Google Analytics 101: 3 Key Things You Can Learn

 Designing your new website, creating compelling content, and building out your social platforms is (sigh) the fun part. The sometimes not so fun—but just as important—part? Analytics!

After all, if you don’t know how people are interacting with your brand, you won’t know how to make it better. And while analytics can feel like a whole lot of overwhelming numbers, understanding that data is essential to better engaging your audience, improving your content, and building metrics of success around your PR, marketing, and advertising campaigns.

So, where to begin? If you’re looking for a comprehensive—but free!—analytics tool, Google Analytics is your best bet. But analytics newbies beware: For a free service, Google Analytics packs a punch. Here, we outline three high-level, useful insights you can learn from Google Analytics and what you can do with them.

1. Who is Visiting and When?

Once you’ve installed Google Analytics on your website, you’ll have access to a Google Analytics dashboard. On the left hand navigation, there will be several tabs, including “Audience.” Clicking on “Audience” and then “Overview” will give you a snapshot of useful pieces of data, like the number of people who visited your site in a specific time period, the countries those people are visiting from, and the days of the week and times of day people are spending time on your site.

In addition to being really interesting, these stats can help you make business decisions moving forward. For example, if you are a U.S.-based company but notice that a great deal of traffic is coming from the U.K., it may be the next market you consider expanding into. Or, if you’re updating your blog on Wednesdays but notice that your traffic spikes on Fridays, you may want to re-work your calendar so you’re posting your best content when there are the most people there to see it.

2. Are They New or Coming Back For More? How Long Are They Staying?

Now that you know that (let’s say) 50,000 people are accessing your site each month, how long are those 50,000 visitors staying? Three seconds? Five minutes? Clicking on “Behavior” in the “Overview” tab and looking at “Engagement” will give you a comprehensive breakdown of the amount of time visitors are spending with you.

Remember: The longer, the better! If you find that people are jumping off quickly, it’s likely that they’re not finding what they need. Dig into the look and functionality of your site: Is it easy to navigate? Is it aesthetically pleasing? Are you updating your content consistently? Remember that your website often serves as people’s first impression of your brand, so you want to make it as appealing and intuitive as you can.

Next, taking a look at “New vs. Returning” will tell you how many of those 50,000 people are new to your site compared to how many have visited before—and are coming back for more! It’s important to keep an eye on returning visitors, especially if you’re an e-commerce site, because it means that people value what you offer and want more of it.

Once you start tracking this metric, make a note of when it goes up or down. What did you post that day? When did you post it? If you can identify patterns, you can start to replicate the content and timing that yields the biggest increase in returning visitors.

3. How Did They Find Me?

Google Analytics offers an extremely valuable analytic called “Traffic Sources,” which explains how your visitors ended up on your site. Did they see you on another website and click through? Did they type your name directly into Google?

Google Analytics organize traffic sources in four buckets. If you’re new to the lingo, here’s what they mean:

Search Traffic: These are visitors that have landed on your website after clicking on a search result. If someone Googles “yoga pants” and finds your fitness apparel website through the search results, that’s considered search traffic.

Referral Traffic: This tracks the pages that have led people to your website. If you’ve just launched a Facebook page, people who visited your Facebook page and then clicked on your site through Facebook are referral traffic. Or, if you’ve just landed a big New York Times story, clicking on “Referrals” under “Sources” will show you how many people clicked on you from the New York Times.

Direct Traffic: These are people typing your web address directly into their browser.

Campaigns: This tracks how many people are coming to you through your advertising campaigns, including Google’s AdWords. If you’ve just launched an online advertising campaign, you’ll be able to see how many visitors came from the sites where your ad is running by clicking on “Campaigns.”

Once you know where your traffic is coming from, you can adjust your marketing, PR, and business strategies based on what you’ve learned. For example, if you’ve invested more in building out your Facebook and Tumblr platforms but find that most social media visitors are accessing your website through Twitter, you’ll want to make Twitter a priority. If you take a look at your direct traffic and find the majority of people visiting your site have bookmarked your video pages, you’ll want to make sure that your video content is front and center on your site.

Looking at the insights around your search traffic can help you understand what people are actually searching when they look for you, which can inform your branding and SEO strategy. And if you’ve recently launched an online advertising campaign, tracking how many people visit your website from the sites where your ad is running can determine how successful the ad buy was and whether it’s something you should consider doing again.

While this may seem like a great deal of info, we’ve only just scratched the surface on the insights Google Analytics can offer. Other data points to keep an eye on? The number of pageviews you’re receiving on top performing pages of your website (“Content”), how many people are on your website this second and which parts of your website they’re looking at (“Real-Time”) and whether your website is being accessed from a desktop, tablet, or mobile device (“Mobile”). For a full tutorial on all of the analytics available and how to search, sort, and track them, check out Google’s (very helpful!) Help Section.

source: https://www.themuse.com/advice/google-analytics-101-3-key-things-you-can-learn

Google Analytics 101: How to Track Your Website Traffic

Do you have a website? Do you have a blog? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, you should be using Google Analytics to monitor your website traffic. Google Analytics answers just about every question you could possibly think of when it comes to web traffic, including how many people visited within a certain time frame, where they came from, which marketing tactics are working, how many sales you received this month and more. The best part about this tool: It’s free, so you really have no excuse not to give it a try.

