There is no doubt that Google Analytics is one of the most powerful and amazing analysis tools. And when it comes to various aspects of SEO, it has a lot to offer. But, are you using it to its full potential? Are you driving your SEO in the best way possible? Let’s look at some of the key ways to track SEO performance with Google Analytics.
Using analytics for SEO
In the current digital landscape, SEO has become more important than ever. There are a gazillion websites and businesses online, and many more get added every day. And to get the attention of the market and reach the target audience, companies need to build brand awareness and visibility.
Data analytics is a great asset in understanding the markets, customer trends, business performance, and more. And in a highly competitive market, doing this right can be a game-changer.
Focusing on the pages that contribute to conversions
Your website has various sections and webpages focused on different use cases. So, not all pages bear equal importance or user value. When you interact with the new customer, the chances of instant conversion is minuscule. Rather it takes several interactions and campaigns to convert the lead.
Identifying and improving the landing pages can be valuable and improves returns. Google Analytics helps you find these via its ‘Assisted Conversions’ report. Simply navigate through ‘Conversions -> Multi-Channel Funnels -> Assisted Conversions’ and setup up metric.
Custom alerts for important metrics
SEO is an iterative process, and you want to succeed, it needs continuous improvements and efforts. Considering how complex the SEO metric is, it is not feasible to perform manual steps and keep track of all. Instead, you can assign that job to Google Analytics and just focus on the results.
From a search on specific keywords, traffic variations to 404 errors and session count control, and more, you can set-up notification/alerts for all. You can find these in the ‘Admin’ section of your Google Analytics account.
These alerts would notify the webmasters and help them track the SEO performance with Google Analytics efficiently. Integrate your Google Adsense campaign with analytics and get real-time updates on the components that need your attention.
Annotations are a blessing
You are observing a spike in traffic, or suddenly have a lot of mentions on the web. That’s good news, but what changed, and what is driving this surge?. Tracing back the source for this increase can be time-consuming and cumbersome, especially if you are working in teams. With Google Analytics Annotations you can tag your actions and changes over the timeline. Making it easier to look back and find the source of this shift.
Managing your spend on keywords and PPC campaigns
Keywords (KWs) are an essential ingredient of the SEO recipe, and that’s a fact. They are key to link your business to the audience, help drive ranks in web searches, and finding new leads. But, with that said, there are good keywords and then there are bad keywords.
Let’s say you are driving your keywords campaign via Google Keyword Planner and have bid on 15 KWs. But, not all of them perform equally well in driving conversions. And it would only be smart to cut down on your costs and just bid on the ones that perform well for your website. You can leverage Google Analytics to closely monitor your KW conversions and optimize your spending.
Understanding market interests and overview of your segment
Driving SEO and marketing without understanding the audience isn’t practical. One of the primary rules of advertising and marketing is to give what the audience wants. However, building industry knowledge and gathering details on customer demographics gets easier with Google Analytics.
The tool can categorize the market into various segments and groups based on various factors. These details are available for the industry as well as for the specific business domain and website. All these stats enable business developers and marketers to formulate effective strategies. Furthermore, choose their target and focus on certain segments for greater returns.
You can access these figures at ‘Audience > Interests > Overview’ and many more reports for detailed analysis. Sync your Google Adsense account and drill down into the stats.
Custom dashboards make your lives easier
There are so many elements and components on a website and worth tracking. Despite the seamless view and navigability of the Google Analytics tools and Google Analytics login dashboard, surfing through each section is cumbersome.
Also, when dealing with business users and management, the presentation makes a difference. You should have some important performance widgets like web traffic breakdown, keyword performance, and conversions on your dashboard.
If you are looking to create a single view for all essential metrics, custom dashboards are something worth looking at. You can add all-important reports and widgets on the dashboard and get a summarized view of your website’s performance.
To sum it up, Google Analytics as a tool has an enormous collection of predefined and integrated features for tracking the performance of a website. If you are new to this or are looking to improve your monitoring, check out Google Analytics Academy and learn more about its features.
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