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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can analyze exactly where your traffic comes from, what your visitors are like, and how they engage with your website.\u00a0You can understand exactly how effective your marketing efforts are and if they\u2019re providing a return on investment.\u00a0You can also easily pinpoint ways to improve your strategy even when you\u2019re already performing well.\u00a0There\u2019s always room for improvement.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s talk about how we take this massive amount of data inside Google Analytics and turn it into valuable, actionable information.<\/p>\n
Make sure you\u2019ve set up goals<\/h2>\n
I\u2019ve talked about this subject\u00a0a few times<\/a><\/u>, but\u00a0it\u2019s worth repeating<\/a><\/u>.\u00a0Google Analytics offers lots of tools to track your business\u2019s performance.\u00a0However, to get the most out of them, you need to customize them for your business.\u00a0Setting goals is a perfect way to begin your customization process.<\/p>\n There are\u00a0four different types of goals<\/a><\/u> you can use to track your content marketing results: <\/p>\n If you\u2019re not familiar with how to set up goals for your site,\u00a0Google Analytics will walk you through it<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to set up goals so that you can see whether your efforts are actually resulting in what matters to your business.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s easy for a website to quickly become huge. After all, an e-commerce site can have hundreds of product pages.\u00a0Add a blog onto that, and you can see how a site can become enormous.\u00a0 After all, the current recommendation is to publish\u00a0at least 16 blog posts a month<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of content!<\/p>\n When someone has that much information in front of them, how are they ever going to find what they\u2019re searching for if they didn\u2019t land on it directly from Google?\u00a0One of the best ways to help your visitors and keep them on your site is to provide a search bar. This not only helps your audience but also provides you with valuable data.\u00a0Google Analytics helps you tap into this data through their\u00a0on-site search terms report<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n With this report, you can easily review which keywords people are searching for on your site.\u00a0Then, you can compare this info with the keywords you\u2019ve been targeting.\u00a0It\u2019s possible that you have relevant content that you should update to include this new keyword. Or, maybe you\u2019ll discover a gap in your content.\u00a0This will help you find out what additional content you can create to build more engagement and drive more traffic.<\/p>\n After all, you know your target audience is already looking for it.<\/p>\n Another possibility is that you see high traffic to a particular page within your internal search. You can use that knowledge to do any of the following:<\/p>\n Log into your Google Analytics account. On the left-hand side under \u201cBehavior\u201d reports, go to \u201cSite Search\u201d and then \u201cSearch Terms.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This will bring up a dashboard that shows you all of the search terms that visitors have completed on your site.<\/p>\n It will provide information about the number of unique searches and your exit-rate percentage.<\/p>\n A high exit rate may indicate that the current content coming up for that search term isn\u2019t what users are looking for.<\/p>\n People are using their mobile devices more and more every day.\u00a0With that in mind, you should plan for your mobile visitors.\u00a0But you can\u2019t just implement without checking to see if it\u2019s working or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n Log into your Google Analytics\u00a0account and look under the \u201cAudience\u201d section on the left-hand sidebar.<\/p>\n Locate the \u201cMobile\u201d tab.<\/p>\n Expand it and select \u201cOverview.\u201d<\/p>\n This will allow you to see how your site is performing on mobile devices.<\/p>\n And if you\u2019ve set up a goal that relates to mobile traffic or mobile conversions, you can pull it into this report as well.<\/p>\n On the far right-hand side, select a goal completion for Google Analytics\u00a0to display next to your mobile performance breakdown.<\/p>\n Then you can see your conversion rates and total goal completions for any given time period. <\/p>\n If the mobile version of your site is performing poorly compared to your desktop version, it could mean that your site isn\u2019t optimized for mobile.<\/p>\n And since\u00a0Google has already begun mobile-first indexing<\/a><\/u>, if your site doesn\u2019t perform well on mobile devices, the effectiveness of your content marketing will be impacted.<\/p>\n Make sure you drill into the mobile report to see traffic and conversions across mobile devices.<\/p>\n This will tell you\u00a0if you have a mobile-wide issue<\/a><\/u>\u00a0or if your site is just poorly-optimized for one operating system.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s mobile-wide, you will need to optimize your site for all mobile queries<\/a><\/u>\u00a0and devices.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If, on the other hand, it\u2019s simply one operating system or one version of one operating system, the fix will depend on your site development and the OS changes.<\/p>\n According to Google,\u00a0the majority of sites are too slow<\/a><\/u>, regardless of industry.