 is powerful. I think I can put it on autopilot... have the CMS automatically write into the title and h1 tags whichever keyword has sent you the most traffic in the last month. To hopefully move up for that keyword. As you get more traffic from more powerful keywords you should automatically have those written into the titles and they will get your more traffic accordingly. Automate this and you'll get more traffic that way then your website ever could on its own, and then you could ever hope to automate.

Sythix said:

Number two is probably my favorite. It's so simple, yet something a lot of people will look past. This is why I think analytics data is so important. I was lucky and learned this pretty quickly. For my first website (well, not my first.. but the first I built intentionally to monetize, everything else what anime fan sites for fun etc..) I put analytics on it, and started noticing certain posts/topics were getting a lot more traffic. Namely, a celebrity name keyword. What I then did was post about this certain person/topic more, and it ended up bringing in a lot of traffic.

So yes.. do more of what's working for you.. and work on your strengths, rather than trying to make something you WANT to work, work. The best advice in IM... take something that is working for you and scale, scale, scale.

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Great post. Did you ever figure out how to do this? Using mailchimp & wordpress and can't seem to figure it out. This would be some great data to start collecting. ill update if i figure anything out

xha44a said:

4) Email subscriptions - when a person subscribes, do you collect their name and email? That's it? Shouldn't you be writing in (via javascript perhaps) fields like referrer, articles read, IP location etc - when they signup for your autoresponder? And have your autoresponder dynamically adapt - articles that you KNOW they will like, follow me on (Social network they use), specials in LOCATION - I'm missing out on a whole bunch of data here and marketing opportunities if I'm not doing this, amirite?

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Hi,

No I didn't spend my time working on it at all. Reason being, I'm not going to be using Mailchimp. There's some pretty impressive what are called event-driven customer contact services out there which I'm thinking of using. If you want to see some seriously powerful stuff that is building on this checkout...

customer.io
intercom.io

I honestly thing that's the way of the future and am looking in that direction.

Cheers

XH

Ventio said:

Great post. Did you ever figure out how to do this? Using mailchimp & wordpress and can't seem to figure it out. This would be some great data to start collecting. ill update if i figure anything out

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