SEO Weekly Checks
Use this measurement plan template to connect your business objectives to the metrics used to assess them. This measurement plan is:
- GA4-ready: An essential step in GA4 migrations.
- Flexible: Works across a variety of business types.
- Scalable: You can start simple and build on complexity.
List of checks
- Google Search Console
- Look for any sharp dips in traffic
- 28 days versus previous period
- 28 days versus previous year
- Screaming Frog Crawl:
- Looking for 404s and 300x
- Look to see if GSC is reporting any non-indexable URLs
- Google the brand
Why Should You Create a Measurement Plan?
The world’s most successful brands use measurement plans because they understand the value of having exactly what they need to evaluate performance and make important decisions.
A measurement plan also helps:
- Provide focus by defining a prioritized list of business objectives.
- Ensure data integrity by identifying what metrics to audit.
- Clarify technology needs by knowing what you need to track.
How to Create a Measurement Plan
There are five steps to creating a measurement plan:
- Define your business objectives: These are the high-level actions your company must take to stay in business and fulfill its mission.
- Define key performance indicators (KPIs): KPIs allow you to assess your performance towards business objectives.
- Determine data sources and metrics: Identify which metric (e.g. new visitors) on which platform (e.g Google Analytics) provides the data for each KPI.
- Assign data owners and perform analytics audit: Each metric should have an owner who ensures correct implementation and performs periodic audits.
- Update the measurement plan: The measurement plan is a living document that will quickly become outdated if not revised on a frequent basis. To ensure updates occur, bake this important document into workflows like reporting and onboarding.
Step 1: Define Your Business Objectives
Business objectives are high-level actions your company must take to stay in business and fulfill its mission. Examples include growing the customer base, converting more website visits, and increasing customer lifetime value.
To develop this list of business objectives, ask yourself the following questions:
- What business objectives are required to fulfill your company’s mission statement?
- What do you want your website to accomplish?
- What is the goal of other digital touchpoints like YouTube and social media?
- What customer actions signal a move to the next customer journey stage?
- What is needed to increase revenue from current customers?
- What key decisions do we make on a yearly, quarterly, and monthly basis? What information do we need to make these decisions?
- What numbers in our reporting call do we consistently discuss?
- What is important to the executive leadership team?
Step 2: Define Key Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators (KPIs) allow you to assess your performance towards the business objective.
For example, the number of website visitors (KPI) would be one means of evaluating whether you’re growing your customer base (business objective).
You will likely have multiple KPIs per business objective as in the example below.
Step 3: Determine Data Sources and Metrics
Put simply, which metric (e.g New Users) on which platform (e.g Google Analytics) provides the data for each KPI?
This is where you need someone familiar with analytics software like Google Analytics who can tell you what metrics are needed to provide data for the KPIs.
Step 4: Assign Data Owners and Perform Audit
Each metric must have an owner. This individual or team will not only ensure correct implementation at the outset, but perform periodic audits to maintain reliable data collection.
Once owners have been assigned, they should perform an initial audit to determine whether the metric is being tracked. If not, they’ll need to implement and/or fix the metric.
Finally, after every team has finished their audit, you should have something that looks like this:
Step 5: Updating the Measurement Plan
This is a living document. Business objectives evolve, data owners leave, and technology platforms change.
To account for this dynamic environment, the document should be reviewed on at least a quarterly basis.
To ensure this cadence, I suggest linking it to important touchpoints like:
- Dashboards
- Reporting templates
- Onboarding documents
- Client discovery outlines
- Vendor intake forms
YOU’RE DONE! WELL ALMOST…
At this point you have a solid measurement plan.
You have alignment on your top objectives, key performance indicators to assess those objectives, and sources and metrics that provide the data for assessment.
Nice job! This alone will provide immense benefit to your organization.
There’s just…
[OPTIONAL] Next Step: Adding KPI Targets
As mentioned above, the measurement plan created in steps one through five gives you everything needed to evaluate business performance and make important decisions.
However, there are means of making this report more valuable.
For example, adding targets to your KPIs.
Targets put numbers to your KPIs so you can better assess performance. For example, increase new website visitors 10%.
Creating targets can be difficult and should not be a prerequisite to finishing the first version of your measurement plan. Thus, they were left off and will be the subject of another post.
That said, if you’re ready to get started with creating your KPI targets, I recommend checking out this post.
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