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10.22.09
Gaining Valuable User Data With Google Analytics  By Patrick HareTools like Google Analytics give you an insight into your customer base that can't be matched by giants in the brick-and-mortar field. You actually can see what people have in their minds when they come to your website or online store, and you can use that information to expand your product line if people aren't finding what they're looking for. For years, companies have spent millions of dollars on survey takers, focus group agencies, and consultants, but the information they have gotten is not as accurate as what you can get out of Google Analytics, which is free. If you've already got Google Analytics installed on your site, you only have to make a few clicks to see what your visitors are looking for. On the left hand menu, click "Traffic Sources" and then "Keywords" to get a list of all the words people are typing into search engines in order to find your site. If you want to see how well you web pages match up with public opinion, you can look at the columns in the middle, an on the right hand column you will see the label "Bounce Rate" which indicates how many people jump off the site after only visiting one page for that keyword. Toward the center of the column, the "Pages/Visit" and "Average Time on Site" categories offer a highly insightful look into whether people explore more pages on your website, and how long they stay. An average bounce rate can range from 35 to 50% for natural traffic, but it can be far lower with targeted paid traffic.
The list of keywords itself can be very valuable, with the caveat that you'll probably see some strange searches in the list if you get enough traffic. As a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company, Web.com Search Agency gets odd queries like "jack first page search engine listings without any seo knowledge" or "can you fool local business center" even though searches like these are not indicative of the audience we are serving. Since our site is a source of SEO knowledge intended for a broad audience, some of our visitors are looking for topics that are beyond the scope of what we offer, what we would recommend, or even what is possible. The vast majority of our searches are relevant to search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, and the many free SEO tools we have on our site. Incidentally, hosting free tools, calculators, and widgets on your own site is a great way to get repeat visitors, unsolicited links, and positive attention from the search engines. Once you've got a long list of keywords (preferably from a few weeks of visits or more) what should you do with it? First of all, it needs to be studied in context. If you have your keyword list open in Analytics, you can scroll to the bottom and filter the list by one or two main keywords. This will give you an idea of all the variations people are using to find you. You can see the average bounce rate for your filtered keywords, and you may get a better idea of which words get better results, a lower bounce rate, more pages per visit. If you've set up goal conversions in Analytics, you can even see which keywords are leading people to fill out a form or make a purchase, which is information that you can feed back into your paid marketing campaigns. If you've got a group of words and phrases that have a very high bounce rate, you can likewise add these into PPC as negatives, or adjust your website to entice these visitors to stay. When you use Google Analytics to make improvements, you can also see how well an adjustment to a web page is working. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Patrick Hare has been managing online and offline marketing projects since 1999. From 2005 to present, he has been with Scottsdale Arizona's Web.com Search Agency (formerly Submitawebsite). Patrick provides Search Engine Optimization and Marketing advice to in-house customers and Web.com Jacksonville’s web design group. |
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