HomeMy WebLinkAbout04. Q1 Website Results & Analysis Report - MilesMarch 2025 Website & SEO Report
Website Analytics
Overview:
The website is showing strong year-over-year growth with sessions up 23.5%, pageviews up
20%, and users up 33.1%. However, engagement metrics are declining with shorter session
durations (-8.2%) and lower engagement rate (-20.9%), which is common with the large
increases in paid traffic in March 2025 and within our expectations.
● Sessions: 79,556 (+23.5% YoY)
● Views: 134,621 (+20.0% YoY)
● Total Users: 64,362 (+33.1% YoY)
● Engagement Rate: 44.37% (-20.9% YoY)
● Views per Session: 1.69 (-2.9% YoY)
● Average Session Duration: 00:02:25 (-8.2% YoY)
Traffic Sources
Organic search remains the largest traffic source but is slightly down (-4.1%), while direct traffic
saw substantial growth (+67%). Paid social from Facebook doubled year-over-year (+100.5%),
suggesting effective social campaigns.
● Organic search: 33,137 sessions (-4.1% YoY), primarily from Google
● Direct traffic: 23,129 sessions (+67.0% YoY)
● Paid social: 9,396 sessions (+100.5% YoY), primarily from Facebook
● Email: 5,305 sessions (+56.3% YoY), primarily from ActiveCampaign
● CPC: 1,691 sessions (-10.6% YoY)
Device Trends
While mobile dominates (63% of sessions), desktop traffic grew much faster (+56.6% vs +12%
for mobile), indicating a shift in how users are researching Vail experiences.
● Mobile: 50,157 sessions (63.0% of total, +12.0% YoY)
● Desktop: 29,526 sessions (37.1% of total, +56.6% YoY)
● Tablet: 640 sessions (0.8% of total, -36.0% YoY)
● Smart TV: 4 sessions (negligible, +300.0% YoY)
Content Performance
Après-ski content is extremely popular, with new pages /spring-apres/ and /apres-madness/
among the top performers. The events page remains the most viewed section.
● /events/ - 14,919 views (+2.1% YoY)
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March 2025 Website & SEO Report
● /spring-apres/ - 12,276 views (new page, no YoY comparison)
● /apres-madness/ - 8,826 views (new page, no YoY comparison)
● /vail-winter-wi-welcome/ - 8,182 views (+44.0% YoY)
● Homepage (/) - 5,894 views (-7.9% YoY)
Conversions & Events
● Enews Signup: 137 conversions (+10.5% MoM)
● Outbound Links: 17,198 clicks (-6.5% YoY)
● Partner Referrals: 19,540 clicks (+10.6% YoY)
● Book Direct Referrals: 40 (-94.3% YoY) (+700% MoM)
● Booking Purchase: 5 conversions (no YoY data)
● RFP Submissions: 2 (no YoY data)
Apres Madness
Overall, 8,826 views with a 65.16% engagement rate
Traffic Sources
● Email: 36.5% of traffic (3,200 views)
● Direct ("none"): 35.3% (3,100 views)
● Referral: 22.8% (2,000 views)
● Organic Search: 4.4% (382 views)
● Other channels (blog, social, paid): Very low contribution
Key Events & Conversions
● Partner Referrals: 1,862 clicks
● Outbound Links: 1,768 clicks
● Email Signups: Only 5 conversions
Organic-Only Insights
The website received 33,236 sessions in March 2025, showing a 3.9% year-over-year (YoY)
decrease compared to March 2024. Despite this decline in sessions, pageviews increased by
1.7% to 71,471, indicating that visitors are engaging more deeply with the content.
Key Performance Metrics:
● Total Users: 23,692 (-7.8% YoY)
● Engagement Rate: 73.68% (-4.6% YoY)
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March 2025 Website & SEO Report
● Views per Session: 2.15 (+5.8% YoY)
● Average Session Duration: 4 minutes (+12.2% YoY)
This suggests that while fewer people are visiting the site, those who do visit are spending more
time and viewing more pages.
Content Performance
● /events/: 11,445 views (+12.9% YoY, 85.23% engagement rate)
● /shopping/: 3,065 views (-17.1% YoY, 76.12% engagement rate)
● Homepage (/): 2,316 views (-11.1% YoY, 65.06% engagement rate)
● /things-to-do/: 2,278 views (-33.6% YoY, 91.75% engagement rate)
● /the-villages/vail-village/: 1,655 views (+13.7% YoY, 85.56% engagement rate)
Event Tracking
● Partner Referrals: 13,506 (-5.2% YoY)
● Outbound Links: 12,307 (-16.8% YoY)
● Enews Signup: 69 (-4.2% YoY)
● RFP Submissions and Groups RFP: 2 each
Recommendations
We've observed significant year-over-year (YoY) declines in organic traffic to key website
sections during March, notably the main Things To Do (TTD) area and overall blog traffic,
despite recent content consolidation efforts. While some optimization efforts are successful,
critical pages are underperforming. Potential causes include unoptimized core pages, content
cannibalization, and external factors like Google's AI Overview. We have a targeted plan to
address these issues.
Key Findings & Recommendations:
1. Major Traffic Drop on Core, Unoptimized Pages
○ The main TTD landing page (/things-to-do/) is down 33.6% YoY.
○ The Shopping page (/shopping/) is down 17.1% YoY.
■ These pages have not yet been optimized by Miles.
○ Action: Re-prioritize SEO efforts to focus on optimizing these critical,
underperforming pages (TTD parent, Shopping).
2. Content Restructure Coincides with Overall Declines & Cannibalization
○ Migration of blogs to TTD pages occurred Feb-Apr 2024.
○ Despite this, overall TTD traffic is down (approx. -25-28% YoY).
○ This indicates TTD & Blog pages on similar topics are competing and splitting
traffic (cannibalization), hurting overall visibility.
○ Actions:
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March 2025 Website & SEO Report
■ Investigate Root Cause: Miles team to determine why the main TTD
page is down so significantly and confirm if overall Vail search demand
has decreased or is going elsewhere.
■ Develop Clear Content Strategy: Define which page type (TTD or Blog)
takes priority for overlapping topics to limit future cannibalization.
3. AI Overviews
○ Early analysis shows Google's AI Overviews and Featured Snippets appearing
for key terms (e.g., "what is apres ski", parent TTD queries), potentially reducing
direct clicks to our site. This aligns with broader industry trends.
○ Action: Factor the impact of AI Overviews into our analysis and optimization
strategies; investigate mitigation possibilities.
4. Targeted Optimization Shows Positive Results
○ A new, keyword-researched TTD page (/sledding-and-snow-tubing/) is
performing well.
○ The recently optimized Vail Village page (/the-villages/vail-village/) is up 13.7%
YoY.
○ Action: Miles to continue applying learned, successful optimization techniques
from these wins to other pages.
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