5 Google Analytics Metrics Every Business Should Watch

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Google Analytics Most Important Metrics

Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most powerful tools a business can adopt, and one of the few exceptions to the “you get what you pay for” rule. It’s incredible how much valuable data you can get from a free tool. Valuable and actionable data.

However, the sheer volume of data and metrics available can feel daunting to people who aren’t familiar with analytics. What’s most important? What should you focus on? What should you tackle first? Every business is different, with different goals and markets, so what you focus on will depend on that. But, there are several metrics that can provide great value to virtually every business.

Whether your aim is to improve your search engine rankings, keep people on your site longer, increase onsite conversions, raise brand awareness, etc., these five Google Analytics metrics should be featured on every business’s GA dashboard:

Guy Typing on his mac book

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

 

Here is the list of the most important Google Analytics Metrics:

Bounce Rate

This is the percentage of visitors who arrive on your site, then leave (i.e. close their browser window or tab, or navigate to another website) without accessing any other pages within your site.

Through GA, you can check the bounce rate of your site overall, as well as the bounce rate of individual pages. Checking the stats of individual pages gives you a good picture of your most engaging content and the content that most often leads to people dropping off. For pages where people stay and decide to explore more, you’ll want to boost visibility of those pages, use them as landing pages and try to create similar (but not duplicate) content on other pages.

For pages where people are dropping off, you’ll want to investigate how to improve those pages to reduce bounce rate, and potentially reduce their visibility by no longer using them as key landing pages while you’re working on improvements.

Time on Site

There are two reasons to watch this metric closely. First, search engines are giving more and more weight to ‘time on site’ as an indicator of the value and/or credibility of a page or overall website. It’s a good measurement because people spend more time with content that’s engaging, educational, useful or entertaining. Search engines like Google want to provide users with good content, so it makes sense that they’d rely on behavioural metrics like this one.

The second reason is that it’s an indicator to you of how engaging and useful people find your content. If people are just clicking through pages then dropping off, your content isn’t doing its job. But if they’re spending time with it, it means you’re doing something right.

Again, you’ll want to look at the overall time on site, but mainly focus on individual pages to see which ones are really striking a chord with your audience and which ones could do with some strategic optimization.

Pages Per Visit

Pages per visit is another indicator of engagement, but can also tell you if your site is easy to navigate, which matters to both your visitors and search engine spiders.

If you have a consistently low pages-per-visit rate, one of the first things you want to investigate is your site’s navigation. Are the links or menu items easy to find? Are the links actually working? Are they rendering properly across all browsers and devices, including mobile? Investigate all of this and consider getting someone unfamiliar with your site to give it a try and provide feedback.

If your navigation is visible and accessible, but you’re still seeing a low pages-per-visit rate, then it’s time to look at your content. Look at what they’re seeing first, where they go from there and where they’re dropping off to determine what might need to be optimized.

Conversion Rate

What does “conversion” mean? It will differ from business to business, project to project. It could be a sale, sign up, registration, download… whatever you want people to do on your site, that’s your conversion. Many businesses have several variations of conversions, including macro and micro conversions. For example, a sale or registration could be a macro conversion, whereas a newsletter signup or ebook download might be considered a micro-conversion.

Conversions matter because they’re kind of the whole point of your website. They’re what keep you in business! This is another instance where you will want to drill it down to individual pages to determine the type of content that is most likely to convert, and for which of your conversion types, and what content does not convert well.

Visits and Returning Visits

Person looking at Google Analytics on their phone

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

In GA, new visits are people who have never visited your site before, whereas a return visitor is just that – someone who has been to your site before and is now coming back. Google Analytics does set a two year expiry, so if someone visited your site more than two years ago and is now returning, they will be counted as a new visitor.

You want to watch these metrics because a steady stream of new visitors means any marketing investments or search engine optimizations you’ve been making are paying off (in this case, you’ll want to look at where those visits are coming from to determine which of your investments are working and which are not). If you aren’t seeing noticeable spikes in new visits to coincide with campaigns, that’s an indicator that something has gone wrong. Either the content isn’t engaging enough, or there could be a technical issue like a broken link. This needs to be investigated ASAP.

