Understand the data, it’s not scary.
We’re heading into a post-COVID isolation phase but I’m still seeing some weird trends in data. Items that were hot pre-COVID are seeing resurgence. When analysing data you need reference points for context and the same applies when setting your own goals. The right metrics can help you observe your past and plan your future.
What I learned
- Post-COVID trends are odd
- The end of stimulus isn’t the end of the world
- Why data needs reference points
- Which metrics are right for you?
- Data mine to find the gold
Transcript
Hey, welcome back Rankers. How are you going? Bloody cold in Melbourne and Queensland won’t open up its borders, just mean. I thought we should touch on what’s happening in search post-COVID because it’s weird. This is “dryers”; this is search for dryers over the last five years. Now we’ve come out of isolation, but people are still looking to buy more clothes dryers than over the last five years, which is interesting. Over the last seven days. Well, actually, I’ll go back to that. Here’s a really weird one, “rowing machines”. So we know that going into isolation, a lot of people worried about fitness and so they were getting home gyms or all those sorts of things, right? We already have a home gym.
Post-COVID trends
Rowing machines. Take the ‘s’ out. Makes a big difference doesn’t it? Are you looking for one or are you looking for several? This is pre-isolation, this first spike, but now we’ve got another spike, post-isolation. And it’s higher; this is a five-year scale. So once again, it’s unprecedented. Everything’s unprecedented. So if you were to read the news or watch the news, which I don’t and haven’t for several years, so good. If you watch the news, you might be thrown off by certain things that people are around when the stimulus package finishes, everything’s going to fall of the cliff, it’s going to be the end of the world. And if you look at this graph here, at house and land, you can see gosh that’s dropping off already. However, that scale is only seven days.
So it depends on what you’re looking at and you’ve got to give yourself some reference points and the same goes with your own goals. What are you doing now? Where do you want to be in six months? How are you going to grow? Where do you want to grow? If we look at that though, over the last five years, once again it’s unprecedented. That is ridiculous. That’s five years’ worth of data; we have never had this many people searching for house and land packages.
Now take that one step further. Home loans, plural, it’s up, definitely up. Singular, unprecedented, I am sorry, it is. And of course, for some context we put in home builder, which is the government grant, federal government grant. And you can see there where it happened and you can see there, that is the result in spike for home loans and house and land.
Focus on your destination
So there’s a whole bunch of those. But the important thing is to focus on the right metrics for you. Don’t get hung up about things like we’ve talked in the past, like bounce rates or how many links you’ve got or where are you going to lose those links? Or do you have bad backlinks? Work out how much money you want to make and work out how you’re going to do it. Is it going to be through ads? Is it going to be through new products? Is it going to be through growing your line? Your catalogue, those sorts of things. And then find the partner that’s right for you rather than going to a partner and saying, “What do you sell?” Which is what I’ve had a couple of this week. Do you do this product? It’s like, “Well, do you need that product? Or would you prefer something like this? What are your goals?”
And I had that conversation today with someone just half an hour ago and I said, “Well, what do you want? More backlinks?” And he said, “Well, you know, to get ranked higher in Google.” So I said, “Okay, maybe. Yeah okay, it could, maybe. Why do you want to rank higher in Google?” “Get more traffic.” “Oh okay. Well why do you want to get more traffic? Oh, you want to make more sales? Okay. So you want
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
