google Analytics
Table
of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: How to Install
Google Analytics?
Chapter 2: The Perfect
Combination of Analytics With Wordpress – know Everything you need
Chapter 3: Uncover The
Five Report Suites
Chapter 4: Basic Date
Range Reports
Chapter 6: Discover the
Practical Uses for Google Analytics
Chapter 7: How to Get More Search Engine Traffic
Chapter 8: Best Traffic
Sources
Introduction
There is one extremely important thing that
can really make or break the success of any website, but a lot of webmasters
are underutilizing it – or worse, aren’t using it at all. That is analytics.
Specifically, Google Analytics.
What makes Google Analytics so great?
Well, not only is it a great way to monitor
how much traffic your site is getting and where it’s coming from, but if you
use it properly you can glean a wealth of other information including your
bounce rate, most popular pages or articles, and even your conversion rates!
The trouble is, it can be confusing. There
are tons of features that seem hopelessly hidden amongst a wide variety of
options, and the majority of people don’t even know they’re there, much less
how to use them.
In this guide, you’re going to learn about
some of the most important features of Google Analytics, and how you can use those features to improve
your traffic, conversions and more!
So let’s get started, shall we?
Chapter 1:
How to Install Google
Analytics?
The first thing you need to do is get a
Google Analytics account, if you don’t already have one:
You can use an existing Google account. Just
sign in and press “Sign up” you’re ready to start using Google Analytics.
Next, you’ll need to add a site to Analytics.
To do this, you can take a look at this great guide Google has already made for
you:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080?hl=en
The Perfect Combination of Analytics With
Wordpress – know Everything you need
If you’re using WordPress, and a great number
of sites are these days, you can use a nifty little plugin to make it easier to
install Analytics on your pages.
This is especially helpful if your theme
doesn’t already have a specific place to add your Analytics code. (Some do.)
If your theme doesn’t, you might want to
check out the Analytics by Yoast plugin.
This plugin will connect to your Analytics
account and let you choose which site you want to track and will then
automatically add your Analytics code to all of your posts and pages.
Take a look at the plugin here:
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/google-analytics/
Uncover The Five Report Suites
There are five report suites inside Google
Analytics that will each offer you different types of information.
These five different report times include:
·
Real Time
·
Audience
·
Acquisition
·
Behavior
·
Conversions
Some sites may not use all of these reports.
For example, if you’re not selling anything, you may not need to use the
conversions suite. (However, it’s still useful for tracking conversions to your
email list and such.)
Real-Time
Real-time reports let you know what is
happening with your site right now. You can find out what is happening on your
website at the moment you’re viewing the report.
This will give you live information about how
much traffic you’re getting and what pages people are currently viewing.
Audience
The audience reports give you information
about the people visiting your site.
They let you know their demographics such as
age and gender, their interests, where they are located, what type of devices
and browser they use, etc.
Acquisition
Acquisition reports tell you where your
traffic is coming from. It gives you information such as keywords used to find
you and links they came from.
This will help you determine which are your
most effective keywords and marketing channels.
Behavior
The behavior reports let you know information
such as which pages people are viewing, where they go, how fast your pages
load, etc.
This will tell you which articles are most
popular, and what you could do to make people enjoy your content more.
Conversions
The conversion reports will let you know how
effective your site is at making sales or getting email signups or getting
users to take whatever other action you’d like them to take.
Those are the five different types of reports
and what type of information you can get from each one.
Ideally, you’ll be using each of these
different types of reports in order to take full advantage of the power offered
by Google Analytics.
You can learn a lot about how to increase
your traffic and conversions by using these reports.
Basic Date Range Reports
Using date ranges can help you in many ways.
It will allow you not only to see your
traffic over a time period, but also compare it to other time periods in the
past to see if your traffic is growing or shrinking, and how certain events
affected your traffic.
If you look at the top of your screen while
logged into Analytics, you’ll notice a date range.
You can set this to pretty much any date
range you want in order to see historical data and compare your information to
times in the past.
This is useful for figuring out if your
traffic is growing or shrinking, when you might have had spikes in traffic to
figure out what may have contributed to the spikes, etc.
You can also compare data easily by selecting
“Compare to” in order to select two different time periods in order to get a
comparison that will show you different lines to let you compare historical
data.
Here’s how to do it:
Just tick the “Compare to” box after you
click your date range, and then select the time period you want to compare it
to.
Note: You can do this while viewing a single
site, OR while viewing an overview of your entire account at once to give you a
snapshot of how all your sites are doing.
Here’s what it looks like to view your main
page with this:
And here is what it looks like to view a
single site:
If you look at the bottom of your chart, you
can add an annotation. This will help you add notes to remind you in the future
what happened on certain dates.
