Optimizing Reports for Your Business Needs

In Chapter One, we walked you through the differences between Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics, and showed you how to set up a basic SEO dashboard. In this chapter, we will guide you through the steps to ensuring your Adobe Analytics 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.

Understanding your Adobe Analytics SEO setup

Adobe Analytics is much more configurable than Google Analytics. The downside to this is that you need to make sure it is set up how you would expect. An “out-of-the-box” Adobe Analytics implementation does not equate to an “out-of-the-box” Google Analytics implementation. In addition, there are many ways to achieve the same or similar outcome, so it’s imperative you understand how your SEO data is captured and reported.

In this section, we’ll explore the following:

1. Paid Search Detection

2. Internal URL Filters

3. Marketing Channel Setup

4. Marketing Channel Wizard

1. Paid Search Detection

Your paid search detection settings are one of the first things you’ll want to check because they influence how Adobe classifies paid vs. organic traffic from a search engine. If they aren’t set up correctly, you won’t be able to properly track your SEO (and Paid) success.

These settings impact how the following reports are populated in Adobe Analytics:

• Paid Search Engines

• Paid Search Keywords

• Natural Search Engines

• Natural Search Keywords

Tip: Keyword reports no longer include keywords from Google, so use these reports with caution.

1.1 Check your settings for Paid Search Detection

You can find these settings under:

Admin > Report Suite Manager > [Select Your Report Suite] > Edit Settings > General > Paid Search Detection

Once there, check that your current Paid Search Detection Rules match how you tag your PPC/SEM/Paid Search campaigns. Generally, you can set the rule to “Any” search engine, unless you know something is specific to a search engine — for example, Google and gclid.

Remember, this only applies to traffic that has a search engine as a referrer. It won’t affect any traffic like email or affiliates if it uses the same query string parameter, such as “cid.”

Add any missing rules by populating the Search Engine and Query String parameter settings, then click Add. All rules will be displayed in the list.

1.2 Common examples

2. Internal URL Filters

Internal URL Filters are similar to the Referral Exclusion List in Google. With these settings, you need to ensure you exclude any domains that are considered part of your website. Common types of internal URLs include payment portals and white-labeled forms or content on other domains.

If these filters are not set up correctly, these domains will appear in the Referrer report and override any previous channel, including SEO. (Note: These domains sometimes appear if the user has come from a page on one of your specified domains that does not have Adobe Analytics code on it).

2.1 Check your settings for Internal Link Filters

You can find these settings under:

Admin > Report Suite Manager > [Select Your Report Suite] > Edit Settings > General > Internal URL Filters

Once you have these settings opened, check that all your internal domains are included. You don’t need to include subdomains. For example, yourwebsite.com will match to www.yourwebsite.com, portal.yourwebsite.com, app.yourwebsite.com, etc. Make sure any external sites are also listed here. Most common are microsites and payment providers — for example, PayPal or Afterpay.

3. Marketing Channel setup

In Chapter One, we touched on Marketing Channels. These need to be set up before they’ll collect data for a given report suite. This is different from Google Analytics, which is pre-configured to account for organic search traffic via the Channel Settings/Groupings.

That being said, with Adobe Analytics, there are three parts to the setup of marketing channels. You need to:

1. Name the channels you require (similar to Google Analytics Channel Definitions).

2. Create processing rules for the channels (similar to Google Analytics Channel Definitions > Define rules)

3. Determine your “Override Last-Touch Channel” settings

We’ll now go through how you can check your setup to ensure you’re capturing your SEO traffic and conversions correctly.

3.1 Check your settings for Channel Names

You can find these settings under:

Admin > Report Suite Manager > [Select Your Report Suite] > Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Manager

Once there, the first thing you’ll want to do is check that your Marketing Channels are set up. If they are, you’ll see something similar to this:

If you don’t see something similar to above and instead get a pop-up called “Marketing Channels: Auto Setup”, skip to our Marketing Channels Wizard Setup Walkthrough below.

Now that you’re looking at the Marketing Channel Manager, check to see if you have an SEO channel defined. It could be listed under Natural Search, Organic Search, SEO, or something similar, depending on how you define and talk about SEO within your company or organization.

• If you cannot see a channel that represents SEO, then your SEO channel is not defined. Skip to the Marketing Channels Wizard Setup Walkthrough below to see how to add a channel.

• If an SEO channel is defined, the next step is to check the Channel Processing Rules and Override settings, detailed below.

3.2 Check your settings for Channel Processing Rules

You can find these settings under:

Admin > Report Suite Manager > [Select Your Report Suite] > Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Processing Rules

Now that you’ve checked your Channel Processing Names, you’ll want to review the rules used to identify SEO traffic. The usual setup will be “Matches Natural Search Detection Rules,” as you can see in the screenshot below. This is the recommended setup and will correctly capture your SEO traffic so long as you have set up your Paid Search Detection rules (as discussed earlier in this article).

From there, check to see where this Channel sits in the order of rules.

Rules are processed in order, so ideally your SEO rule will be very high up in your rule set (first or second). This will ensure that your traffic doesn’t accidentally match another rule and get classified under another channel.

Tip: Marketing Channels are not retrospective. When you make changes they only apply moving forward.

3.3 Check your Override Settings

Most SEOs need to report on organic traffic, revenue, or other key conversion metrics resulting from SEO traffic. Therefore, you must ensure your setup is attributing conversions to the correct traffic channel. Once your SEO channel is setup in Marketing Channels, you will be able to report on any metric such as visits, revenue, orders, leads, etc., from both a first and last touch attribution perspective.

