Making Sense of your Google Analytic Stats
When it comes to tracking the success of your website and the effectiveness of a search engine optimisation campaign then it’s vital that you use a good quality website traffic stats package or web logs analyser.
My personal preference at the moment is Google Analytics which was first introduced a few years ago after Google acquired the web analytics firm Urchin Software. Google Analytics is continually evolving and new and exciting add-ons appearing on a regular basis.
The beauty of Google Analytic is that firstly, it’s free. It’s easy to install by simply copying and pasting a small piece of code into the web pages that you wish to collect information on. The interface is simple to use, it displays information in a variety of different charts and downloadable file formats. It can also be integrated with a Google adwords campaign to cross reference your organic results against your pay per click adverts.
Making sense of all this information is the key to understanding the browsing habits of your visitors and potential customers. Failure to do so could result in a loss of potential sales or sales leads.
Below are a few of the key pieces of information that you need to be checking out on a regular basis.
The number of visitors versus the number of page views
Every website owner wants to get as much traffic into their website as humanly possible but it’s not always case of the more the merrier. Are your visitors hanging around? If so, how many pages are they visiting? What parts of your website are they looking at? It’s no good if people are landing on your website and then leaving. You need them to be moving around, looking at the important areas of your site, checking out your products or services and finally progressing through to your call to action.
Visits versus bounce rate
Next you need to be looking at how much of the traffic your website receives is new visits and how much is returning. You may find that if your website offers an online service, forum, blog or other service that encourages visitors to return on a regular basis then you may find new visits are equal to or lower than your new visits. Either way you’ll need to consider the overall bounce rate on your website. The bounce rate is the number of visitors that land on your website without moving onto another page. Ideally this needs to be as low as possible.
Global Location
Another useful piece of information to have is the global location of your visitors. If your target audience is UK based and the majority of your traffic is coming from other country then you may have a problem. This could be a reason for low levels of web generated leads or sales as the majority of visitors are geographically wrong for your website. In this case you’ll need to look into ways of reducing the number of referrals from these countries and increasing the number of inbound links from other websites and regional directories.
Traffic Sources and Keywords
The sources of your websites traffic and the keywords being used to find your site are probably the first thing most people want to know. Make a note of which search engines are referring traffic? You’ll find that a well ranked website will be receiving the majority of its traffic from Google. If you are supporting the search engine optimisation of your website with a process of link building you may also find that you’ll be gaining referrals from other websites and search directories, make a note of these too.
Look at which keywords are being used to find your website? Are these generic search terms or specific to your products, services or company name? It’s also worth noting which keywords return the highest bounce rates and of these, what is the average time spent on the page by these visitors?
Top content, top landing pages and exit pages
It’s important to review which are the most viewed pages for your website. Is the majority of traffic visiting key areas of the site such as your products? Are visitors then progressing through to the call to action pages? Are they submitting a contact enquiry, making a purchase or registering for something? Of these pages which are the top landing pages? How do these pages relate to your keywords? Finally, where are visitors exiting? Ideally this will be your call to action page.
Site Overlay
An interesting feature of Google Analytics is the site overlay feature. This allows you to view your website with percentage scores against each link, thus giving an indication of the popularity of links clicked on your website. You will probably find that these links will tally up with the most popular sections of your website. By navigating through using the most popular links you’ll get a picture of the browsing habits of your visitors. Look where are these links placed on the page? Are they in areas of the page where the mouse naturally hovers? Are these links part of an advert or area of colour contrast on the page? Are poor performing clicked links indicative of a problem with the usability of the navigation system?
By checking out your websites traffic stats on a daily basis you’ll begin to get an overall picture of the browsing behaviour of your websites visitors and the effectiveness of your search engine optimisation campaign. A lot of valuable information can be gained if this is done correctly.
Tags: Google Analytics, seo