Google Analytics is a goldmine of insightful data for anyone trying to optimize website SEO. And the best thing is that it is absolutely free to use. However, business owners and digital marketers often feel overwhelmed by the amount of data available on Google Analytics. Sometimes, they might only scratch the surface of the real insights available through the information.
Relying on instincts might serve the purpose for several business aspects. However, you cannot use it as a foundation for your SEO strategies and efforts. If you want to really dig into the real benefits of Google Analytics, you have to think beyond keyword ranking. That is why we will give you an overview of some of the most useful reports that can bolster your SEO campaigns.
Every reputable SEO company needs to ensure that they can continuously build and improve SEO campaigns for their clients. That is why most of them create custom reports for their clients using Google Analytics. That enables them to tailor their actions for specific business needs for their customers.
So these are some of the beneficial and customizable reports that you can use for your SEO strategies and efforts.
Organic Search
It is one of the most obvious reports, but it is a good place to start for everyone. Look for the ‘Overview’ tab under ‘Acquisition’ to identify the primary traffic channels for your website. It gives you a summary of the best-performing channels. You can also find out how each channel is performing in terms of traffic volume, user behavior, and conversion rates.
If you want to dig deeper into this data, you can click on ‘Organic Search’ and customize the filters according to your needs. These are some of the aspects that you can consider looking for:
- Best performing organic landing pages
- Keyword performance overview
- Search engines generating most of your incoming traffic
- Exit pages
- Bounce rates
Let us take the example of bounce rates to understand the insights you can gather. You can find out the bounce rate for individual web pages to identify the ones that are higher than your site average. That way, you can review these pages to find the root cause and make necessary amendments.
You can find this report under Acquisition > Overview > Click through to ‘Organic Search’Landing Pages and Page Titles
We understand how frustrating it can be when you see the ‘(not provided)’ result that appears under ‘Keyword.’ It happens for secure searches when the search engine URL features HTTPS or the users are protected by data privacy policies. Even though you cannot make the search phrases appear magically, you can use an alternative solution.
You can look for the organic traffic for your landing pages and page titles to see the best-performing ones in terms of organic search. Including the page titles enables you to look for the keywords that have been used to optimize those pages. That way, you can get a clear picture of the search phrases used by your visitors.
You can find out the best-performing phrases in terms of organic traffic, as well as get an overview of their bounce rates. This method also allows you to identify the pages that have poor organic traffic so that you can review their keywords, on-page SEO, and content.
You can find this report at Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages >Add secondary dimension ‘Page Titles.’
Conversion Goals Overview
You must be aware that a high volume of organic traffic can be irrelevant if they are not converting. Therefore, you must track the conversion rates to understand the effectiveness of your organic traffic.
The first option is to the conversion goals that you can filter according to your traffic. It will help you to understand the conversion rates resulting from your organic traffic. If you want to find out the real value of this data, you can add monetary aspects to your conversions. It depends on whether you care more about your keyword rankings or revenue.
You can find this report at Conversions > Goals > Overview
Assisted Conversions
The conversion goals might be useful, but it only gives you a surface overview of your conversions. A visitor might land on your website from Google and leave without converting but come back later directly to purchase or subscribe.
Most users do not convert during the first introduction to a brand, especially if they are in the initial phases of the sales funnel. These returning customers are most likely to come to your website directly or via social media to complete their conversion.
That is why you need to find out the assisted conversions by clicking on Multi-Channel Funnels > Conversions > Assisted Conversions.
This data will allow you to identify and review each channel that has resulted in conversions. That way, you can get a better overview of the quality and sources of your organic traffic conversions. You must pay close attention to any sudden increases or decreases in your organic traffic from this section.
For example, you may notice a sudden drop in your organic assisted conversions despite consistent organic traffic. That can be an indication that your leads are no longer providing the desired results. So you will know that you need to take steps to review the keywords or rethink your content strategy.
Apart from these, there are several useful reports that you can generate from Google Analytics, such as website speed, site search terms, mobile user traffic, etc. You can also customize your dashboard according to your requirements to gather the best possible reports to get further insights.
It may take some time to familiarise yourself with the different types of data formats available on Google Analytics. But we hope that this article gives you a good head start for acquiring valuable and insightful reports.
This Analytics pro tips and deep learning will help me to improve my conversion rate on my blog. Thank you so much.