Google Analytics : Learn How to Use Google Analytics

 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 hopelesslyhidden 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?Installing Analytics

The first thing you need to do is get a Google Analytics account, if you don’t already have one:

http://analytics.google.com

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

Analytics with WordPress

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/

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.

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.

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”,

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:

Practical Uses for 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

Getting 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

Which Traffic Sources Are Working Best

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.

Conclusion

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!