Returning visits are yet another indicator of how engaging your content is to your audience. If people aren’t coming back, it could indicate an issue with your content, service or products. In this case, you’ll also want to look at where visitors are coming from. For example, are you investing in advertising that brings a lot of initial visits, but not quality visitors that come back again and again? What areas are driving traffic that converts to returning visitors? Invest in more of that and reconsider investments that aren’t driving quality traffic your way.

Takeaway

Never before in history have marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs had such a wealth of data available right at their fingertips. That brings a lot of advantages, but also this whole new problem of too much data to know what to do with it all! Instead of trying to analyze and act on all of it at once, aim to focus on a few key areas to start. Analyze reports, tweak your content and strategies, test, measure, analyze and update over and over again to continually improve your efforts, keep things fresh, respond to the market and grow your business.

 

Learn how to setup Google Analytics here. 

Get your copy of: “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics”

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Short Guide to On Page SEO Tags | On Page SEO Optimization Intro

What is on page optimization?

The optimizations that you can do on-page of the site. These optimizations include most of the on-page tags of the website.

What are the most important SEO On Page Tags?

What are the on-page tags that we can optimize?

  • Meta Title tags
  • Meta descriptions
  • Page URLs
  • Content on page
  • Alt text for images.

It is important that the work that we do on these tags is aligned with the Keyword map that we put together in the previous chapter.

Meta Title tags

What is an SEO Meta Page Title Tag?

HTML: <title>Page title goes here</title>

This is the first thing that we see in the search results.

In the page below it is “5 Best National Parks Near Montreal | Top 5 National Parks in Quebec”

Based on Moz, https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag

They recommend that we use both the Primary Keyword and the secondary keyword with the brand in the title.

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name

If we are to go back to the keyword map that we put together in the previous chapter, here is how the title would look:

Page/Topic KW 1 KW 2 Related Terms
“5 neighbourhoods to visit in Montreal” Montreal Famous Neighborhoods Places to walk in Montreal. Montreal Downtown

NDG – Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

Mile End

Le Plateau-Mont-Royal

Gay Village

Mont-Royal

Westmount
Title Montreal Famous Neighborhoods | Places to walk in Montreal

It is important to note that the title should be within 65 characters if it has more than that, it will show the three dots at the end and Google will not show the full title.

 

Meta descriptions

What is an SEO Meta Page DescriptionTag?

Meta description no longer has a direct impact on the page’s SEO. Yet it does have an indirect impact.

What does that mean?

Well for search engines right now the most important ranking factors are mostly user behaviour related. Meaning CTR (Click through rate) and number visits for example.

As much as a description may not have a direct impact on the site, it may still have a direct impact on the user behaviour which in turn will have a direct impact on the SEO of the site.

What does that tell us as marketers?

Well when we are creating a description for our site, it is more important that we create the descriptions for the user’s engagement rather Search engines.

It is definitely important to include consistent keywords yet it is also important to have a call to action, and enough information to peak the searcher’s interest.

 

Page URLs

How to optimize page URL for better SEO Results?

As for the page URLs. Well, it goes back to the site structure chapter. Where I highlight the importance of having a clean and well-organized site.

Yet to emphasis, good site structure leads to a good URL structure. What I tell my students at Concordia University is the following:

“I should be able to understand what the site is about and what the pages are about, and where it fits by just looking at your URL”

So when creating URLs always bear that in mind.

But also bear in mind that you should not use:

  • Capital Letters: having different caps in the URL that makes a URL inconsistent. Not only that it will dilute the URL as it will create a different version of it. So always keep your URL in lower case.
  • Underscores: The reason be is that search engines and browsers view underscores as nothing, but hyphens as spaces. So if as search engines see this in the URL “best_montreal_restos_for_date” it will read bestmontrealrestosfordate.

