google console/ google/ google analytics

 google console/ google/ google analytics

A Complete Guide to Google Analytics

Peter Drucker once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

Without data, it is impossible to show what affect your SEO strategies are having.

Tracking performance and progress makes analytics invaluable to marketers.

According to HubSpot,  of respondents say generating traffic and leads is their most significant marketing challenge.

When the C-suite isn’t getting the leads they expect, they start questioning if your work is valuable. That is where data becomes crucial to digital marketers.

This guide is an overview of Google Analytics, the most robust free analytics platform available, and how SEO pros and marketers can use it to their advantage.

How Can Google Analytics  Help My SEO?

Google Analytics provides access to a massive amount of data related to how users find and interact with your site.

For example, you can see how many people visited a specific page, how long they remained there, where your users live, how certain keywords perform, and so forth.

This information is vital in determining how effective your awesome SEO strategies are – and to uncover areas you can make improvements.

What You’ll Learn About Google Analytics

Now that you know why Google Analytics is essential to SEO, let’s talk about what you will learn in this guide.

This article is broken up into five sections based on the reports in Google Analytics.

Then, we will cover and  to see if your account is up to par.

Real-Time

This report offers real-time data about who is on your site and what they are doing.

Did you publish an awesome post and want to see how many people are reading it? Or do you want to find out if users are watching the video you just uploaded?

With real-time, you can.

To access data as it happens, click “Real-Time” in the left sidebar of your Google Analytics dashboard.

In most cases, real-time shows actions that have occurred on your site in the last five minutes. A few real-time reports will allow you to view data in the last 30 minutes.

Let’s look at the different real-time reports.

Locations

Do they live in a different time zone or even speak a different language than you?

In this report, you can see where your current users are located, what page they are on, and how long they have been there.

Traffic Sources

Traffic Sources tells you how users found your site.

Did they click a link on Facebook? Type your URL in directly?

This section can be extremely useful in real-time if you want to see how much traffic a new social post is generating or see how a brand-spanking new landing page is performing.

Content

This section provides insight into where users are landing on your site and how long they are staying there.

You can see the page title, URL, and the percent of active users on a specific page.

Events

In real-time, events allow you to track customizable interactions users have with your site.

This might include ad clicks, white paper downloads, or video views.

You can further customize data by viewing “Events (Last 30 min)” to see events in the past half hour or click an event category to see activity specific to that category.

Conversions

For every strategy you implement, someone is going to want to know “But did it increase conversions?”

This report gives you that data in real time.

View the top goals, how many users completed that goal, and the percentage of users who completed that goal – all in real-time or in the last 30 minutes.

Audience

Audience reports group users together based on set parameters.

Want to know how many people performed a site search? Or how many people made a purchase in the last year, but haven’t made a purchase in the last two weeks?

All this information can be yours.

You can use this info to better target specific sections of your audience.

There are two crucial features to keep in mind:

Active Users

This section of the audience report lets you track users who have visited your site in the last 1, 7, 14, or 30 days.

This information helps you measure audience interest.

For example, if you have a high number of 1-day active users but see a drastic decrease at 7, 14, and 30, this might indicate a disconnect with your audience.

Lifetime Value

Are you wondering if the leads you gained through an email campaign are valuable? Trying to decide if it is worth it to spend more resources on social media?

The Lifetime Value report calculates the long-term value of users acquired through a variety of methods including social, direct, organic, and referrals.

You can then sort each acquisition audience and see average goal completions, pageviews, revenue, and so forth.

Cohort Analysis

A cohort is a group of users bound by a shared characteristic, for example, users acquired on a specific day.

This report allows you to analyze a variety of data about cohorts.

For example, you could define a cohort as the day you launched a new course. You could then view data about users who responded to your launch – where they live, if they used a tablet, if they made a purchase, and so on.

Audiences

An audience report inside an audience report? Yes, you read that right!

This section allows you to create more granular audiences and apply them to other sections of your analytics report.

You can create and apply up to 20 audiences at a time.

