Tag: Google Analytics

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What Should You Watch in Google Analytics

Educate yourself on the value of monitoring your site in Google Analytics.
Educate yourself on the value of monitoring your website in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google. Insert a small snippet of code in your website files and statistical tracking starts immediately. Over time you can start to identify important trends that you can use to leverage exposure for your business.

Here Are the Areas I Watch in Google Analytics

1. Audience on Left > Overview
Use this page to identify the overview of what is happening on your website from total visits, unique sessions, to time on page and bounce rate.

2.  Audience on Left > Mobile > Overview
Use this page to monitor the technology people are using to visit your website. Monitor the percentage of mobile devices and desktops.  Make sure you are aware of the technology used when visiting your site so you can make sure you are catering to your reader trends.

3. Behavior on the Left > Site Content > All Pages
Use this page to identify the top visited pages of your website.  On this page I monitor my bounce rate by page of content. Where I have a high bounce rate I may want to review my content to make sure it is targeted and concise. Too high of a bounce rate may indicate that AdWords is not targeted enough for you (if you are using AdWords to drive traffic to your website) or that the reader simply did not quickly find the information that they wanted.

4. Behavior on the Left > In Page Analytics
Use this page to actually see an overlay of your own website pages with click traffic indicators and link popularity over the links and navigation of your pages. You can navigate through your entire website. I use this page to identify if I have hot sections of my website or sections that don’t get much attention.

If you need help understanding what is important on your own website and how you may be able to improve site traffic, make sure to review our services for site evaluation.

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Keyword Blackout in Google Analytics Makes It Hard to Know Your Traffic

Over six months ago, Google announced that for users signed into their Google account using https:// at Google.com Google, would no longer have their search terms or activity shown in Google Analytics. Matt Cutts at that time mentioned that this would not be a big impact for website analysis but would however provide secure searches for users.

Fast forward now about six months, and if you are like me, in Google Analytics I cannot see upwards of 54% of my website traffic’s search keywords. That’s no small number! So, what’s a website owner to do to understand what is happening on his or her website and to try to know what keywords are popular to your web presence.

Here are three things you can to to try to get more keyword data:

1. Make sure to link your Google Analytics account with your Google Webmaster control panel account and verify your access. When you do this, Google Analytics will show more keyword information under the Search Engine Optimization links from the left side bar. Although this is simply not as much data as before, it does give you additional insight into the traffic and keywords popular for your website.

2. In Google Analytics add query parameters to you can track activity on your own site search function. This article found at SiteProNews written by Nell Terry explains how to do just that; track searches in Analytics.

3. Advertise on Google AdWords for keyword and conversion keyword discovery. Using AdWords, and if you link your AdWords account to Google Analytics the data will flow into the section called traffic and then advertising and will give you more keyword insights.

Unfortunately with keyword blackout in Google Analytics, and the “not set” descriptor, even site owners find it hard to understand what keywords are driving search traffic. However, these tips will allow you to glean a little bit more knowledge into what is driving your own traffic so you can further evaluate activity and change accordingly.

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Web Page Bounce Rate Explained and What to Do About a High Rate

Website page bounce rate is defined by Wikipedia as ” the percentage of visitors who enter the site and ‘bounce’ (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.” You can view your own website bounce rate figures on the “Audience Overview” link in Google Analytics. As a point of reference, Google Analytics reported that last year the average global bounce rate was 46.9%.

If you look at your own website and see a bounce rate figure like mine (which is 84.95%) don’t get worked up. The most important next step is to go to the “Content”  link and select “Site Content” and then “Pages” in Google Analytics to see where the truth to your bounce rate lies.

In my own personal case, I have been writing for my website and adding white papers and instructional how-to’s since 2001. I have some interesting free content that I offer such as how to change your signature in Outlook, how to set up multiple email accounts in Outlook, how to create an address group in Outlook, and many other similar topics that are not focused on my own services. Many of these pages get several thousand unique visitors each month but are associated with high bounce rates. I have provided these special pages in my website as link bait and traffic multipliers, but as a result some of these high traffic pages have boosted my website’s aggregate average bounce rate.

In my case, important service pages in my website do have bounce rates that track closer to the global average of 46.9% or are lower.  What I feel is more important to mature websites, such as my own, is to evaluate the bounce rate on a per page basis. That being said, once you have identified high traffic pages in your own website, use those pages to drive social media traffic by encouraging Facebook likes, newsletter subscriptions or consider putting banners advertising your own services on them to try to take advantage of the high one time traffic. You may be able to convert some of these one-time visitors at least into newsletter subscribers.

Although I want to continue to offer some informational content for free, I have started to try to put these pages to work for me so that I get a benefit from the traffic while trying to move some of these visitors into helping to promote my name through social networking. You don’t necessarily want to remove these high bounce rate pages from your website, but instead need to identify what they are and then use them to your long term strategic advantage. Google likes authoritative, informational, high traffic websites and rewards them with organic search placement, but it is still important to keep a careful eye on your bounce rate just to make sure important pages aren’t slipping into irrelevancy.

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Google Search Goes to Secure Encryption Causing SEO Headaches

Google announced this past week that for all signed in users it will now show search results with an https:// address. This means that if you are signed in to Google+, Gmail or any other Google Properties when you go to Google.com the page will default to https://www.Google.com.

So what you say, “no big deal”, well here’s the rest of the story…

“Today, a web site accessed through organic search results on http://www.google.com (non-SSL) can see both that the user came from google.com and their search query. (Technically speaking, the user’s browser passes this
information via the HTTP referrer field.) However, for organic search results on SSL search, a web site will only know that the user came from google.com.”

This is very important news for website owners who are using Google Analytics to track traffic on their website and for the SEO firms that you may employ who may be tracking keyword information. You can read the full article on the Google Webmaster blog.

The bottom-line is that Google is not going to show the search terms people used to find your website when doing organic searches. This information has been incredibly valuable. One, it let’s you know what keyword search activity has helped people to find you so you can build on these successes; two, it allows you to evaluate your current SEO strategy to adjust if needed; and three, it allows your Google AdWords account manager to harvest additional keywords to help your AdWords program perform better.

Google does go on to say that they are making the change to protect a user’s privacy but annoyingly enough they are showing the full data in Google AdWords accounts. As a result webmasters all around the world have gone crazy over this news. Here is a link to a site that has archived a few of the most interesting articles on this topic if you would like to read more.