In a previous post, I posted a Google Analytics tutorial video showing you in 27 minutes how to rip apart your Google Analytics to get the most valuable insights from the data. I taught you how to think about your analytics, and how to gain actionable insights to implement in your business to help you increase your sales and profits.
In today’s post, I am going to provide a brief overview of some key questions you should know the answers to when analyzing your Google Analytics, and explain why knowing these answers will help you in your business.
1) What is the most popular content on my site?
By knowing what the most popular content on your site is, will give you a good idea about how visitors are consuming your website. When you know what pages they are looking at, it gives you a better picture about the key “leverage points” to integrate within your website to help you achieve your desired goals.
If you notice a particular article on your blog is driving a lot of visits and engagement, why not think about monetizing it by promoting something that is relevant to the reader?
To analyze this stat, you can easily do this by clicking the “Content” tab on the left hand side and clicking “Overview.” If you need help with this, be sure to watch the Google Analytics tutorial linked at the top of this article!
2) What are the most popular keywords driving traffic to my site?
When you know what keywords are driving traffic to your site via search engines, it provides you more information with the “type of visitor” that is being attracted to your site. By understanding this fact, it will allow you to cater your site more towards the interests of your visitors to help you increase conversions.
You can easily find the most popular keywords by clicking “Keywords” under the “Traffic” tab on the left hand side of the app panel.
3) What keywords are driving traffic, and what posts are they driving traffic to?
When you know what keywords are driving traffic to your site, the next thing you want to figure out is what content are the keywords driving traffic to. This is important as well because it gives you a better idea about how your website is showing up in the search engines for the specific things you are targeting.
When you look at this part of Google Analytics, you may be surprised to find out that different variations of different keywords are driving traffic to a myriad of different pages that you wouldn’t have expected.
You can easily find this information by following the tutorial that is linked at the beginning of this article. I show you how to do it, step-by-step.
4) Who has linked to my site, and how much traffic do they send me each month?
When you know what links are driving traffic to you, it provides you a better idea about how your site is virally spreading throughout the web. While these links are a combination of you posting stuff yourself, and also include content getting virally picked up, it is important for you to understand what specific efforts are working for you.
If you notice a huge unexpected spike in traffic, it is most likely from someone linking to your content on one of their popular pages, or blog-based websites with a lot of readers. Once you identify the source through “Referral Traffic Sources” in Google Analytics, it is best to dive deeper to see what page is getting the benefit from that link.
This information is easily found by following the tutorial video linked at the beginning of this post.
5) Of the most popular content on my site, what is the page that keeps the visitor there the longest?
One key metric you always want to be paying attention to is the “Avg. Time on Page” metric for each individual page. This is an important metric because it will tell you how engaging your content is, and how your visitors are responding to the stuff you have on your site.
When you know this piece of information, you can then start asking yourself, “How can I leverage this into helping me generate my ideal result with the site?”
The easiest way to do this is to look under the “Content” tab in your Google analytics, and click into the most popular articles on your site. Are you winning or losing the battle with your visitor based on the Avg. Time on Page?
6) What is the most popular page that visitors look at after landing on my home page?
This is another key thing to monitor and pay attention to because this intelligence gives you a better understanding about how your home page visitors landing there for the first time consume your site. By analyzing what they do after they hit the home page, you will be able to figure out better ways to keep them on the page longer and within your personal domain for an extended period of time.
The easiest way to do this is in Google Analytics is to click on the homepage link under the content section, and click at the top where it says “Navigation Summary.” On this page, it shows you how people are coming into your home page, and then where they are likely to click next.
This is also explained in the tutorial video at the link above!
7) What traffic source is driving the most traffic to my home page, and how sticky is the traffic?
One of the last key metrics you want to pay attention to is, how much traffic is being driven into your home page, and what is the bounce rate and average site time for these type of visitors? Knowing this will give you a better idea about how all of your “front end marketing” is working, and may also let you know what you need to change in that aspect to be more effective with your ad spend.
The best way to figure this out is to open up the “Content” tab within Google Analytics, and then click open the homepage to then figure out the sources of traffic being driven to that page, and the behavior from each traffic source.
I cover how to do this in the tutorial linked at the top.
Conclusion
While this post may seem like a lot of “mumbo jumbo,” I will leave you with a quote that I learned a long time ago that provides the true essence of this post, “What gets measured, gets managed.” The more you are committed to measuring and improving what matters on your site, the more top and bottom line revenue you will see coming into the door for you and your business. It is just that simple!
Don’t take looking at your Google Analytics lightly. There is a plethora of actionable insights you can take from spending a good amount of time each month learning from what they have to tell you!
Finally…Make sure you watch the video tutorial at the link in the first paragraph above. I guarantee you will come away with some really valuable insights that aren’t covered in this article!
About The Author
Scott Bradley is an entrepreneur who is passionate about helping business owners create and implement effective marketing plans, strategies and tactics. He is the owner of this website, Brilliant Business Advice, and spends most of his time creating products and services that directly serve the small business community. You can learn more about Scott on his personal website which can be found at http://www.ScottBradley.name
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