Google Analytic Traffic
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: How to Install Google Analytics?
Chapter 2: The Perfect Combination of
Analytics With Wordpress – know Everything you need
Chapter 3: Uncover The Five Report Suites
Chapter 4: Basic Date Range Reports
Chapter 5: Goals
Chapter 6: Discover the Practical Uses for
Google Analytics
Chapter 7: How to Get More Search
Engine Traffic
Chapter 8: Best Traffic Sources
Conclusion
Resources
Introduction
There is one extremely important thing that can
really make or break the success of any website, but a lot of webmasters are
under utilizing it – or worse, aren’t using it at all. That is analytics.
Specifically, Google Analytics.
What makes Google Analytics so great?
Well, not only is it a great way to monitor how
much traffic your site is getting and where it’s coming from, but if you use it
properly you can glean a wealth of other information including your bounce
rate, most popular pages or articles, and even your conversion rates!
The trouble is, it can be confusing. There are
tons of features that seem hopelessly hidden amongst a wide variety of options,
and the majority of people don’t even know they’re there, much less how to use
them.
In this guide, you’re going to learn about some
of the most important features of Google Analytics, and how you can use those features to improve your traffic, conversions and
more!
So let’s get started, shall we?
Chapter 1:
How to Install Google Analytics?
The first thing you need to do is get a Google
Analytics account, if you don’t already have one:
You can use an existing Google account. Just
sign in and press “Sign up” you’re ready to start using Google Analytics.
Next, you’ll need to add a site to Analytics. To do this, you can take a look at this great guide Google has already made for you:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080?hl=en
Chapter 2:
The Perfect Combination of Analytics With Wordpress – know Everything you need
If you’re using WordPress, and a great number of
sites are these days, you can use a nifty little plugin to make it easier to
install Analytics on your pages.
This is especially helpful if your theme doesn’t
already have a specific place to add your Analytics code. (Some do.)
If your theme doesn’t, you might want to check
out the Analytics by Yoast plugin.
This plugin will connect to your Analytics
account and let you choose which site you want to track and will then
automatically add your Analytics code to all of your posts and pages.
Take a look at the plugin here:
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/google-analytics/
Chapter
3:
Uncover The Five Report Suites
There are five report suites inside Google
Analytics that will each offer you different types of information.
These five different report times include:
·
Real Time
·
Audience
·
Acquisition
·
Behavior
·
Conversions
Some sites may not use all of these reports. For example, if you’re not selling anything, you may not need to use the conversions suite. (However, it’s still useful for tracking conversions to your email list and such.)
Real-Time
Real-time reports let you know what is happening
with your site right now. You can find out what is happening on your website at
the moment you’re viewing the report.
This will give you live information about how much traffic you’re getting and what pages people are currently viewing.
Audience
The audience reports give you information about
the people visiting your site.
They let you know their demographics such as age and gender, their interests, where they are located, what type of devices and browser they use, etc.
Acquisition
Acquisition reports tell you where your traffic
is coming from. It gives you information such as keywords used to find you and
links they came from.
This will help you determine which are your most effective keywords and marketing channels.
Behavior
The behavior reports let you know information
such as which pages people are viewing, where they go, how fast your pages
load, etc.
This will tell you which articles are most popular, and what you could do to make people enjoy your content more.
Conversions
The conversion reports will let you know how
effective your site is at making sales or getting email signups or getting
users to take whatever other action you’d like them to take.
Those are the five different types of reports and
what type of information you can get from each one.
Ideally, you’ll be using each of these different
types of reports in order to take full advantage of the power offered by Google
Analytics.
You can learn a lot about how to increase your traffic and conversions by using these reports.
Chapter
4:
Basic Date Range Reports
Using date ranges can help you in many ways.
It will allow you not only to see your traffic
over a time period, but also compare it to other time periods in the past to
see if your traffic is growing or shrinking, and how certain events affected
your traffic.
If you look at the top of your screen while
logged into Analytics, you’ll notice a date range.
You can set this to pretty much any date range
you want in order to see historical data and compare your information to times
in the past.
This is useful for figuring out if your traffic
is growing or shrinking, when you might have had spikes in traffic to figure
out what may have contributed to the spikes, etc.
You can also compare data easily by selecting “Compare to” in order to select two different time periods in order to get a comparison that will show you different lines to let you compare historical data.
Here’s how to do it:
Just tick the “Compare to” box after you click your date range, and then select the time period you want to compare it to.
Note: You can do this while viewing a single
site, OR while viewing an overview of your entire account at once to give you a
snapshot of how all your sites are doing.
Here’s what it looks like to view your main page
with this:
And here is what it looks like to view a single site:
If you look at the bottom of your chart, you can add an annotation. This will help you add notes to remind you in the future what happened on certain dates.
For example, you might add notes such as:
·
Ran Facebook ad, traffic up 28%
·
Launched new website
·
Added article on Pinterest, traffic doubled
overnight
·
Site hacked, traffic dropped by 75% for several
days
Not only will this help you figure out what kind
of marketing and such is working, but if you sell your site later, you’ll be
able to remember what happened at various times in order to explain traffic
discrepancies to potential buyers.
