I came across a great article from Martha Iring. With more and more people just starting to use Google Analytics to view metrics from the groups on the Knowledge Hub. This is quiet timely as Martha exaplins what you can do with it.
Many of you will have Analytics set up. But do you ever use it? And I’m talking really using it, not just popping in to have a look at the number of visitors.
There is so much more your account is just bursting at the seams to tell you!
Unlocking Your Google Analytics Secrets
VISITORS
This section tells you all about your site visitors.
The “Overview” page gives you a great snap shot of what’s going on. For some of you, this may be enough information. You can click deeper into the tabs to get some further insights.
Juicy info (on the overview page):
· Number of visitors
· How many pages they looked at
· How long they spent on your site
· What your bounce rate is
· What percentage of your visitors are new, and what percentage are returning
Digging a little deeper:
· What country your visitors are in (under Demographics > Location)
· What city your visitors are in (under Demographics > Location > Click on the city tab under the map – country is the default)
· How frequently visitors come to your site (under Behaviour > Frequency & Recency > Count of Visits)
Juicy questions:
· Is my traffic going up or down?
· Is my site engaging visitors, encouraging them to look at other content and spend time reading?
· Do people often come back to my site, or is it mostly new visitors?
· Which communities in my area exhibit the greatest need for my local service?
· How many visitors get to my site and leave immediately without getting further into my content?
TRAFFIC SOURCES
Never wonder how your site visitors found you again! Clicking on this section gives you specific insight into which websites sent you traffic. This is especially important to gauge those internet marketing strategies you have on the go.
· Percentage of search traffic
· Percentage of referral traffic
· Percentage of direct traffic
· All the keywords that have brought you traffic (on the Overview page you will see the top 10 keywords. Click on “view full report” to see them all).
· Which sites sent you traffic (Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals)
· How do my visitors find my site?
· Which keywords are people using to find me? (this can be really fascinating!)
· Which other websites are sending me traffic?
· Which social media channel is sending me the most traffic?
· Did that online ad I bought send me any traffic?
· Did that guest post I wrote bring me any new visitors?
CONTENT
This section gives you insight into which pages your visitors checked out.
It can be surprising what visitors look at. You might have just quickly thrown up a page and forgotten to polish it. And it turns out that TONS of your visitors go there. Or you might be wondering whether anyone is actually going to the page that you so very carefully crafted.
Figuring out your most popular content also gives you an indication of the type of information that people want and need from you.
Juicy info:
· Which are the top viewed pages on my site? (Content > Site content > Pages)
· What is the first page that people see? (Content > Site content > Landing Pages)
· From which page do people leave my site? (Content > Site content > Exit Pages)
· Where do people click on my site? (Content > In-page Analytics)
Are visitors looking at the content that I want them to?
Which are the most popular pages on my site?
What’s the most popular type of content on my site?
How do visitors engage with the content on my site (navigation, links, sidebar etc…)?
COMPARING DATES
By changing the dates in the top right hand corner, you can get a broader picture, say the last 6 months or the last year.
If you work in a seasonal business, where you are really busy at certain times of the year, seeing that your traffic has gone down from the busy months to the slower months is not much help to you. Much more useful is comparing this year’s busy month to last year’s, to see if things are improving. Comparing apples to apples so to speak.
You can do this easily by going into the dates area and ticking the “Compare to Past” box. This will allow you to compare 2 different date ranges and see at a glance how things are looking.