Business leaders should keep in mind these three questions vital to website traffic:

Who are your website visitors?

How they are interacting with your content?

Are visitors converting into customers?

Find Out Who is Visiting Your Website

Once you log into Google Analytics, you’ll be taken to the Audience Overview dashboard to get a quick look at the most important metrics regarding your website:

Sessions: The total number of website visits within a given date range.

Users: Users who have had at least one session on the website within the selected date range. This metric includes both new and returning users.

Page Views: The total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

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Pages Per Session: The average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Average Session Duration: The average length of a session.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

Percentage of New Sessions: Percentage of first-time visits.

You can hover over the points in the line graph to view more information about website activity on any particular day. You can also choose to compare traffic to the previous period, month, year or a custom range you choose.

There are several reports Google Analytics generates to provide valuable insight about the visitors coming to your website. These reports are the breeding ground for information you need to make decisions regarding your business and marketing strategies.

For example, the Audience Report tells you everything you want to know about website visitors including demographics, interests, locations, languages they speak, the specific technology they are using, how they got to the website and how often they visit. If the types of people visiting your website are not who you are trying to reach, it may be time to reconsider your messaging and content.

Understand How Visitors Are Interacting With Your Content

Which channels drive the most traffic to your website? The Acquisition Report tells you where your visitors are coming from. Traffic is broken down into six main categories:

Organic Search: Visitors who arrive at your website as the result of a keyword search.

Direct Traffic: When a user enters a URL into the search bar to arrive at your website.

Referral: When someone navigates to your website by clicking on its URL listed on another website.

Social Traffic: Users arriving to your site via social media channels.

Paid Search: Users arriving to your site from a pay-per-click advertisement.

Other: Traffic from unidentified channels that do not allow third-party cookies, or the surfers were in anonymous/private mode.

Do you want to learn about the keyword searches users have completed to arrive at your website? By digging into the Organic Search traffic, you can determine the most popular keyword phrases users are associating with your website.

Do you want to know how many people are on your website right now? Visit the Real-time Report section. This dashboard allows you to “watch” your visitors in real-time. If you notice many users leaving the website after navigating to a page without making a conversion, you may consider adjusting the page’s content.

In the Behavior Report, you’ll learn about your top pages, how many page views occurred in any given time frame, the average time spent on each page, the bounce rate and the exit percentage. If you’re adding a piece of content to the website and you’re unsure of where to place it, the top pages section will show you which pages experience the highest amount of traffic.

Learn If Website Visitors are Converting

If you have set up goals in your account to track sales, downloads or any other action on your website, the Conversion Report will be one of the most useful sections in Google Analytics. You’ll be able to track how many website visitors made a conversion in any given period.

Did they convert from an organic search or social media? Did they come to your site on two separate occasions through two different channels? The Conversion Report will answer these questions.

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Google Analytics provides you with the data you need to make smarter, more informed business decisions based on factual information. Without analytics, you’ll have no way of knowing what’s working and what’s not. If you haven’t installed Google Analytics, find instructions on how to install the tracking code here.

Happy analyzing!

source: https://sspr.com/seo/google-analytics-101/

SEO 101: The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

 The world of SEO can be a little overwhelming to say the least. At first glance it sounds like a simple concept, but as you start to dig deeper it’s easy to find yourself tangled up in jargon - “SERP? Search Intent? What do you mean they’re crawling my store?”. No one gets the hang of it right away, and we all have to start somewhere - that’s where we come in. We’ve developed a series of four blogs designed to give you a solid foundation from which you can confidently dive further into the complexities of Search Engine Optimization. 

For Part 1, we’re going right back to basics and giving a brief overview of three basic SEO concepts, followed by a quick “jargon dictionary” looking at some of the terms that will pop up over and over again on your SEO development journey. Each subsequent blog in this series will explore the concepts in this article in greater detail, so if you’re eager to learn more then stay tuned.

What is SEO, and why is it important?

Before we start getting into concepts, let’s take a look at what SEO actually is and why it should be part of your overall marketing strategy. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quantity of traffic coming to your store through non-paid (Organic) search results. However it isn’t so much about the quantity, but the quality; SEO aims to bring more people to your store who will actually be interested and engage with your content. You’re looking to understand your customers and target audiences better through what content they already engage with, what words they use, the questions they ask, etc. which will ultimately help you to know what you need to do to bring them to your store. In short, you’re making your store easy to find for your target audience.

But why is this important? If you’re all over social media advertising, using paid search engine ads, and engaging in other marketing tactics, why bother with SEO? The simple answer is most of your store’s traffic is driven by Organic Search; on average, 43% of ecommerce traffic comes from Organic Search. If it’s your biggest source of traffic then you want to make sure you’re making the most of it, right? Plus it pays off over a longer period of time; developing good SEO driven content and optimizing your store now will continue to build trust with search engines and users and therefore bring more and more traffic to your store. 

