Let start from the beginning – what is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a fantastic service that keeps track of your website’s success (or failure) on organic and paid search results. It gives you a better understanding of how are your visitors reacting to your website, and all that in a very detailed way. And the most important thing – it is free for everyone to use!
In the past, you could also track keywords in Google Analytics. But that is in the past 🙂 Click To Tweet Since GDPR there is no way to track organic keywords users enter into Google to get to your site, which is a shame, but there is nothing we can do about it.
Google Analytics shares with you which of your SEO campaigns deliver the best ROI (Return on Investment is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment. ROI tries to directly measure the amount of return on a particular investment, relative to the investment’s cost.).
Google Analytics is very good at tracking down the results of your internet marketing campaigns. Click To Tweet Combined with Google AdWords, you can get a lot of useful information about your site and visitors.
Note: Google AdWords gives you keywords the user entered into Google, just an FYI.
A little “blast from the Past” 🙂
Google Analytics was once named Urchin visitor tracking by Google (really??). In November 2005 Google decided to rename it to Google Analytics (so grateful for that) :).
Here are the 5 most important reasons why you need Google Analytics:
1. It’s free and it’s from Google 🙂
2. It helps you identify where visitors leave your check-out or sign-up process;
3. It will help you identify the pages and links your website visitors click on the most;
4. It will tell you what was the referring website your website visitor came from;
5. It will segment your visitors by new and returning, their geographical information and if you set it properly, their age and shopping preferences.
But like most search engine services, Google Analytics has its own advantages and disadvantages:
1. Its setup is very straightforward, “plug and play” style. You don’t have to waste time waiting for results;
2. It is very flexible and can provide valuable reports;
3. You can track multiple sites if you have more than one website;
4. It also has eCommerce tracking features.
But, the disadvantage is you cannot track down individual users (as much as I would love that).
And to end this article I will give you a helpful tip that is very popular these days – How can you use Google Analytics to see if (or when) Google manually reviewed your site?
First, you log in to your Google Analytics account and go to the Audience -> Overview.
Add Segment. Then find the Advanced tab and click Conditions.
Copy and paste this as shown in the screen below.
Source: contains "raterhub"Source: contains "zerochaos"Source: contains "workforcelogiq"Source: contains "raterlabs"Source: contains "isoftstone"Source: contains "leapforce"Source: contains "lionbridge"
Behavior tab -> Site Content -> All Pages.
All Users on your Audience tab because you will get a pretty good scare when you notice your audience is at zero all the time 🙂
All Users, Made a Purchase, Referral traffic and Search Engine Evals. This is a personal preference to have my results shown immediately so I don’t have to search for them.
Conclusion
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I have recently started looking at my site’s Google Analytics but still have a lot to learn and decipher. I liked the screen shots you have shared, which gave a better clarity and understanding about review by Google. Bookmarking this post and will come back again to follow the steps you have shared. Thanks for this useful and informative post, Karmen
Google Analytics is a great tool that can help you analyze your website, but can be overwhelming sometime… Just take your time and get to know it. It has so much to offer.
Wow, what a fascinating tip. I’m definitely going to try it out Karmen. Thanks!
I used to struggle to read my Google Analytics until I started using the app on my phone. I find it a lot easier to navigate than the desktop version.
Where I usually come completely unstuck though, app or no app, is in fixing errors on my site. I’ll email you about the latest one on this site…
Yes, the app has little less functions so it is easier to read the data. I, on the other hand love the desktop version because it provides more information and more data. But it doesn’t really matter what you use, desktop or app, as long as you use it. And by all means, send me the email, so I can take a closer look at these errors.
Thank you for sharing about Google marketing and analytics in detail here. I love the fact that you used screenshots to explain. I have bookmarked this post now and will follow these steps. I definitely need to work on SEO of my blog.
You probably won’t find anything unusual but it’s a good thing to know in case you ever need it.
Even though I have been using Google Analytics so long I did not know about this. It is fascinating. I am going to check this out straight away. Thank you for providing these detailed screenshots. I like going through GA statistics as it provides a good idea on traffic sources and popular content.
I am glad I could provide some value with this post. Google analytics has so much to offer and it’s a very powerful tool to help you understand your audience.