Key Segmentation Approaches for Evaluating Technical SEO Data
When it comes to analyzing technical SEO data, it’s important to be able to segment the data effectively. This allows you to identify specific locations, patterns, trends, and fluctuations that may be causing errors or issues on your website. In this article, we will explore some of the key segmentation approaches that can help you evaluate your technical SEO data and take action to improve your website’s performance.
One commonly used approach is segmenting the data by country. This allows you to pinpoint exactly where site trends have changed and identify any issues that may be specific to certain countries. By analyzing the data for each country separately, you can uncover patterns and trends that may not be apparent when looking at the data as a whole. This can help you prioritize your efforts and focus on fixing issues that are impacting multiple countries.
Another important segment to consider is the subfolder or directory. Many enterprise-level websites use templates or widgets that can generate errors across thousands or even millions of pages. By segmenting the data based on the subfolder or directory, you can quickly locate and fix issues at scale. This can save you time and resources, allowing you to address problems more efficiently.
Segmenting by language is another valuable approach, especially for websites that have content duplicated across multiple countries. By filtering the data by language, you can identify if duplicate content within languages is causing issues. For example, if you notice a drop in traffic to multiple country sites that all have the same language, it may be a sign that one country’s pages are cannibalizing traffic from others due to duplicate content. By identifying and addressing this issue, you can improve the overall performance of your website.
Monitoring specific product lines is another useful segmentation approach, particularly for businesses that have a wide range of products. By setting up a segment for your top-priority product lines, you can quickly rule out any issues that may be impacting their traffic. This can help you ensure that your key products are receiving the attention they deserve and are not being negatively affected by any technical issues.
Segmenting your data based on keyword clusters or topics is also important for evaluating the impact of traffic changes. Many companies use rank tracking tools to monitor changes in pre-defined, targeted keywords. However, it can be more effective to pull traffic and rankings data from all the keywords within a cluster. This allows you to quickly confirm that your core keyword topics are not being impacted and identify any issues that may be affecting traffic to those topics.
In addition to these commonly used segments, there are also some less common segments that can provide valuable insights. For example, segmenting by CMS platform instance can help you identify if a specific CMS is causing any problems. This can be particularly useful for large enterprise-level companies that have multiple CMS platforms or instances generating their entire site. By analyzing the data across these platforms, you can pinpoint any issues to a particular dev team and address them more effectively.
Segmenting by Core Web Vitals is another important approach, especially with the recent emphasis on these metrics by search engines. It’s important to segment the data deep enough to understand why these metrics may be low and what you can do to improve them. This can include segments based on device (mobile or desktop), country, navigation types, form factors, and even connection speeds.
In conclusion, segmentation is a crucial aspect of evaluating technical SEO data. By analyzing the data in different ways and using various segments, you can identify patterns, trends, and issues that may not be apparent at first glance. This allows you to take targeted action to improve your website’s performance and ensure that it is optimized for search engines and user experience. By implementing these key segmentation approaches, you can gain valuable insights and make informed decisions to enhance your technical SEO efforts.