So instead use a hyphen, a proper way to have a URL should be “best-montreal-restos-for-date”

  • NON- ASCII characters. Since URLs can only communicate using ASCII characters, when they see a non-ASCII character, they replace it with a “%” that causes URL issues and broken pages in the long run.
  • Spaces: Avoid spaces at all costs, if you leave a space when you are creating a URL, it will convert that space into a “%20” when the site is live. That also causes the URL to have issues and might affect your SEO negatively.

 

Content on-page

How to optimize on-page content for better SEO Results?

You might see it everywhere by now. That content is just king.

SEO and Content on the page go hand in hand. Based on research by SEMrush, sites that are rank number one have on average 45% more content than the sites ranking number 20th.

Using the right content and the impactful content on the site will help a lot.

Put it this way if Google doesn’t know enough about you and they need to make sure that you are an expert on the subject, so the more details you give the better it is, the more you can proof you are knowledgeable on the subject the better it is.

When it comes to content the quantity off content is as important as the quality of content. So as you fill up your site with information, make sure that it is as meaningful as possible.

Alt text for images.

How to optimize image alt tags for better SEO Results?

Alt image tags are made first and foremost of the visually impaired.

Meaning when someone with visual impairment is checking out your site, they will be able to know what the image is about, by moving their mouse over it.

As this is the main purpose, we shouldn’t look at this tag from an SEO perspective, yet from an ethical and purposeful perspective.

I this tab it is not only a best practice but our duty and responsibility to fill in this tag properly.

Check the example that follows:

A large scale Mural of Leonard Cohen on the side of a building in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

A large scale Mural of Leonard Cohen on the side of a building in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

ALT tag: A large scale Mural of Leonard Cohen on the side of a building in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

 

To learn more about SEO and how to take your optimization to the next level: Get your copy of “The SEO Way” here.

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How to Manage Google Analytics Permissions?

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Google Analytics Permissions Guide

Google Analytics structure is important when it comes to giving permissions and delegating rights to teams and individuals. For example, you may want to permit some people to view reports, but not make changes within the Google Analytics platform, whereas you may want to grant someone else permission to edit dashboards and create filters. The structure is a key part of that.

You can delegate four types of permissions in GA. Permissions can be granted at any level of the GA structure (Account, Property and View). Permission types include:

Manage Users (Permission): This allows someone to remove and add user access to the account.

This is a dangerous right to hand off, especially given the fact that if you grant this level of permission, you might be kicked off the account yourself. Ideally, only one person should be able to add and remove users. This way, you have better control over who has access, and what level of access they have, to your incredibly valuable data.

Edit (Permission): This allows someone to edit accounts, properties and views, filter data, and create goals. The only thing they can’t do is manage users. This permission level is ideal for Analytics experts.

Collaborate (Permission): This allows someone to edit shared dashboards or add annotations. This permission level is ideal for marketers, social media managers, and campaign managers.

Read & Analyze (Permission): This is a read-only level. It allows someone to read and view reports, but they cannot make any changes. This permission level is ideal for CEOs, managers, etc.

Note:

It is important to note that while you can grant permission at either the account, property or view level, that permission is hierarchical. That means, if you grant someone permission at the property level, they will automatically have access at the view level as well. Grant it at the account level, and they automatically have it at the property and view levels.

List of permissions in Google Analytics

 

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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5 Tips for Setting up a Google Analytics Account Structure

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How to set up a Google Analytics Account Structure?

While setting up your account it is hard to foresee where the account will be in the future. Yet there are some factors that you should always account to, to ensure that your account is setup to grow in a sustainable manner.

Here are 6 factors to keep in mind when setting up your Google Analytics Account:

