Landing Page Performance / SEO Performance

[ElinaMirin]

Hello! I am trying to create a report in Adobe Analytics for SEO performance and I was wondering if tracking Entry Page dimension with Visits, Bounce Rate and Time Spent per Visit is it more accurate than tracking Page Name dimension with Visits, Bounce Rate and Time Spent per Visit. I am looking only at Organic Search Marketing Channel and only at specific pages (they need to contain specific words) - for these purposes I have created 2 segments. However, is it better/accurate to track Entry Page or Page Name?

[Josh__Stephens]

Hi @ElinaMirin I would definitely recommend using entry page. The metrics you mention go perfectly with entry page and will give you a clean picture of the data. 

When using page name, you should get the same results for visits and bounce rate. But time spent per visit for entry page will give you the full time spent on the visit. While time spent per visit for page will give you the time spent only on that page.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

There's a few issues to address here:

1. Marketing Channels have a default attribution of 30 days... so direct visits that come after the MC is set will also be included in your numbers

2. Entry Page is the first value captured into the Page dimension during a visit, but Organic Search is not generally limited to only the first page view in a visit. And this value is persistent through the entire visit...  So using Entry Page isn't really a good candidate.

It sounds like you are specifically interested in where people are coming in from Organic Search... So at a very basic level, I would use the Page dimension, and the Marketing Channel Instance metric. This is a specific metric that is triggered when the Marketing Channel is set (but does not exist to pages where the values persist).

Example:

Visit 1 - Direct

• Page 1
  • Marketing Channel set to "direct"
  • Marketing Channel Instance triggered
  • Page = "page 1"
  • Entry Page = "page 1"
• Page 2
  • Marketing Channel persisted value "direct"
  • Marketing Channel Instance not triggered
  • Page = "page 2"
  • Entry Page = "page 1"

Visit 2 - Organic Search

• Page 3
  • Marketing Channel set to "organic search"
  • Marketing Channel Instance triggered
  • Page = "page 3"
  • Entry Page = "page 3"
• Page 4
  • Marketing Channel persisted value "organic search"
  • Marketing Channel Instance not triggered
  • Page = "page 4"
  • Entry Page = "page 3"

Visit 3 - Direct

• Page 5
  • Marketing Channel persisted value "organic search" (still within 30 day attribution)
  • Marketing Channel Instance not triggered
  • Page = "page 5"
  • Entry Page = "page 5"
• Page 6
  • Marketing Channel persisted value "organic search"
  • Marketing Channel Instance not triggered
  • Page = "page 6"
  • Entry Page = "page 5"
• (User Gets a Marketing Email and Clicks to Site from the email)
• Page 7
  • Marketing Channel set to "marketing email"
  • Marketing Channel Instance triggered
  • Page = "page 7"
  • Entry Page = "page 5"

So you can see how Marketing Channel crosses visits, and that Entry Page isn't tied specifically to different entries within the same visit.

Now, I know that you are also looking for Visits, Bounce Rate and Time Spent per Visit

Visits, depending on whether you are looking for "specific visits from the channel" vs Visits within the 30 Day attribution can change the connotation...

Bounce Rate you need to see the entire visit to determine which visits only had a single hit versus multiple...  

Time Spent per Visit also needs to see the full visit... but if you use Page as your Breakdown, you will get the time spent per page, not the entire Visit (the name is misleading as it reflects the specific dimension breakdown).

If you really just want to see the pages by "technical entry" then the Marketing Channel Instance would isolate the count of the pages that came directly from the organic search....

You might want to create a segment something like:

This should isolate Visits that had an instance of Organic Search, but it will still show other Marketing Channels if they happen in the same visit (see Visit 3 above)

 You should be able to use this in conjunction with bounces and time spent... but make sure that the table breakdown isn't going to cause calculation errors...

[DanIMS1 · Accepted solution]

Hi @ElinaMirin,

If you are reporting on the entry page you should use both the Entry Page dimension and the Page Name dimension in different reports, as both will give you more useful information and will work differently with specific metrics, which is more insightful than just using one alone. 

If you use the Entries and Visit metric with the Entry Page dimension this will show you the same data, as the visits metric in this case is just the number of visits that started with that page.
If you combine this with the Entry Rate metric you will just see 100% for each dimension value, which doesn't tell you anything on the performance of the entry page.

The Average Time Spent on site, the average time spent on the site where that page was the entry page.
(Average time spent on site has a misleading title it's actually the average time spent interacting with the dimension value, so with the Page Name dimension it's just the average time spent on that page).

Now if you use the Entries and Visits metrics with the Page Name dimension, this will show you the same number for the entries as the entries and visits you see with the Entry Page dimension but when you use the Visits metric with the Page Name dimension you will see the number of visits to that page. You can then use these along with the Entry Rate metric and you get more useful information on the performance of the page from than just using the Entry Page dimension alone. 

Some metrics are the same in both and it doesn't matter which dimension you use for example Bounces are the same across both dimensions as is Bounce Rate.

In short, you should for some metrics it doesn't matter what you use but it does for specific ones. If you want some clarification on if a metric is suitable, the description you see when you click on the info icon of the metric will usually be enough to tell if it's correct to use it or not.