When you want an online business presence, you can’t neglect the need of optimizing your site. Without the right SEO elements in place, your site will sit in oblivion and people won’t even know that you exist. So, to bait the search engines and improve your online marketing efforts, you would need a time tested tool. It is here that Google Analytics comes to the forefront as the trusted partner of many site owners. You will simply need to insert the Analytics Tools onto the web page that you want to monitor, and start receiving data to get an insider’s view of what works and what not. If you are still apprehensive of how Google Analytics can help, this guide can help you take the plunge:
Selecting Keywords
Keywords play an important part in bringing human visitors to your site and attracting the search engine spiders. Though most people select their keywords based on guesswork, you should steer clear of the same practice. Instead, try to find out what search terms people are using for finding products or services in your niche area. Google Analytics offers a tool called ‘Entrance Keywords’. You can employ it to find out the words or phrases that people use to find your site on search engines. If you aren’t targeting these keywords, chances of your site appearing in the search results is low, if not non-existent. So, Google Analytics can be a powerful tool in your hands to find the right keywords, which you can use in your Meta Tags and site content.
Know your Traffic Sources
To make the most of your web presence, you need to know about your source of traffic. Thanks to Google Analytics, you can check if other websites (or referring sites), direct hits, or search engines are bringing the most traffic to your website. Ideally, you want to strive for a 1/3 from each – thus not relying on only one stream of traffic to your site. This way, you can concentrate more on the areas that bring you less traffic and also work to keep the other entrance gateways continue driving the traffic flow that they have been doing already.
Know Your Website In and Out
Most webmasters forget to check how their websites are faring after the site gets up and running. You shouldn’t fall into the same trap. Try using Google Analytics to get an insight into your site. Starting from your visitor demographics and the type of browsers used by them to the links on your site that get clicked the most, the most sticky pages and the ones from where visitors leave fast (pages with high bounce rates), Google Analytics can help you evaluate all these and more. Once you are able to locate the problem areas, remedial measures are easy to implement. Say, when you find a few pages or articles to be viewed frequently or find a particular page with high page views, compare them with those that have a high bounce rate. A business website that attracts people to its articles page but fails to hold their attention in the “Ask a Quote” or “Contact Us” page needs to seriously rethink their strategy. It may happen that either the submit button in these pages don’t work or the language puts off the visitors. Whatever be the reason, you can compare these non-performing pages with your star pages having high page views to get an idea of what needs to be changed. In other words, you no longer need to guess what your visitors respond to. Google Analytics brings you hard data based on which you can plan your descriptions, images, headlines, and layouts to produce the outcomes that you are looking for.
Check for Browser Compatibility and Broken Links
Different browsers show your site differently. Sometimes, even different versions of the same browser can display your site in various ways. So, it becomes important to check cross browser compatibility of your site, thus making sure that visitors with different browsers can see the entire site the right way. You can use Google Analytics to get an idea of the most popular browsers used to view your site and then work on them accordingly. Getting quick updates of broken links also become easy with Google Analytics. This way, you can fix the errors fast and save yourself the wrath of annoyed visitors.
Measure and Maximize your ROI
Google Analytics can help you to target your marketing efforts better by determining the demographics of your visitors. By judging the data, you may even find out who are most likely to buy from you, or have the chances of becoming a member or a subscriber. Thus, by measuring your marketing efforts, this tool gives you an opportunity to fine tune things and earn optimum ROI.
If you pay for online advertising, you can use Google Analytics to see which referring sites/ads bring the highest quality traffic to your website. This way, you will receive the best return for your business.