  • Keep in mind that GA is there to serve your marketing and business strategy.
    As much as the setup is important, it is more important to check it daily. Most successful marketers and business people check their analytics almost daily. It usually guides their decisions to be more data-driven. As you design your structure, think about how you will use it daily.
  • Don’t forget the purpose of data and GA. The main reason to use GA is to make sure visitors are doing what you want them to do on your site or web property. This could be contact form submission, sign up to a newsletter, buy a product, request a quote, etc. When setting up GA remember your KPIs and goals for the site.
  • Remember that a big strength of GA is the ability to integrate with all the other Google tools. Keep in mind that you will likely be connecting your GA account with Google Ads, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Google AdSense, etc.
  • Another strength of GA is the ability to customize reports to your needs. As you go through the process of setting up GA, keep in mind how you want to view the data. Better yet, always bear in mind who will benefit from what report. When we approach the end of this book where you’ll learn how to customize data, bring these thoughts to life through the right dashboards.
  • Through GA, you can compare data across different months, traffic sources and other dimensions. As you analyze different reports, remember to make data more relevant through comparing.
  • Remember that GA can do (much of) the work for you. You are better off creating intelligent alerts to notify you of a rise or drop in traffic or any other significant change with your site data, rather than relying on manual daily checks.

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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How to Properly Setup Google Analytics

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Google Analytics Structure

GA is divided into three levels.

The account level: This is where you label your group of properties. Every account can have up to 50 properties.

The property level: This is where you manage all your web properties. A web property could be an app, a website, a POS, etc. Any property that is solely yours could be here. For example, you own your mobile app, so it can be tracked as a property. You don’t own your Facebook page – that’s the property of Facebook – so it can’t be tracked as a property. Each property can have up to 25 views.

The view level: This is where you select the different ways you can view your property. One unfiltered view for every property in your account is automatically created. You can set up multiple views on a single property.

Let’s use an example to better understand this structure:

I run a business called The Camino Within. Let’s imagine it has a blog, speaking site, book site and a mobile app. These are all separate properties, meaning the blog, for example, is not embedded within the main website, but has its own URL.

The account name would be:

  • The Camino Within

The property names would be:

  • The Camino Within site – thecaminowithin.com
  • The Camino Within blog – blog.thecaminowithin.com
  • The Camino Within travel app – IOS & Android apps
  • The Camino Within speaking site – speaking.thecaminowithin.com

A good example of the views could be as follows:

  • All data view
  • Canadian visits
  • International visits
  • External traffic only
  • Backup view

With views, you apply filters so that you only see the data you want within that view. This makes it really easy to quickly extract your most relevant and frequently needed information. Just note that when you’re in a particular view, you won’t be able to retrieve any information that you’ve set to be filtered out. You’ll need to remove that filter or choose another view. Also, be sure to label your views very clearly.

Google Analytics Structure

As you will learn further along in this book, this structure is important for permissions, account management, integration and accessibility. For this reason, take care that your GA structure makes sense for you, your business and your business objectives.

Takeaway

Google Analytics account structure is an important factor in collecting and compiling the data most relevant to your business goals, in a way that makes sense for you. When setup properly, it will help considerably in the long-term planning, preparation and performance of your business online.

 

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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How to Successfully Utilize Google Analytics

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SUCCESS IN GA REQUIRES 3 STEPS

Like all tools, GA is only as effective as the person wielding it. Take the time to get to know the tool and how best to use it within your business. These are 3 key steps you need to invest in to ensure success with GA:

  1. Setting up Google Analytics in the right way
  • Creating a Google Analytics account
  • Customizing the account
  • Understanding the structure
  • Understanding how you can create views and properties for your account
  • Understanding how to distribute privileges
  • Understanding how to activate features
  • Understanding GDPR, privacy and Google Analytics

 

  1. Translating your data into insights
  • Understanding metrics and dimensions
  • Understanding data hygiene
  • Knowing where to find relevant data
  • Understanding what this data means for your business
  • Understanding what is working and not working
  • Getting the most out of the data

 

  1. Acting on your insights
  • Applying learnings to your business
  • Knowing how to react to data
  • Optimizing for better results

 

Lessons from GA Consulting

When I work with companies, I always work on getting to know the client first, understanding their business and their goals.

After that, I aim to create a Google Analytics account setup that is fully aligned with their goals.

To go the extra mile, I also help them with reporting, insights and dashboarding.

So, the process goes like this:

  • Understanding who you are and what you want to achieve;
  • Customizing your account to gather and compile data that’s relevant to who you are and what you want to achieve;
  • Creating reports and dashboards that give you easy-to-interpret visuals of what your data means.