Navigate back to the Marketing Channel Manager and check to see what channels DO NOT have the Override Last-Touch Channel option checked. In most cases, you would expect to see Direct and Internal unchecked. This means that any direct traffic or internal traffic will not take credit for any conversions that were preceded by SEO traffic. This is the most common set-up for Marketing attribution.

• If Internal has “Override Last-Touch Channel” checked, this goes against best practices. We highly recommend unchecking this immediately as it is incorrectly taking credit for conversions that belong to other channels, including SEO.

• If Direct has “Override Last-Touch Channel'' checked, confirm internally that this is the expected behavior. There is no best practice with this; it depends on your company or organization. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that Google Analytics standard is the Last Non-Direct Click model (equivalent to this box remaining unchecked).

Imagine a user visited your site via SEO first and then visited directly a few days later when they made a purchase. Depending on your setup, attribution for that purchase could either go to the Direct or SEO channel. Here’s a helpful visual to understand this concept:

4. Marketing Channels Wizard Setup walkthrough

This section will guide you through Adobe’s Marketing Channel Wizard Auto Setup. If your Marketing Channels are already set up, you can ignore this section and skip to Alternatives to Marketing Channels setup.

4.1 Marketing Channels: Auto Setup

When Marketing Channels are not defined, you’ll see this Setup Wizard. You can find this setting under:

Admin > Report Suite Manager > [Select Your Report Suite] > Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Manager

The quickest way to get set up is to use the wizard and the default settings, as you can always update them later. That being said, it’s important to keep the following in mind:

1. Check all channels that apply to your business. We recommend leaving channels checked if you are unsure. Only leave channels unchecked if you are absolutely sure you won’t be using them.

2. If checking Email or Display, fill in your query string parameter used for that activity. Commonly, this will be cid, cmp, or utm_medium. Check with your digital marketing team if you’re unsure.

3. If checking Affiliate, add in the domain of an affiliate site. Note: Most implementations also use a query string parameter for affiliate sites, so you can put a dummy value here and adjust the rule later.

4. Press Save.

4.2 Marketing Channel Manager

Once you’ve clicked save, you’ll now see the Marketing Channel Manager screen:

We recommend making the following adjustments:

1. Uncheck the boxes for Override Last-Touch Channel for Natural Search and Direct. To read more about what this means, see section 3.3 Check your Override Settings.

2. Rename the Channels to match your business convention. For example, you may want to change Natural Search to SEO.

3. You can also change the channel colors here if you have an internal convention for this.

4. Press Save.

4.3 Marketing Channel Processing Rules

After hitting save once again, you now have the opportunity to update your marketing channel processing rules.

1. To start, click on the Marketing Channels Processing Rules link in the Related links area.

2. Click on 1 rule identifying Natural Search to enlarge the dropdown.

3. We recommend adjusting the last setting to Search Engine, as keywords are now pretty much non-existent. Your rules should now look like this:

4. Press Save, and now you’re all set to track SEO traffic.

At this point, your SEO traffic will be tracking correctly. However, don’t forget to make adjustments to the other channels such as Paid Search and Email so that they’re tracking accurately, too. You can refer to Adobe’s set-up guide here: Processing rules for Marketing Channels

Add to your SEO dashboard

Now that you’re confident your data is being tracked correctly, let’s add some new panels to your dashboard from Chapter One. We’ll be adding: Top Search Engines - SEO and First Touch & Last Touch Order Attribution.

1. Top Search Engines - SEO

Firstly, we’ll create an SEO traffic report that shows visits, unique visitors, and bounce rate by search engine. This will give you an immediate indication of which search engine is driving the most traffic to your site.

1. To start, add a new panel to your dashboard and add a new Freeform Table to the panel.

2. In the Freeform Table, drag and drop Search Engine - Natural into the body of the table. Tip: Searching is often the quickest way to find your desired component.

3. Drag and drop Visits over the top of the default metric Occurrences. Then add Unique Visitors and Bounce Rate, side-by-side. Lastly, rename and resize the table as you see fit.

2. First Touch & Last Touch Order Attribution

In this panel, we utilize the two default attribution models from Adobe’s Marketing Channels: first touch and last touch.

1. To start, add a new panel to your dashboard and create a new Freeform Table. Find First Touch Channel and drag and drop into the body of the panel.

2. Drag and drop Visits over the top of the default metric Occurrences. Then add your conversion metric to the right of visits. This will depend on your company. Some examples could be Orders, Revenue, Quotes, Leads, Sign-ups.

3. This is a good time to give your table a meaningful rename such as First Touch Order Attribution.

4. Now that you have a table for First Touch Channel, the Last Touch Channel table is easy. All you need to do is duplicate the table and adjust. Right-click anywhere outside the current table in the panel (just to the right of the title is the best place) and select Duplicate visualization. A new table will appear.

5. Find Last Touch Channel and drag and drop over the top of First Touch Channel. Then, you are all set!

6. Lastly, rename, resize and reposition the charts to your likings to complete your report.

Tip: We wanted to take you through the basic First/Last Touch reports as this is still heavily utilized amongst Adobe Analytics users. However, Adobe now has a new way to apply multiple different attribution models using a feature called Attribution IQ. We will discuss this in Chapter 3.

Conclusion

Congratulations! By now, you should have a better understanding of your unique Adobe Analytics setup and have made changes as needed. You also have the tools to add some new and exciting features to the dashboard you started in Chapter One. For more advanced views, continue on to Chapter Three.