<\/p>\n The current ideal benchmark is three seconds<\/a><\/u>\u00a0for page speed loading time, yet most sites are above the nine-second mark.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is important to recognize for two reasons:<\/p>\n Having a slow site can kill your chances of ranking in SERPs and tank your traffic.\u00a0 But before you can try to fix the problem, you first need to be able to diagnose it.\u00a0Not every page on your site will take the same time to load.\u00a0Using Google Analytics, you can pinpoint the specific pages on your site that need the most improvement.<\/p>\n This way you can save time and gain some quick wins by targeting your slowest, top-performing pages first.<\/p>\n How to monitor page speeds<\/strong><\/p>\n Log into Google Analytics, and under Site Speed, select Page Timings.<\/p>\n This report quickly shows you all of your pages on-site, grouped by page load time.<\/p>\n You can then analyze to see the specific pages in each bucket.<\/p>\n Want more advice on how to improve slow pages?<\/p>\n Back in the left-hand menu, also under Site Speed, is a Speed Suggestions report.<\/p>\n This will give you some specific suggestions you can implement to improve your speed.<\/p>\n Google also offers another tool,\u00a0PageSpeed Insights<\/a><\/u>, for even more free help in optimizing your page speeds.<\/p>\n Understanding your customers helps you\u00a0personalize your content<\/a><\/u>\u00a0for them.<\/p>\n 68% of firms have already made\u00a0personalized experiences a business priority<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Well, it\u2019s a great way to increase revenue and profits by tapping directly into your customer\u2019s wants and needs.<\/p>\n You can start to understand your customers better with Google Analytics\u2019 Affinity reports.<\/p>\n How to view your affinity reports<\/strong><\/p>\n Open Google Analytics and check out your left-hand menu.<\/p>\n Under the Audience section, you will find the Affinity Categories report.<\/p>\n This report helps you analyze common buyer trends. \u00a0 Check out which affinity groups have high traffic and low bounce rates or high conversions on your site.<\/p>\n You may find that you do really well with a group you never expected to target, such as TV Lovers.<\/p>\n This knowledge can help with future content marketing and ad campaigns.<\/p>\n Another report to help you understand your customer base is the Audience Data report.<\/p>\n How to view audience reports<\/strong><\/p>\n This time under the Audience section, you\u2019re going to select Overview rather than Affinity.<\/p>\n This is a broad overview.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t go into a huge amount of depth about your customers, but it helps target some general areas that may be of interest, such as language, device, and location.<\/p>\n If most of your users are from the US, or even from within a few states in the US, that information can be very helpful for marketing.<\/p>\n You can further analyze your customers by adding some additional demographic and interest data.<\/p>\n Demographics give you customer information such as age range and gender.<\/p>\n Interests are exactly what they sound like. This report tells you some of the things your customers are generally interested in.<\/p>\n You can then take all this information and combine it to build\u00a0customer personas for marketing<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n Searcher intent simply means the reason for why someone performed a search.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a\u00a0pretty old, but still accurate article<\/a><\/u>\u00a0that breaks searcher intent into three broad categories:<\/p>\n Of course, this doesn\u2019t cover everything, and people may not also neatly fall into just one category.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s a great way to start understanding who is coming to your site and why.<\/p>\n You can begin to understand the intent of your traffic by looking at the Overview of Acquisition report in Google Analytics.<\/p>\n How to check you acquisition overview<\/strong><\/p>\n In the left-hand menu, under Acquisitions, select Overview.<\/p>\n In this report, you want to focus on organic traffic. The other results could be skewed by promotions and other marketing efforts.<\/p>\n If you click on the word \u201cOrganic Search,\u201d it will provide you will additional information:<\/p>\n Now you can see a breakdown by keywords searched.<\/p>\n It shows you a vast amount of data, including highest volume, bounce rates, and average pages per session.<\/p>\n You can then use this information in your next content marketing campaign.<\/p>\n For instance, are you receiving a lot of traffic for informational intent searches but not transactional intent?<\/p>\n This could mean you need to boost your conversion efforts and your marketing towards bottom-of-the-funnel searchers.<\/p>\n A\u00a0typical conversion funnel<\/a><\/u>\u00a0used to look like this:<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s more like this:<\/p>\n Add in the quirks of individual customers, and the ways users can escape a funnel, and it gets even more complex.<\/p>\n This is why being able to visualize your actual site funnel can help you understand how well your content marketing strategy is working. It can help you understand which site pages correlate well with each funnel stage. It also helps pinpoint which paths convert well and which ones need work.\u00a0This Funnel Visualization report is in the Conversions section of Google Analytics.