Concept #1 - How Search Engines Work

The first step in getting to grips with SEO is understanding how search engines function in relation to your store. There are three basic functions to know about first and foremost - crawlers, indexing, and ranking.

Crawlers

Crawling is the process by which search engines discover content on websites. Crawlers are essentially programs that visit sites and look over all the content on each page and then stores that information. The content might be written copy, images, videos etc., all of which is discovered via links. This leads us onto...

Indexing

This is where all that information and content is stored. It’s how search engines organize all that content they crawled to enable a fast, accurate response to search queries. The links we mentioned earlier all get stored in a databank ready to be retrieved when a user searches for something that the search engine reckons will be a good match.

Ranking

In short, ranking is how a search engine determines the order of the list of sites that comes up as a result of a search query. When a user searches for a specific term, Google will dig through their index to find relevant content that matches the query. The higher a site is listed on a search results page, the more relevant it has been deemed by the search engine. There are a number of different factors that go into a site’s ranking, but in the simplest terms a site needs to be relevant, trustworthy, and user friendly.

Concept #2 - Keywords and Search Intent

The vital component in any good SEO strategy - keywords. These refer to what terms the user is actually inputting into a search engine. So as part of your strategy development you want to do keyword research, find the terms your target audiences are using, and include them as part of your site’s content. Keywords are the battleground on which you’re vying for valuable traffic against your competitors - use the right ones strategically, and you’ll be able to improve your ranking for those terms.

Search intent is another important concept that goes hand-in-hand with keywords. It’s one thing to know what words your audience is using but it’s another to understand why they’re searching those keywords. Are they looking for a definition of a word? To buy something? To know more about a product? There are three broad types of search intent:

Transactional - the user is looking to make a purchase e.g. “fleece lined sweatpants buy online”.

Navigational - the user is looking to navigate to a specific type of content e.g. “Nike Instagram”.

Informational - the user is looking for specific information on a subject e.g. “best coffee New York”

 

Once you understand the user’s search intent, you can fine-tune your keyword strategy so that your store is offering a solution to the specific reasons for a search. 

Concept #3 - User Experience

This refers to what it’s like for a user to actually navigate and browse your store. User experience is a big part of SEO strategy - if your site is tricky to navigate, slow to load, or difficult for finding relevant information, then search engines won’t rank your site highly. The better an experience you provide users, the more trustworthy Google and other search engines will determine your store to be. For your user experience you’ll want:

• Fast page load speeds
• Easy navigational structure
• Clear calls-to-action
• Relevant keywords
• Focussed and optimized content

By making it as easy as possible for the user to get what they want from a page, you can build trust with search engines and therefore improve your store’s ranking.

SEO Dictionary: 10 Words to Know

There are a lot of different terms and phrases used in the world of SEO. Some are simple, whilst others are a bit tricky to grasp right away. In order to help you navigate your way through the jargon jungle, here are ten words you'll see appear in articles and guides regularly. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) - The smart learning programs a search engine uses to understand and interpret a user’s search term to deliver the most relevant results. 

Backlinks - Links from other sites which point to your store. Also known as inbound links.

Black Hat SEO - This term refers to tactics which violate guidelines used in order to artificially “trick” search engines into ranking pages favorably. For example, keyword stuffing.

Conversion - This refers to when a user performs a specific desired action e.g. making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter etc.

Featured Snippet - A block which Google displays for certain search queries, usually informational. 

Internal Links - Links on your store which point to other pages on your store.

Keyword Stuffing - The practice of trying to cram as many keywords onto a page possible, even if they’re not relevant to the content. 

Longform Search Term - Instead of a keyword or a couple of keywords, a longform search term is when a user is searching for something more specific. For example a question such as “Best gifts for amateur photographers this year” or “how to care for a calathea plant”. 

SERP - Search Engine Results Page. Exactly as it sounds, but it’s almost always abbreviated. This is the page that comes up when you put a query into a search engine.

UX - User Experience. Refers to how users interact with your store through content, navigation etc.

sources: https://venntov.com/blogs/blog/seo-101-the-basics-of-search-engine-optimization

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

What is Extensible Markup Language (XML)?

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a flexible markup language for structured electronic documents. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a programming language commonly used by data-exchange services (like blog feeds) to send information between otherwise incompatible systems. It is readable by both humans and computers and is based on SGML (standard generalized markup language), an international standard for electronic documents. Many other languages, such as RSS and XHTML, are based on XML.

Understanding Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Unlike HTML, XML allows users to define their own markup. Using XML, one user could choose to denote a footnote with the tag <footnote>, while another user could opt for <fn>. Using HTML, only one pre-determined tag can be used to denote a specific type of information. XML documents are meant to be easy to read since they contain user-defined tags and since the documents only consist of markup and content. Markup is the text that appears between two pointed brackets (e.g., <footnote>), and content is everything else.

sources: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/x/extensible-markup-language-xml.asp