Finding Your Direction with Google Analytics -By Dan Allen

April 23rd, 2007

12 comments

Posted in: Blog Bash Expert Posts

Expert: Dan Allen, LoveAccess.com

#23 of 30

So you’ve created a website or started a blog, but do you know who’s visiting it, or more importantly, why they’re visiting it? With the help of Google Analytics, you’ll be able to answer those questions and many others. It’s free, quick and easy to set up, and provides information that you probably won’t find anywhere else. So what’s the big deal? Why should you use it? Here are a few ways you can use it to improve your content:

Overview
When you log into Google Analytics, the first thing you’ll see is the Executive Overview. This page gives you a quick glance at four useful pieces of information:

• Visits and Pageviews - this section shows you how many visitors you had for the week, and their average amount of pageviews. This is a good way to watch your site/blog’s performance over time.
• Visits by New and Returning - with this section, you can see the balance between people coming back to your site and people coming to your site for the first time. As your site/blog grows over time, you want to see your New Visitor percentage slowly decrease and Returning Visitor percentage increase. This will show that as you’re getting new visitors, many older visitors keep coming back for more.
• Geo Map Overlay - this section shows a small map of the world, with yellow dots to show where your traffic is coming from. Knowing where your visitors are coming from can help you with marketing and keywords if you write about local or global content.
• Visits by Source - this section is a great way to see how your visitors found you. This will let you see the balance between new organic traffic, returning visitors, people that found you by word of mouth, and marketing campaigns if you have any.

Marketing Optimization
This section has more in-depth reports than the overview. While they are all useful in their own ways, here are the ones you’ll want to check:

• Visitor Loyalty - you can find the Visitor Loyalty report under the Unique Visitor Tracking section. This page will give you a better idea of how many visitors keep coming back to your site/blog. Remember, SEO is a good way to get traffic, but you need good content to keep them coming back for more.
• Visitor Recency - you’ll find this report right below the Visitor Loyalty one. Of the returning visitors you saw above, this page will tell you how often they’re coming back.
• Referring Source - this report is under the Visitor Segment Performance section. This page will show where your traffic found you, how many visits you got from each, and their average number of page hits. This can be a great way to get an idea of the types of sites you want linking to you.
• Overall Keyword Conversion - this report can be found under the Search Engine Marketing section. This is probably the most important page for checking how your keywords are performing. This page shows how many clicks you got for each of the search terms shown, and the average number of page hits for those visits. This will give you an idea to the importance of each of your keywords, and how they relate to the rest of your content.

Content Optimization
This section will give you a good idea of how visitors are spending their time on your site/blog.

• Top Content - you can find this report under the Content Performance section. This page shows how many times each of your pages are visited, the average amount of time someone spends on that particular page, and how often people leave your site/blog from that particular page.
• Length of Visit - this report can also be found under the Content Performance section. This page simply shows the average amount of time people spend on your site/blog.
• Entrance Bounce Rates - this report is under the Visits by Source section, and will show you not only the first pages that your visitors are seeing, but also how often they’re viewing that one page and then leaving. This can let you know if you need to improve your site/blog’s navigation.
• Top Exit Points - this report is right beneath the Entrance Bounce Rates page, and will also show you how often visitors are leaving your site from particular pages. This can give you a heads up on pages that may need improvement.

There is a lot more info available than the sections that I mentioned, and you should decide for yourself whether or not they’re relevant to you. The sections above will not only show you how your site/blog is performing over time, it will also give you hints as to which keywords to expand on or drop, and which pages out perform others. This can point you in a direction that will make your site/blog stand out from the others. Rather than molding your writing style after someone else’s, it lets you see how your own writing style works and how to improve it. Remember, keep your content unique, easy to read, and most importantly, keep it interesting.

12 Responses to “ Finding Your Direction with Google Analytics -By Dan Allen ”

1. 
   TJ Says:
   April 23rd, 2007 at 3:54 pm

   Good call, Dan. Google Analytics is a sweet tool for people who really want to get down to the nitty-grit regarding their traffic.

   Best part is that its free - who doesn’t like free stuff?

2. 
   elmo227 Says:
   April 23rd, 2007 at 8:59 pm

   Good overview on analytics, Dan. I like your last point about keeping things interesting above everything else.

3. 
   Elimar Says:
   April 24th, 2007 at 2:09 pm

   Hey Dan! I didn’t know much about you till I came across your post! This is such an insightful post. Thanks for sharing such great knowledge.

4. 
   Anuj Seth Says:
   April 25th, 2007 at 8:52 am

   Google Analytics is quite an impressive tool; its not the only one in that space but one that is surely simple to use and provides easy to decipher reports.

5. 
   Mark Jason Bagsic Says:
   April 27th, 2007 at 8:06 am

   Thank you for the information.

   Is their a certification for Google Analytics?

6. 
   Make Money Online: Weekly updates 28-April-2007 Says:
   April 29th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

   [...] Dan Allen, LoveAccess.com - Finding Your Direction with Google Analytics [...]

7. 
   Dan Allen Says:
   May 1st, 2007 at 7:37 pm

   Mark Jason Bagsic:
   I don’t believe they have a certification program, but they do have that the call “Conversion University”, where there’s a wealth of SEO knowledge to learn from. It’s a lot more in-depth than the outline I wrote. Definitely worth a read:
   http://www.google.com/analytics/conversionuniversity_dt.html

8. 
   Dan Allen Says:
   May 1st, 2007 at 7:39 pm

   err, typo. Should have been ‘what they call Conversion University’. That’s what I get for not proof-reading. =/

9. 
   magpie’s shiny things»Blog Archive » TQR - Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging Says:
   May 31st, 2007 at 3:30 pm

   [...] First up Dan Allen’s Finding Your Direction with Google Analytics. Unless you’re writing for the cat, you’ll want to know a little something about who is reading your blog and how often. I’ve had occasional run-ins with web analytics on various projects in the last couple of years. Leaves my head reeling. This is a short and sweet introduction to just a handful of the most useful reports provided by GA. (And the imformation works just fine with the new version of GA.) [...]

10. 
    oyyhisjzlf Says:
    June 18th, 2007 at 8:53 am

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11. 
    Internet Marketing Pakistan Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 5:02 am

    Very informative indeed.
    I have been using Google Analytics for quite some time now for various websites and sometime I fail to figure out a couple of things. The keywords that GA shows against which the visitors visitied my websites (organically through search engines) are not there when I try to run the same search query. I just don’t get it. Sometimes its not there even 4-5 pages down the row. Then how come Google Analytics show those to be the keywords searched against which my websites are showing up.
    Yes, I even tried the search with both Global Search and my country specific search, in case the users are doing that. But there are times when I don’t see my website coming up against those keywords in Google.
    So my question is, what is the catch there. Am I missing something.

12. 
    MR KING Says:
    December 30th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    I wonder if MR Alen creates fake profiles himself or he has a staff to do that.
    I applied to an ad on a site and got one of those famous emails back to contact her on loveaccess. Naturally, that is BS. However,I needed a laugh so I signed up. SURPRISE the girl did not exist and I saw at least 2 models with pictures..one being an almost perfect 10. Then my email was giving to every online whore out there. I got emails from 4 more dating sites, a few for auto refi and even the great leharmony. Apparently, Jesus thinks spam is ok too. Eharmony founder is real Christian dude, he claims.

    Just another lame site.

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