But here’s the crazy part: even though the client is the person in this equation who best knows the business, they always want me to be there to act on their insights, data and reports.

What this taught me is that data is more than just marrying our minds with numbers. In fact, it’s not a marriage at all. It’s more of a master and machine relationship. YOU are the master. You need to make the machine work for you.

Every time I sit down with a client’s team to go over their data, we always end up with more than just the sum total. We always end up with genius ideas and actionable next steps. The data becomes an impetus to launch creative new ways to market and cater to customers.

The ability and drive to interpret and act on data is there, but for whatever reason, many people need to be led to the water, so to speak.  Don’t ever play the passive or reactive role to data. Be involved at every level. Data will not act alone. It needs you in the driver’s seat. Get yourself in that mindset.

To bridge this gap between gathering the data and acting on it, I divide analytics consulting into setting up, researching and recommendations. For this, I like to use the metaphor of producing a Broadway play.

 

Prepare. Practice. Perform. Here’s how it goes:

Prepare

  • Get to know the structure of your GA account.
  • Learn how to create a Google Analytics account.
  • Learn an alternative way of adding GA through a tool called Google Tag Manager.

Practice

  • GA uses some terms you may be unfamiliar with. Learn the most important metrics and dimensions so that you are able to read the data on GA reports.

Perform

  • Navigate the platform.
  • Read and analyze GA reports.
  • Act on the knowledge and insight they provide.

 

Takeaway

Having data without interpretation is like trying to perform in a play without a script.

Don’t ever play the passive or reactive role to data. Be involved at every level. Know the tool, learn how to wield it, then do it.

 

Learn More about analytics and how to capitalize on it: Get your copy of “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics” here

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How to Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Site’s SEO Presence  

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GOOGLE ANALYTICS & SEO

 

The Search Engine’s Mission

The role of search engines is to crawl the web and index the pages that they deem worthy, in an order that provides value to users.

In doing so, their mission is to ensure users can quickly and easily find the information, products, services or content they’re looking for.

Google’s mission statement, written in 2013, is as follows: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Source: https://www.google.com/about/

 

Bing’s mission statement, also written in 2013, is as follows: “At Bing our central mission is to help you search less and do more. To that end, we’re constantly looking for ways to make your search experience more efficient.”

Source: https://blogs.bing.com/search/2013/08/23/find-it-faster-with-bing-product-search/

 

Yahoo’s mission is to “make the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining.”

Source: Yahoo.com

 

What can we take away from this?

Essentially, search engines exist to send us away from them and to what users search for. Ironic, isn’t it?

Google Search Console on Google Analytics

Google Search Console on Google Analytics

 

Think about it. You visit a search engine, perform a search and then leave. The better the experience you have with a search engine (i.e. the greater success you have at finding what you want) the more likely you are to use that one again. With that in mind, you can rely on them wanting to return search results that are as closely related as possible to what it “thinks” you are truly looking for.

There is a lot to learn from this.

My grandpa used to say, “Tell me what someone wants and I will tell you how to control him.” And I tell you today that if you want to control how your web property shows up in search engines, you have to understand that the primary mission of the search engine is around what people want and nothing else. Yes, the companies behind them want to make money through advertising, sales, etc., but they know that these things are most profitable when driven by that primary mission of providing value.

User driven metrics control search, and likely always will.

If you are able, through your site, to provide useful, accessible, engaging, inspiring and entertaining information, then you are golden. If people want you, search engines will want you. This should be the guiding principle behind your SEO strategy.

Thankfully, GA can help you understand what searchers want, like, enjoy, engage with and how you can act on that knowledge to improve your ranking.

Google Search Console on Google Analytics                                                               

Going back to chapter 14, where we installed Google Search Console, you may recall that GA alone is not enough for us to capture adequate data to take a knowledge-driven approach to SEO.

To be able to make educated SEO decisions, you need Google Search Console. Once you connect Google Search Console data to your web property, you will have access to a wide array of reports that will help you understand how pages are performing, what keywords are sending the most traffic, what pages are getting the highest engagement, what is relevant and what is not.