Date ranges make it easy to get an idea of how your traffic is growing or shrinking. Be sure to remember to add those annotations to major traffic events so you remember what caused them.
Chapter 5:
Goals
Goals are a function of Analytics that is
dramatically under used.
Many people don’t even know goals exist in
Analytics, and others know little about them or don’t know how to use them.
Goals can be very helpful. Goals will let you
track the effectiveness of your sales funnel, your squeeze page, your ads, etc.
Here’s how goals work:
1.
Traffic comes in from a specific traffic source
2.
You have a specific action you want people to
take
3.
Users take that action
4.
You now know where the traffic comes from, how
many people saw the offer, and how many people took the desired action
To set up a goal, open Analytics and go to Admin
at the top of the page. Then click Goals on the left hand menu. Select New
Goal, then select Custom. Click Next Step.
Choose a name for your goal. It can be whatever
you want, but be sure it will be easy for you to remember what you’re tracking
with it.
You might name it something like “Squeeze Page
For Weight Loss Report”, for example.
There are several types of events you can track:
·
Destination – User ends up at a specific page
·
Duration – User is on page for a specific length
of time
·
Page/Screens per session - User views at least X
number of pages
·
Event – User views a video, for example
Let’s say your ultimate goal is to get users to
make it to the download page for your lead magnet, which happens after they opt
in to your list.
You’d choose a Destination goal, then set your
value to the URL of your thank you page.
If you’d like more detailed information about
setting up all the different types of goals, here is an in-depth tutorial from
Analytics:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
Chapter 6:
Discover the Practical Uses for Google Analytics
There are so many uses for Analytics it would be impossible to name all of them in a short guide, but we’re going to take a look at some of the best ways you can use Analytics to increase your traffic and income.
Identifying Successful Content
Analytics is great for figuring out which pages
your visitors are landing on most. Not only that, it will also tell you where
they go NEXT.
This is useful for finding out which content is
most effective at pulling in traffic so you can write more content along the
same lines.
Let’s say you see a large portion of your
traffic visiting an article on Pinterest marketing. You could write more
articles on Pinterest marketing, going more in-depth or covering different
angles.
Or you could write articles about different
types of social media like Facebook or Twitter.
Identifying your key content is important, because
you will be able to decide:
·
What type of content you should write more of
·
What kind of content isn’t working, so you don’t
waste time on it
·
Which topics your visitors are most interested
in
· Which articles to focus links on to boost their search rankings
Chapter 7:
How to Get More Search Engine Traffic
Everyone wants more traffic from search engines,
but without Analytics is can be hard to figure out where to concentrate your
efforts.
You can use Analytics to figure out a plan to
help boost your search engine positions and attract more traffic.
Most of your information for this will come from
the acquisition reports. If you go to Acquisition > Search Engine
Optimization > Queries, you’ll discover the keywords people are using to
find your site.
It will also tell you the position you were in
at the time, and how many people clicked when they saw your page on Google.
(Note: This will be more accurate if your site
is added to Google Webmaster Tools and linked to your Analytics account.)
Here are some ways you can use Analytics to get
more traffic from search engines:
· Identify successful and unsuccessful content
· Figure out which keywords users are using to
find your site
· Find out which keywords you’re ranking near page
one for so you can get a few more links to boost them to the first page
· Find out which pages are most popular so you can
send more people to them
· Find out which keywords are getting the highest
CTR in search results to know which articles might need to be changed (such as
title or description changes) to get more clicks
Best
Traffic Sources
If you visit your dashboard and go to
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium, you will find out which sites
are sending you the most traffic.
This can be helpful in figuring out where to focus
your marketing efforts, as well as what you could improve to get more traffic
from other sites.
It can also let you know if too much of your
traffic is coming from a single source, which is dangerous.
For example, if most of your traffic is coming
from Google and there’s a huge update that drops your rankings, your whole site
would be in serious trouble.
Conclusion
Analytics is a complex tool, but that makes it
incredibly useful. Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to.
It’s not one of those intuitive, at-a-glance
tools that put everything right at the fingertips of the average user.
But if you really take the time to delve deep
into it, Analytics can really help you boost your traffic, conversions, and
income.
Analytics can be used to:
·
Track traffic sources
·
See which keywords people are using to find your
site
·
Track conversion results
·
Learn what content people want more of
·
And much more!
Don’t be like the average Analytics user who
installs it on their site and then forgets it other than maybe checking overall
traffic numbers now and then.
Take the time to learn the different features
and how you can use them effectively.
Trust me, you’ll really be glad you did!
Resources
Here are quick links to the resources mentioned
in the guide:
Google Analytics:
Analytics Setup Help:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080?hl=en
Analytics Goals Help:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
Here are some tools that will help you make the
most of the traffic that you have been tracking:
Landing
Page Monkey: http://landingpagemonkey.com/
Catcha
Monkey: http://catchamonkey.com/
Social
Share Monkey: http://socialsharemonkey.com/
Pop Up
Monkey: http://popupmonkey.com/
Countdown
Monkey: http://countdownmonkey.com/
Attention
Monkey: http://attentionmonkey.com/
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