For example, you might add notes such as:
·
Ran Facebook ad, traffic up 28%
·
Launched new website
·
Added article on Pinterest,
traffic doubled overnight
·
Site hacked, traffic dropped by
75% for several days
Not only will this help you figure out what
kind of marketing and such is working, but if you sell your site later, you’ll
be able to remember what happened at various times in order to explain traffic
discrepancies to potential buyers.
Date ranges make it easy to get an idea of
how your traffic is growing or shrinking. Be sure to remember to add those
annotations to major traffic events so you remember what caused them.
Goals
Goals are a function of Analytics that is
dramatically underused.
Many people don’t even know goals exist in
Analytics, and others know little about them or don’t know how to use them.
Goals can be very helpful. Goals will let you
track the effectiveness of your sales funnel, your squeeze page, your ads, etc.
Here’s how goals work:
1.
Traffic comes in from a specific
traffic source
2.
You have a specific action you
want people to take
3.
Users take that action
4.
You now know where the traffic
comes from, how many people saw the offer, and how many people took the desired
action
To set up a goal, open Analytics and go to
Admin at the top of the page. Then click Goals on the left hand menu. Select
New Goal, then select Custom. Click Next Step.
Choose a name for your goal. It can be
whatever you want, but be sure it will be easy for you to remember what you’re
tracking with it.
You might name it something like “Squeeze
Page For Weight Loss Report”, for example.
There are several types of events you can
track:
·
Destination – User ends up at a
specific page
·
Duration – User is on page for a
specific length of time
·
Page/Screens per session - User
views at least X number of pages
·
Event – User views a video, for
example
Let’s say your ultimate goal is to get users
to make it to the download page for your lead magnet, which happens after they
opt in to your list.
You’d choose a Destination goal, then set your
value to the URL of your thank you page.
If you’d like more detailed information about
setting up all the different types of goals, here is an in-depth tutorial from
Analytics:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
Chapter 6:
Discover the Practical Uses for Google Analytics
There are so many uses for Analytics it would
be impossible to name all of them in a short guide, but we’re going to take a
look at some of the best ways you can use Analytics to increase your traffic
and income.
Identifying
Successful Content
Analytics is great for figuring out which
pages your visitors are landing on most. Not only that, it will also tell you
where they go NEXT.
This is useful for finding out which content
is most effective at pulling in traffic so you can write more content along the
same lines.
Let’s say you see a large portion of your
traffic visiting an article on Pinterest marketing. You could write more
articles on Pinterest marketing, going more in-depth or covering different
angles.
Or you could write articles about different
types of social media like Facebook or Twitter.
Identifying your key content is important,
because you will be able to decide:
·
What type of content you should
write more of
·
What kind of content isn’t
working, so you don’t waste time on it
·
Which topics your visitors are
most interested in
·
Which articles to focus links on
to boost their search rankings
How
to Get More Search Engine Traffic
Everyone wants more traffic from search
engines, but without Analytics is can be hard to figure out where to concentrate
your efforts.
You can use Analytics to figure out a plan to
help boost your search engine positions and attract more traffic.
Most of your information for this will come
from the acquisition reports. If you go to Acquisition > Search Engine
Optimization > Queries, you’ll discover the keywords people are using to
find your site.
It will also tell you the position you were
in at the time, and how many people clicked when they saw your page on Google.
(Note: This will be more accurate if your
site is added to Google Webmaster Tools and linked to your Analytics account.)
Here are some ways you can use Analytics to
get more traffic from search engines:
·
Identify successful and
unsuccessful content
·
Figure out which keywords users
are using to find your site
·
Find out which keywords you’re
ranking near page one for so you can get a few more links to boost them to the
first page
·
Find out which pages are most
popular so you can send more people to them
·
Find out which keywords are
getting the highest CTR in search results to know which articles might need to
be changed (such as title or description changes) to get more clicks
Chapter 8:
Best Traffic Sources
If you visit your dashboard and go to
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium, you will find out which sites
are sending you the most traffic.
This can be helpful in figuring out where to
focus your marketing efforts, as well as what you could improve to get more
traffic from other sites.
It can also let you know if too much of your
traffic is coming from a single source, which is dangerous.
For example, if most of your traffic is
coming from Google and there’s a huge update that drops your rankings, your
whole site would be in serious trouble.
Analytics is a complex tool, but that makes
it incredibly useful. Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to.
It’s not one of those intuitive, at-a-glance
tools that put everything right at the fingertips of the average user.
But if you really take the time to delve deep
into it, Analytics can really help you boost your traffic, conversions, and
income.
Analytics can be used to:
·
Track traffic sources
·
See which keywords people are
using to find your site
·
Track conversion results
·
Learn what content people want more
of
·
And much more!
Don’t be like the average Analytics user who
installs it on their site and then forgets it other than maybe checking overall
traffic numbers now and then.
Take the time to learn the different features
and how you can use them effectively.
Trust me, you’ll really be glad you did!
