Google Analytics is an amazing tool that helps you track, optimize and analyze your website. It provides information about your website activity, but it also gives many useful insights which help you understand how to improve the overall experience of your users.
Google Analytics also provides access to more than thirty reports which give you new information on how search engines interact with your site. Google analytics can be used to measure things like time spent on specific pages or sections on the website, bounce rate (the number of people who visited a page and left), navigational paths through the site and much more. This article will go over some of the most important insights from Google analytics for SEO.
The first thing I want to mention is something called “not provided.” This refers to the keywords people are using to find your site. Although Google has always anonymized its organic search data, this is the first time they’ve actually excluded it completely. This means that you can no longer use information about keyword searches to help determine what these users are looking for on your site.
Google analytics still provides some valuable insight behind “not provided” data, however. You can get a list of words that are being searched before the user gets to your page, but then once they land on your site, you receive nothing except their landing page URL. This tells us how well your ads perform at capturing people who were searching for specific things related to your business or brand.
This report shows where the referrals came from so you know how effective your ads are. There is a separate report that gives you information on the keywords people were using before clicking your ad. You might find, for example, that many of the searches have words related to the product or service you offer. If so, you can use this information in your Adwords campaign, including relevant keywords and expanding to different forms of the same word for more exact targeting.
The biggest insight from google analytics here is how it helps you see what kind of content your users want and need in order to generate leads and increase conversions think about what kind of content would answer the questions they’re asking in their search queries (and which pages on your site may not be answering them).
For example: if “how do I setup a blog” is a common search term for users on your site, you could create a page that teaches them how to setup a blog and link to it from the navigation.
Do this for as many questions as you can coordinate! Even if it means adding a new section to your website or creating a new page. You’ll soon see which pages are being linked to most frequently, giving you insight into what kinds of content people find most useful.
To get started with understanding the types of content that perform best on your website, simply go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. From here, sort by “content” from everything that isn’t referral traffic (so basically anything other than direct or social). Can then look at each individual content type, or use the provided filters to narrow down your results.
You can then look at each of these content types individually to see which are being linked to most often, giving you insight into what kind of content is providing users with the answers they are looking for on your site. Remember that more links mean better authority and higher rankings, so it’s important to keep an eye on this number!
Also keep in mind that although social media is not considered a “content” source according to this report, it does show up here as referrals under “medium.” This means you can still get information about what kind of posts and updates people are sharing from your website.
For example: if a lot of people link back to a specific blog post or page on your site, you can determine that it’s the one they found most useful. The same goes for any other bit of content that gets shared a lot.
Once you have this insight into what kind of content people are looking for, then it’s time to start optimizing your website! You’ll be able to see how many conversions each page is getting and which pages may need tweaking in order to generate more leads and sales.
This is where understanding “not provided” really comes into play: you can’t tell if someone who landed on a particular page went on to convert — but by looking at the keywords they used before clicking through and matching these with pages on your site (and using them as a guide for creating new content), you’ll know which pages are getting the most conversions.
This report also shows how many times each page was viewed per visit, giving you insight into whether or not people are actually reading your content when they land on a particular page.
For example: if someone lands on your “how to bake a cake” blog post but only reads half of it before clicking away, that would indicate that people might not be finding what they’re looking for in this article and you may need to adjust the content or its placement in order to better help users.
To get started with understanding user behavior on your website, simply go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages and look at both bounce rate and average time on page. If you want more detail, you can click on a specific page to see where users are dropping off.
Once you have this insight into the behavior of your users, it’s time to start optimizing. Look at which pages have high bounce rates and low average times on page and determine whether or not they’re actually answering their questions as content types often perform differently with regard to these metrics.
For example: if someone lands on your “how do I setup a blog” article but bounces almost immediately because it didn’t answer their question, then that page wouldn’t be very useful to them. You may want revisit its content in order to provide more solutions for the problem presented in the search query (or perhaps consider removing it all together).
You can also use both average time on page and bounce rate as a measure of your content’s quality: the more time a user spends on a piece of content, the better it is likely to be. Inversely, the higher the bounce rate, the less useful it is likely to be.
Once you have this insight into what people are looking for from your website, you’ll want to start optimizing for these keywords by creating new pages or updating existing ones in order to provide solutions for searchers’ questions.
