Many companies today have analytics on their websites but only a handful actually use it; other than to see how many hit they got the other day. Many business people look at analytic’s As another type of SEO voodoo but trust me analytics is core to any Internet business and the basics are pretty easy when you know. However like ever thing in SEO you can take Google analytics to many levels but for now let not get a head of are self’s.
There are a number of basic things to setup once you have installed Google analytics, all of which will aid you in your quest to understand how your site is working in term of traffic. The first thing to do is make sure you remove you office IP address from the data being collected, many business don’t even think about doing this, but if you don’t you may corrupt your traffic data in a big way! Plus it doesn’t take an SEO shaman to set it up.
Just log in to your analytics, at the bottom right you will see a link called filters, click it and it will take you to the Filter Manager page. Filter management does what it say on the tin, it filters out unwanted traffic from your analytics data, in this case we want to take out the office IP. For this you want to create a new filter by click the “Add Filter link” located in the darkest grey box at the right hand side and it will take you to the Create New Filter page. The are two sections the first section is call enter filter information. This is contain three field Filters: Name, Filter Type and Domain. In the first field “Filter Name” Name your filter: for instance: “Exclude office IP” always try to name and filter after what they are doing; it goes with out say really but I will say it anyway.
Next is “Filter Type:” this is a drop down box, for this you want to select the option “Exclude all traffic from an ip address.” Finally the last option “IP address” for this you will need to know your offices IP not you the computer you on but the IP address of the router for the whole building to do this go to start run and enter the following “ipconfig” and press the Enter The Gateway button, this should be the IP of your offices router enter this information in to the IP address in Google analytics and just apply it to your site profile in section two and your done.
I hope you have found this blog useful, look out for Google Analytics part two, coming soon!
The use of Google Analytics is common practice within SEO. I’m not going into detail of what Google Analytics does but to make a long story short; it gives you data about who visits your website, what browser they have use and where they are on the globe as well as many other important figures such as bounce rate and page views.
Once logged into your Google Analytics account you can select ‘View Report’ which will give you a brief and general report of all data gathered by the script implemented on each page. For a more in-depth look at specific selections of data Custom Reporting can be used. This enables you to see trends within the data you have much easier as you can select which data is taken into consideration.
Custom Reports
Whilst in the Analytics interface, select the left menu option that selects the Custom Report feature. This will then bring you to the Custom Reporting page were you can select the data you want to be added into your report.
The next step you have to think about is what data you want to make a report with. One example that I use is the Bounce Rate, coupled with the Keyword Entered to find the website. This then enables me to decipher which keywords users are typing in to find the website whilst visiting and staying. In short; the keyword used when a user doesn’t bounce. Below is a graph that can be generated which shows the percentage bounce rate for the specific keyword against the websites’ average bounce rate.
I can then gather from my report which keywords are not working for me; as if they’re not working effectively and people are bouncing straight away then I can make use of a different keyword. You can even double or triple your traffic when analysing the data you have been given and acting on it. If you eradicate the keywords that aren’t performing well and target a different keyword theres nothing for you to lose. You’re losing that traffic anyway so if the new keyword works well then great; if not then go on to the next keyword!
Use the Custom Reports feature to fine tune your website; once you have realised how good it is you’ll think how you ever lived without it.
Google analytics is a fantastic SEO tool, the beauty of Google Analytics is that it is FREE all you need to do is sign up for a free Google account. Once you have a Google account you can login, and begin to monitor the traffic to your website. The Google Analytics tool provides you with useful information to aid in the search engine optimisation of your site. For instance your websites bounce rate, a bounce rate is when a visitor lands on a particular page of your site and immediately leaves. Using Google Analytics you can view what pages visitors are viewing within your site, and how long they stay on your site. The bounce rate can give you an indication as to what pages your visitors appear to be exiting the site from. For instance the site may have an error on a particular page, hence why the bounce rate is high on that page. This vital information will help you to manage your website more effectively, ensuring visitor retention throughout your site.
Google Analytics can also analyse what countries your visitors are coming from, for instance if the majority of your visitors are from the USA, you may want to consider using American syntax or American ideals more often throughout the content of your site. Or perhaps adjusting your product/service range to suit your audience. Google Analytics can also aid in the search engine optimisation of a website through the traffic source analysis. For instance Google Analytics can report on where your traffic is coming from. What your visitors are typing to find your site, whether they are coming direct from the search engines or indeed other websites throughout the World Wide Web. This information is ideal for analysing the relevance of your targeted keywords. SEO targets specific keywords relating to the products/services you provide. A clients site is optimised to contain there specific keywords throughout, the search engines pick up on these keywords and rank their site accordingly. If you can analyse what your visitors are typing in to the search engines to find your website, this can help with optimising keywords.
Consequently Google Analytics is a useful tool for SEO, you don’t need to be a website programmer or designer to understand Google Analytics either! The reports are in a readable format, they include visual representations in the form of charts and percentages. Here at The UK SEO Agency we use Google Analytics as well as other tools to analyse our clients websites progress.
If you would like to learn more about possible Internet Marketing options for your website, feel free to give the team a call at The UK SEO Agency on: 0845 057 3461. Alternatively complete the online form on our site to receive a Free Website Analysis for your website.
