A Guide to Adobe Analytics for SEO

Introduction

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Trying to decide what analytics tool is best for your website? If so, you probably know the largest players are Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics, and for many (like us), the latter is typically an SEO’s first foray into the world of analytics. While the Internet is overflowing with tutorials and guides to self-learn Google Analytics, there is noticeably less documentation for Adobe Analytics.

In this guide, we’ll cover the basics of Adobe Analytics for SEO, guide you through creating a simple dashboard, and help you ensure your implementation is set up correctly for your business needs. Then, we’ll show you how to add a few new and exciting elements to your SEO dashboard.

About the Authors: Caitlin Boroden & Kristi Barrow

Caitlin Boroden is the Sr. Director of Digital Strategy at Adept, an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For almost a decade, she's helped small businesses and Fortune 100 brands track, analyze, and activate data to improve performance. Her other interests include photography and puppies, and she has a slight addiction to Reddit.

Kristi Barrow has been passionately involved with digital marketing and web analytics from back in the day when Omniture was still known as Site Catalyst, and "Adobe" meant Photoshop. She has been a regular member of Adobe Customer Advisory Boards, presented at multiple Adobe Summits, and has been a finalist in Adobe's Web Analytics Idol. Kristi now runs Kritikality, a digital analytics consultancy specializing in scalable analytics implementations to meet business needs. When she isn't fixating on Adobe Analytics eVars and props, she is either cooking up a storm on the BBQ, struggling with a CrossFit WOD, or hacking IKEA furniture.

What is Adobe Analytics, and why is it important for SEO?

Before we begin, let’s quickly go over what Adobe Analytics is.

Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture) is an enterprise-level analytics and reporting solution. It functions just like Google Analytics in that it allows you to monitor website traffic across channels, track conversions, and understand customer behavior.

However, Adobe Analytics has many advanced features that allow you to get down and dirty with the data. It can be fully customized to your company's unique and complex data needs when using the software to its full potential, allowing you to even pull data in from outside sources.

As for SEO, as you'll see in the SEO dashboard we'll be creating together, with even a basic setup, Adobe Analytics can provide you with a wealth of information about your website and its visitors. From the basics, such as top organic pages to advanced conversion tracking, you'll have all the information you need to make informed decisions.

Important differences between Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics

Before we begin, it’s important to note that there are some significant differences between Google and Adobe Analytics that you should be aware of. Specifically, there are some big differences in terminology, tracking, and attribution.

1. Terminology differences

One of the most confusing distinctions for the Adobe Analytics beginner is the fact that Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics often use different terms for the same or similar thing. For example, Google Analytics uses “Organic Search” while Adobe Analytics uses “Natural Search.” Organic Search and Natural Search are the same thing.

To help with that, throughout this guide, we’ve included the matching terminology in Google Analytics to help those with a background in GA understand how these same concepts translate to Adobe. Nevertheless, we’ve also provided a few additional helpful examples below:

Examples

2. Google Analytics sessions vs. Adobe Analytics visits

In Google Analytics, a session can be expired in three ways:

Time: Usually 30 minutes of inactivity.
End of Day: A session expires at midnight (and a new session is started).
Campaign: Anytime a link (for your website) with a UTM parameter or from a referring site is clicked, the session ends and a new session is started.

However, in Adobe Analytics, a visit is usually expired by 30 minutes of inactivity (there are a few other less frequent ways to expire a visit that are detailed below in the Metrics section). This difference in tracking can result in very different traffic counts between systems, and make it almost impossible to compare the two.

3. Traffic attribution differences

In Google Analytics, “Direct” as a campaign source never overrides an existing, known campaign source like a search engine.

However, in Adobe Analytics, you can choose whether you want “Direct” to override any existing marketing channel. You can also decide whether you want SEO traffic to override any existing marketing channels.

You should check your Marketing Channel setup to ensure you understand how your conversions are attributed. (We will cover this off in more detail in Chapter 2).