For example: if people are searching for “how do I get more blog subscribers” there may not currently be any related posts available; however, once you know that this keyword is drawing traffic (and users are bouncing because they didn’t find what they were looking for), then it’s time to start creating related content that provides the solution, such as “how do I increase blog subscribers.”
The final report you should be paying attention to is keyword (not provided); this simply means people are searching for these terms and Google can’t tell what they’re looking for because they’ve been encrypted. This happens if a user’s search query contains a keyword deemed too specific or unrelated to general searches.
For example: someone may have searched “best football players under 27” but as there are so few results that relate specifically to this topic, Google has encrypted the keywords in the URL to protect personal information from being exposed. When you see a high volume of traffic from encrypted keywords, it’s an indication that much more information needs to be provided to users so they can get the results they’re looking for.
The main thing to remember is that Google Analytics provides you with all of this information so you know what content resonates most with your users and how to adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. By monitoring these trends, not only will it help your rankings but also ensure that the quality of content on your website meets user demand.
Analytics provides insights into user behavior on your site; by taking advantage of the available statistics, you’ll soon spot patterns between what people are looking for and where that information can be found on your website. You may even want to consider using keyword research tools like Jaaxy which use relevant terms as suggestions for other keywords to target.
Google Analytics is one of many tools available to help you understand your audience and make intelligent content marketing decisions; it’s well worth taking the time to setup an account and take advantage of all it has to offer.
Now That You Know What Information Google Analytics Provides, How Does It Relate To SEO?
Well, the key here is that by analyzing Google Analytics data for insights into your target audience (and their search preferences), you can adjust both your marketing strategy and website in order to generate more traffic from top keywords. This means more leads, better conversion rates and increased revenue for your business overall.
The main thing to remember about this process is that everything should be geared towards providing the solution users’ problems as quickly as possible.
If what you’re offering is relevant to the content you’ve already published and complements it, then there should be no reason for visitors not to engage with your site. This comes down to the quality of content and whether or not it’s satisfying a user’s question; if it isn’t, then they’ll simply bounce and look elsewhere for information that does.
A good way to monitor this is by focusing on average time on page as well as bounce rate: the longer someone stays on a piece of content (and engages with others), the more likely they are to share it with their social media contacts. Inversely, if someone bounces right away without clicking any further links, chances are there wasn’t enough relevant information to keep them interested.
Now that you have a better understanding of Google Analytics, let’s look at how it is used to improve your SEO. Because once you know what keywords are most popular with your audience, they become easier to rank for and generate more traffic from in less time.
There are several different approaches to using analytics data in order to optimize website content for top rankings; all of which involve looking at the available statistics and finding ways to make improvements where possible:
Identify the current ranking keywords for each page on your site (you may want to use keyword research tools like Jaaxy here) and find relevant topics outside of them which provide the solution users were searching for (e.g., if someone searched “best football players under 27” a good article topic could be “best soccer players under 27”).
Identify keywords where specific pages on your site aren’t ranking. As well as you’d like and brainstorm other ways to target them through organic traffic.
For example, if a keyword isn’t currently target by any page but has a high search volume (over 100k). It may be worth writing an article around that topic. As it should have potential for top rankings given the right circumstances.
Checking out organic click-through rate from Google’s Search Console. It will help give you insights into how users are interacting with your content, including whether or not they’re clicking links and staying engaged:
This information to make changes such as increasing/decreasing word count. Adding/removing keywords in the title and Meta description. And even changing the order in which content is display.
Check out these top 3 SEO mistakes to avoid. If you want to be sure you’re heading down the right path. When editing your website’s content.
Google Analytics provides a wealth of information for SEO purposes. But simply looking at data before implementing any change.
people don’t buy from statistics; they buy from other people who have provided value through useful information. So never view Google Analytics as a direct sales tool. It’s there to help you get results by providing valuable insights into audience preferences and behavior.
Overall, analytics can give all kinds of great details into how users are interacting with your website and content, including:
- Identifying the top pages on your site.
- Optimizing specific keywords for improved rankings and traffic generation.
- Making changes to improve your site’s overall SEO performance.
By using analytics as a first step towards making positive changes. You’ll be well on your way to increasing organic traffic. Getting more visitors from search engines in no time at all!
