SEO Quick Tips Tuesday

Last week, I discussed the basic importance of analyzing your web traffic, specifically through Google Analytics (FO FREE). This week, I’m going to walk you through how you can go about doing so and what terms to keep your eyeballs peeled for. Remember, most data is useless. Bending over backwards to understand every number and chart might make you feel like a super cool analytics wizard, but it’s only wasting company time. So, here we go…

 

Organic Search Investigation Nation

Organic search, in a little itty-bitty nutshell description, is what users are typing in their Google search bar to look for something specific. For example, let’s say I want local cheeseburgers for dinner tonight (I really do), I would go to Google and type something along the lines of, “cheeseburgers omaha.” Google would find me the most relevant result and I would click on the link that best fits my search.

Voila, organic search. Now, on the marketing side of things, I can’t see what users are searching when I’m performing my data analysis *shakes fist at the sky.* Your Organic Search report is still good to take a look at. Go into the “Acquisition” tab > “All Traffic” > “Channels” > “Organic Search.”

 

Segments

Here’s the magical part. Imagine this: a place where you could reveal what devices users viewing your site on whether it be iPads, mobile or desktop, how long they are on your site, how many enquiries they’ve made, how much paid traffic they’ve looked at, how much mobile traffic you’ve driven, what country they’re from, and how many sales these users are making. Sound like wizardry? It’s close, they’re called segments.

Go to the top of the Google Analytics page and click on “Add Segments.” A list of amazing options will appear and you get lost in the magic! Don’t bite off more than you can chew here. One step at a time with these things.

 

Common Web Analytic Word Bank

As I’ve mentioned before, we need to be careful with the analytics we’re viewing when running a page analysis. Here’s a quick’n’dirty word bank of what you need to look for:

Pageviews:

This is the number of views each user loads a page on your website.

Unique Pageviews:

What if the same user loads your page several times? That’s what unique pageview means. If one user visits your “Resources” page 5 times, it will count as one unique pageview.

Session:

From the moment a user loads a page on your site, until the time they decide to close the window is considered one session.

User:

A user who visits your site and returns for later sessions is considered a “unique user.”

Bounce Rate:

Bounce rates can indicate many things for marketers. Bounce rates come from when a user views one page on your site and leaves without visiting any other pages. This could mean you are experiencing slow load times, unappealing content to that specific user or any other technical difficulty under the sun.

Conversion Rate:

This is one of the most important terms to keep a sharp eye on if the content on your site is attempting to get users to act on something like “take a demo” or “download an eBook.” Conversion rates will tell you how many visitors checked out the site and completed a sale. If you have one hundred visitors and three of those visitors made a sale, your conversion rate is 3%.

Goals:

Set up your goals section through Google Analytics to track specific areas of your business you want to track through your site. Common goals include: newsletter signups, product downloads and enquiry from completions.

 

There you have it, your short’n’sweet guide to Google Analytics. Go ahead and take a nose dive into successful SEO, but don’t forget about me because I’m here every week to help you achieve the business you desire through SEO!