User Explorer

This report analyzes the behavior of specific users, rather than providing a broad overview of user behavior, the way you do in the cohort analysis, for example.

How can you use this data?

Aggregated data is important if, for example, you want to understand how users in Denver responded to a recent initiative.

User-specific data provides insight into what led a specific user to make a much larger than average purchase or what actions a user took before abandoning their cart.

For each user, view data such as average session duration, bounce rate, revenue, and goal conversion rate.

Demographics

This section allows you to view detailed information about the age and gender of your users.

For example, you can see the average session time of women between the ages of 25-34 during a specific period.

You can use this information to better tailor content, ads, and other marketing efforts.

You can also create segments based on these categories and create remarketing audiences.

Interests

Want to target users who love technology? Or who love East Asian cooking?

This section of Google Analytics makes it possible.

To get started, you will need to 

Once enabled, you can view data on users based on:

• Affinity categories: Broad lifestyle categories, such as “Food and Dining Enthusiasts” or “Value Shoppers.”
• In-Market Segments: Product-related interests such as “Travel/Hotel Accommodations” or “Baby & Children’s Products.”
• Other Categories: More specific categories such as “Hair Care” or “Pets/Dogs.”

This information is particularly useful for remarketing campaigns.

Geo

The Geo report provides information about the location and language of your users.

You can use this information to better inform new initiatives or look for new opportunities.

Behavior

This report can help you determine if new users are returning to your site to engage with your content.

View data based on three sub-categories: New vs Returning, Frequency & Recency, and Engagement.

You can leverage this data to report whether, for example, a new buyer’s guide is encouraging users to return, indicating they are moving through the buying cycle.

Technology

This report lets you learn more about how users are viewing your site, including which browser and OS they use and what network they use to connect to the internet.

Mobile

This report allows you to view whether users view your site with a tablet, desktop, or mobile device, as well as what specific devices, such as an Apple iPad, Samsung SM-G950 Galaxy S8, or Samsung SM-T800 Galaxy Tab S 10.5.

You can use this information to determine if their site is optimized for the specific devices they users are using – and make changes accordingly.

This is particularly important as

Custom

This area of Google Analytics lets you better define and compare user segments.

For example, compare the bounce rate of mobile users to those who make a purchase, or see how much of your organic traffic are new users.

Sort data by Custom Variables or User Defined.

This data allows you to view extremely detailed, customizable information about how your audience interacts with your site.

Benchmarking

This section allows you to compare your data to aggregated data from others in your industry.

Compare yourself to the rest of your industry based on subcategories, such as Channels, Location, and Devices.

You can use this data to find missed opportunities.

Users Flow

What do your users do once they get to your site?

This report provides a visual representation of how users move through your site and can be sorted by user type.

For example, you can see where users from New York start and where they drop off in your buyer’s cycle.

This granular data can show where specific users leave your site so you can make adjustments.

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Acquisition

The Acquisition Report provides detailed data on how your audience finds your site, what they do once they get there, and if they completed specific actions, such as filling out a form.

Spoiler alert: Google announced that will soon be added to the acquisition reports in Google Analytics.

All Traffic

The All Traffic section shows which sites send you the most traffic.

You can then view data about the actions those users take, including Bounce Rate, Pages per Visit, Goal Completions, and so forth.

The data can be broken down into subcategories including Channels and Source/Medium

Tip: You can use this information to assign a dollar value to your organic traffic by comparing how much a keyword you rank for organically would cost in a Google Ads Campaign.

Google Ads

If you are investing in Google Ads, this data is vital to understanding how you are performing.

First, link your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts.

Then, you can view data about:

• Campaigns.
• Keywords.
• Search queries
• The hour of the day.
• Final URLs.

Search Console

This report is a powerhouse if you want to understand how your site performs in organic search.

First, though, you need to connect Google Search Console with Google Analytics. 

Once connected, you’ll have access to a ton of data and the ability to sort based on subcategories such as Landing Pages, Countries, Devices, and Queries.

You can use this to prioritize your work.