Must-know Adobe Analytics terminology

It’s important to understand some basic terminology. Here is an overview of the top Adobe Analytics terms for a beginner to know.

1. Dimensions

Dimensions are variables that range from items like entry pages and marketing channels, as described below, to cities, campaigns, and even customizable variables known as eVars. Dimensions are not quantitative (numbers based), they are qualitative.

Entry Pages

“Entry Page” in Adobe Analytics equates to “Landing Page” in Google Analytics. That being said, the entry page dimension displays which pages on your site are the first pages seen by a new visit, by percentage and by total visits.

Marketing Channel

While Google Analytics gives you the ability to alter the Default Channel Groupings, from our experience, it’s seldom used to its full potential. However, with Adobe Analytics, thinking through and customizing your Marketing Channels is highly promoted and also encouraged. Adobe has what they call “standard marketing channels” that they recommend for those uninterested in manually defining channel rules.

The following are the standard marketing channels as part of the set-up wizard. While many of these channels will be familiar to those who actively use Google Analytics, there are a few change-ups that can catch the Adobe Analytics beginner off guard:

Paid Search: Paid Search is exactly what you would expect. The referrer is a search engine and contains a query string parameter in the destination URL.

Natural Search: Natural Search identifies visitors originating from a search engine. (Reminder: “Natural Search” in Adobe Analytics is the same as “Organic Search” in Google Analytics.)

Display: Identifies visitors originating from banner advertisements. It is identified by a query string parameter in the destination URL.

Email: Identifies visitors originating from email campaigns and is identified by a query string parameter in the destination URL.

Affiliates: Identifies visitors that originate from a specific set of referring domains.

Social Networks: Identifies visitors that originate from popular social networks. Ideally, your implementation will have this split into paid and organic social.

Direct: Identifies visitors that have no referring domain or campaign parameter.

Referring Domains: Identifies visitors that originate with a referring domain.

Tip: Since Adobe Anaytics’ Marketing Channels are almost always customized, when working within a new Adobe Analytics account, ask your company or client for their unique marketing channel definitions.

In summary, these standard settings are rarely sufficient for most companies. In the next chapter, we will go into more detail for Marketing Channels and how you can verify they are set up correctly

2. Metrics

Metrics allow you to associate numbers with your dimensions. Metrics are quantitative and allow you to determine information like your website’s most popular entry page, which cities your top visitors are from, and even special calculated metrics.

Visits

“Visits” in Adobe Analytics are very similar to “Sessions” in Google Analytics. Visits show the number of sessions across all visitors on your website. A visit starts when the user first arrives on your website and ends when the visitor meets any of the following criteria:

30 minutes of inactivity
12 hours of activity
2,500 hits
100 hits in 100 seconds.

Unique Visitors

“Unique Visitors” in Adobe Analytics is similar to “Users” in Google Analytics. Unique Visitors counts the number of unique visitor IDs for the dimension item. To put it more simply, when a visitor visits your website for the first time, they are assigned a visitor ID, which is assigned to a profile on Adobe’s servers. If a user has an existing visitor ID when they come to your website, they are not counted again as a unique visitor. (Google uses a similar approach via a Google Analytics client ID).

For example, if a user comes to your website six days out of the week, they will have six visits, but be counted as only one unique visitor.

3. Segments

Segments allow you to filter, manipulate, and view your data in all sorts of ways. Adobe Analytics Segment Builder allows you to create segments using dimensions and metrics of your choosing. A common segment many in the SEO field will use is using a Natural Search segment to filter the data by organic traffic.

First Time Visits

First Time Visits is an out-of-box segment that Adobe Analytics offers. Any visitor with a visit number equal to one is considered a First Time Visit.

Return Visits

Return Visits is another out-of-box segment that Adobe Analytics offers. Any visitor with a visit number greater than one is considered a Return Visit.

There are plenty more dimensions, metrics, and segments that are worth understanding. We will explore more of these in the next chapters. In the meantime, we recommend browsing the Adobe Analytics Components Guide for additional information.

Read on to learn how to optimize your reports for your business needs!