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note that this report only works if you have already set up some conversion or sales goals in Google Analytics.<\/p>\n How to visualize your funnel<\/strong><\/p>\n Under conversions, select Goals, and then Funnel Visualization to see the report.<\/p>\n Then select your relevant conversion\/sales goal at the top of the table:<\/p>\n Now the report will show you a visual representation of what that sales funnel looks like:<\/p>\n As you can see in the example above, it will show you specific pages that Google Analytics believes line up to each funnel stage based on customer activity.<\/p>\n Another way to look at your funnel is through Sequential Segments.<\/p>\n How to use Sequential Segments<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a type of advanced segment that can be used for measuring a sequence of user actions.\u00a0For example, a sequence could be landing on a blog page, clicking a CTA button on it which goes to the contact page, and then submitting the requested opt-in form.<\/p>\n You can create segments to report on just like you create goals to measure against.<\/p>\n Go to the Admin section:<\/p>\n Then on the far-right, under personal tools, select Segments:<\/p>\n Select New Segment.<\/p>\n Then choose Sequences under the Advanced options.<\/p>\n Now you create the funnel steps or customer actions that you want to track by inputting the path.<\/p>\n These can be useful to help understand user behavior for different lead pages.<\/p>\n It can also help identify which of your blog posts lead to the most conversions.<\/p>\n There are a lot of different possible traffic channels these days.\u00a0Search engines, PPC ads, social media, and direct search are just a few.\u00a0Where your traffic is coming from may affect how they are engaging with your site and your content.\u00a0<\/p>\n You can use the Google Analytics Source\/Medium report to see how many sessions you have by each source.\u00a0It can also tell you valuable data like the number of new users and bounce rate.<\/p>\n How to view your traffic by source<\/strong><\/p>\n Back to that left-hand menu, under the Acquisition section, go to All traffic and the Source\/ Medium.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll see a report showing you a summary of interactions by source.<\/p>\n You can also add in secondary dimensions such as Acquisition behavior to make the data more meaningful.<\/p>\n For example, you can see all traffic from Google that was organic only .(removing Google PPC ads).<\/p>\n Now you can easily see what referral traffic or traffic types drive visits to specific landing pages.<\/p>\n This helps you target the platforms that are driving the most traffic to your site.<\/p>\n High traffic is a good thing. Right?<\/strong><\/p>\n What if you have a ton of traffic coming to your site and then just leaving again?\u00a0Is it still good?\u00a0Traffic without engagement or conversions is ultimately useless. Don\u2019t worry! Though, if you\u2019ve already successfully gained the traffic, then you\u2019ve won half the battle.<\/p>\n Pinpointing those pages which are high traffic, low engagement is a great potential quick win for boosting conversions.<\/p>\n There are a few ways to do this, but one I like to use is the comparison feature in Google Analytics.<\/p>\n How to find high traffic, low conversion pages<\/strong><\/p>\n Just go to Behavior, then Site Content and Landing Pages on the left-hand menu.<\/p>\n This will bring up all of the pages people land on within your site.<\/p>\n Then you can use the comparison feature on the right-hand side of the screen.<\/p>\n You can select a Goal Conversion Rate if you have one set, or you can choose Bounce Rate from the drop-down menu:<\/p>\n This will allow you to compare conversions or bounces across all pages.\u00a0You can easily sort by the ones with the highest number of sessions to find the high traffic, low engagement pages, so you know where to focus your efforts.\u00a0If you want, you can also narrow your results down even further.\u00a0For example, you can reduce the search to show only your blog pages.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to do this using the search function within the report.<\/p>\n Now you know which pages to target to\u00a0improve your conversions<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n Exactly when you publish your content matters.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hhword.website\/blog1\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/pasted-image-0-18.png\")
<\/p>\n1. Utilize on-site search queries<\/h2>\n
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How to check for on-site searches<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n2. Check your mobile strategy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n3. Optimize your site speed<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n4. Understand your customers<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n5. Focus on searcher intent<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n6. Visualize your traffic funnel<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n![\"sequenctial](\"https:\/\/neilpatel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/sequenctial-segment.png\")
<\/p>\n7. Focus on your current traffic sources<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n8. Pinpoint high traffic, low engagement pages<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n9. Know when you should publish content<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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