“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”


–Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

Just like Sherlock Holmes, as SEO consultants, we stand behind our work by showing performance changes with our data. We’ve all come in on a morning ready to face the day ahead of us. We sit down to view our weekly report with our morning coffee in hand. Bam! We see something we’ve never seen before – traffic either completely fell off the planet or it’s spiked over 1,000%.

Needless to say, such a spike in any metric comes with questions. Questions which you, as an SEO expert, need to have answers for (most likely before 9:30am, when your boss looks at the report). Time to put on your detective cap and follow our recommended checklist to troubleshoot your data fluctuations.

SEO analytics checklist

Read the full post on the Merkle Blog .