Global Hospitality Brand Corrects YOY Traffic Decline and Scales Analysis for 800 Unique Sites

An industry-leading global hospitality brand migrated 800 of their unique sites into their lead domain.

A Decline in Traffic and Click-Through Rate YOY

Soon after the migration of their site profiles, however, there was a decline in the year-over-year (YOY) traffic and click-through-rate (CTR) from organic search.

While a slight decline in YOY traffic and CTR is common in a site transition of this magnitude, the executive team wanted to clearly identify the exact cause of this decline to better understand whether it was the site migration – or something else.

The SEO team began reviewing each of the 800 different site profiles underneath their global brand and quickly realized that they were facing a herculean task. Despite the great data they knew existed in Google Search Console, with 800 unique site profiles across the board, scaling their process was not an option as there is no roll up of data using this tool.

Other tremendous challenges became apparent in this approach, such as:

• Analysis was not time-efficient because the data needed to be manually exported and then imported into Excel for
• Reporting roll-ups would require manual assembly, also through Excel
  spreadsheets
• Questions prompted by the analysis would lead to a restart of the process
• More time spent on analyzing the data meant a slower brand response to factors affecting the traffic which would result in lost revenue

Not wanting to rely on tedious analysis, potential human error, and Excel spreadsheets to present to their executives, the SEO team needed a different solution to scale the analysis for their 800 unique sites to solve the problem. They brought this challenge to seoClarity.

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Solution: Search Analytics Packs a Punch

In the matter of a few clicks within the seoClarity platform, all 800 site profiles from Google Search Console were brought in to seoClarity’s Search Analytics and rolled-up into one, cohesive data-set. Using Search Analytics, the brand’s SEO team quickly uncovered the cause of traffic declines by comparing YOY performance now that all 800 site profiles were integrated in a single location for analysis.

The SEO team was now able to:

• Aggregate 16 months of historic data for all 800 profiles in a single location to view YOY traffic-driving keywords and associated CTR in a single spot.
• Review page-level performance of primary data points such as impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR.
• Categorize keyword performance analysis by brand versus non-brand terms to determine consumer intent.
• Identify customer behaviors based on device type, country, and more.

This provided the team with a clear picture of:

• Before-and-after trends for each of the migrated sites, allowing their team to see the impact of the migration
• The specific site profiles and areas where organic traffic was still showing decline and those that were recovering
• The true character of their site traffic and how their audience was engaging with their brand through organic search
• The content that performed best and which content needed an enhancement

Armed with this knowledge, the SEO team discovered that the observed YOY softness in traffic had nothing to do with the site migration (much to their relief)!

Instead, taking advantage of the on-the-fly reporting and analysis capabilities within the seoClarity platform, they saw that the YOY standstill was actually caused by shifts in device usage and customer behavior from a volume of traffic and CTR perspective. Imagine their excitement when they discovered this information!

Results: Analysis in Real-Time and On-the-Fly Reporting

As a result of using Search Analytics built on seoClarity’s Clarity Grid architecture:

• The executive team understood the reporting that painted a clear picture of user behavior – and why it had changed,
• The SEO team was able to do the analysis and produce reporting efficiently, and
• Questions were answered as they were asked with on-the-fly reporting.

The insight gained from the ability to see deep down into the data has enabled this global brand to address shifting customer behaviors and re-engage, building a solid, data-driven plan for the next year, including relevant content creation that translates into more traffic and greater search visibility.

No Challenge Too Large

From struggling to understand the root cause of their issue and needing data analysis at scale to their ability to pinpoint the specific issue within mere days, the SEO team is now empowered to answer the toughest questions across the organization. This helped win buy-in for their approach and aligned the organization to build a strategy that better matches their customers’ intent and needs.

As they move into their next phase, this global brand has expanded their usage of other features from the seoClarity platform to provide them with the same ability to gain the insights they need for continued success. All of this is enabled from the Clarity Grid infrastructure which provides real-time, interactive analysis at the speed of thought.

seoClarity brings you the most accurate data in a scalable and flexible platform, allowing users to transform all of their SEO data into SEO intelligence. Schedule a demo today to see for yourself.