The goal of this chapter is to help you capitalize on GA to optimize your site’s organic search performance in the best way possible.

Let’s jump back to the GA dashboard.

Under “Acquisition” scroll to “Search Console”.

Without Google Search Console, the default analytics results are extremely limited. In fact, GA will often return “Not Provided”.

With Search Console, you will have access to extensive data, which is enough to optimize, improve and plan ahead.

Also, Google Search Console is the best SEO tool out there that you can use for free. Make sure that you are using it and learning from it as much as possible.

 

Search Console Landing Pages Report

Search Console Landing Pages Report

Search Console Landing Pages Report

As you can see in the report above, GA provides a list of the most popular landing pages on your site that visitors have arrived at through organic search.

The table shows a lot of valuable info, which is the result of the merge between Google Search Console data and on-site behaviour data. This helps you not only know what people did to find your page, but what they did once they arrived there, and whether they took the actions that you want them to take.

These are the terms you should know to get the most out of this report:

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Impressions – This is the number of times your pages popped up in search results.

Clicks – The number of times people clicked on your page from an SERP.

CTR (Click Through Rate) –  The number of clicks/the number of impressions * 100, meaning, it reflects the rate at which people see your listing in organic search results and choose to click through to your site.

Average Position – This is the average ranking of your page in organic search results, taking into account all the keywords that this page ranks for. If your page has an average position of 3, for example, that means your page usually shows up around the third spot in SERPs (which is a very good position to have).

Sessions – This is the number of visits that you get to your site from organic search.

Bounce Rate – This tells you how many visitors to your site (from organic search) left without taking any action.

Goal Metrics – This shows how your traffic from organic search is converting on the site.

The Landing Page Report gives you a view into how your different pages are performing from an SEO perspective. It helps you see what pages are performing well, which ones can be improved, and which pages you can capitalize on elsewhere, maybe through paid search or social campaigns.

 

 Acquisition Google Search Console Countries Report

 Acquisition Google Search Console Countries Report

 Acquisition Google Search Console Countries Report

In this report, you can see the amount of organic search traffic you’re getting from each country.

This insight can help you tailor future content for different countries, with different languages and different information that caters to specific audiences.

I use this report to understand who is coming to my site and how I can tailor new content for them. It also helps me identify opportunities I may be missing out on. For example, if I’m getting a lot of traffic from a specific country, but it isn’t converting, I can start looking into why that may be, and what I can do to better serve that traffic and increase conversions.

In the sample report above, you can see that the US is the second biggest source of traffic to my site. Because of that, I try to tailor some content to that audience instead of only concentrating on Canadian traffic or local traffic.

 

Acquisition Google Search Console Device Report

Acquisition Google Search Console Device Report

Acquisition Google Search Console Device Report

As small as this report is, it packs a big punch.

This gives you a quick overview of where you stand as a brand and site, as it shows your average position on mobile, tablet and desktop.

If you see that you have a lower than usual CTR on mobile, for example, it may be a sign that you are not appealing to users of these devices. You may find that you need to a better job with meta title and meta descriptions, or even that your site isn’t rendering properly on mobile devices

Acquisition Google Search Console Queries Report

Acquisition Google Search Console Queries Report

Acquisition Google Search Console Queries Report

This report is, for SEO purposes, the most important one in the Google Search Console reports, as it shows what terms and keywords visitors used to arrive on your site.

This shows what you’re good at and what you can improve, in terms of keywords.

It is a great place to see what type of content to concentrate on more, and gives you the start of a model for how to approach future content and what types of terms to concentrate on for a more targeted and sustained approach to the details on your site.

 

Takeaway

GA, in partnership with Google Search Console, helps you understand how visitors search for your site, how they perceive it and if they find it relevant, giving you a starting point from which to build and improve on your content strategy for better SEO.

What makes GA so important as a tool, is that it taps into user metrics, and these user metrics are the main ranking factors of any website, as of this writing.

 

This is based on chapter 18 from the book “The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics”

 

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