Google Analytics is free, anyone can setup an account, install it on their website and collect user data. Understanding how to use it, interpreting the information provided, and making an informed actionable list based off of that data takes a professional.
Google Analytics is a flexible script that allows the tracking of how your website’s information is discovered by internet users, be it via email, social media, or search engines such as Google. In addition it allows you to track variables such as what users typed into Google in order to find your site, how long they were on your site, and what pages they visited before leaving your site.
The may sound like a whole lot of random gee wiz information, but it can be used to make informed decisions about how your website is preforming and ultimately your online business. Google Analytics is great for tracking the success of your paid marketing efforts through Google Adwords. Metrics gleaned for Google Aswords traffic can help you determine whether to push an high performing advertisement or cut it, saving you time and money. It segments your inbound traffic into categories such as email, Pay Per Click (Google Adwords), referral traffic (Facebook, Linkedin, Ect), Direct traffic (Visitors Typed your site into the adress bar), and search engines.
You can also establish goals. Examples of trackable goals might include sales (purchasing an item from an online store), user actions (such as contacting your company), or downloads – such as downloading a brochure about your company. Furthermore you can utilize the data collected to identify poor performing pages and choose to change or cut them to improve your wensite’s overall quality ranking and search engine page placement in Google.
The primary attribute we like to focus on at Forcing Function is bounce rate. That is, does the user who comes to your site leave immediately, or do they stay and see what you have to offer. Used in conjunction with another freely provided tool Google Webmaster Tool you can track search phrases users type in to find your site, or identify phrases that are relevant to your site that you should be targeting.
Lets pretend you have an online store that sells toys for dogs. A user searching Google finds your site for the keyword phrase “dog toys” checks out your website and leaves within 9 seconds.
Why? They may just be looking for information on “dog toys” and not be interested in what you are selling at all.
The visitor may even leave your page within 9 seconds of landing on it because the were really looking for something along the lines of “dogs playing with toys”
If this happens often this will affect your bounce rate, and signal Google to place you lower in the rankings for the term “dog toys”.
So it would be to your advantage to then optimize your website or sales page for what I call an actionable keyword. That is, a keyword that has an obvious action associated with it. A couple examples of actionable keywords/keyword phrases would be “buy dog toys” “purchase dog toys”.
With actionable keyword phrases such as these you know the user is interested in buying dog toys, and since you have a store that sells dog toys you are providing useful and relevant information to the user. There is a direct correlation between relevance and quality ranking in Google’s search engine pages. The more relevant a website or page to a users search the longer they will stay on your site. The longer they stay on your site the lower your bounce rate is. This signals Google that the information that have your website is relevant and popular and therefor you will rank higher for that phrase.
Did you know that one in five (1/5) search queries is completely unique and has never be used to search Google before? Often these abstract and new phrases bring users to your website.
While we can all make educated guesses and select actionable keywords that we think are going to help us convert there is no really way to know if they are working unless you have a tracking script installed such as Google Analytics. Google analytics will track these new keywords and help you discover a whole new world of possible phrases to rank and optimize for. Keeping on top of newly emerging keywords that drive sales is paramount. As any educated businesses person knows in order to win you have to be first, better, or cheat.
Cut out the guess work. Forget what you think you know will work. Discover and track what actually converts; forget the rest. Get the competitive advantage you need to stay ahead of the competition. Become one of our clients and in return we will break down your website traffic metrics into actionable steps you can take to be the first and best in your industry!